Busy, busy, busy

I've had so many things I've wanted to put on here and haven't had a minute to sit and put down a thought. I've been so busy with year end at work, with long days and at work late for the last 2 weeks. I'm sure I won't remember anything I've been wanting to get down.

It's so hard on us when I have the long days and I literally don't get to see the girls for days at a time. It's especially hard on Meikiina. Deep inside her she's still so scared that she will lose another family. She's been very good about my being gone, but calls me at bedtime and I can hear the loneliness and fear in her voice, even as she's being so brave about it. She had her last day of school on June 4th. I hadn't seen the girls from Sunday when I put them to bed until I got home from work (late, but before they fell asleep) on Wednesday. They were beyond excited to see me when I got home that day. The next morning I stayed home until Meikiina got on the bus for her last day of school. She was so happy that I stayed and saw her off to school. Here's a picture of her and her best neighborhood friend going off to the bus on the last day of school. She wasn't real excited about being done with school. She said she will miss seeing her friends. But I think she's enjoying being home. She's having fun and seems so much more relaxed already.


During Meikiina's last week of school Brynlee went fishing with Gregg. She caught her first fish, and second, and third, and all the way up to 21 fish between the two of them. I asked Gregg to bring the camera with them in case they caught anything. Here's Brynlee with one of her big catches.

Ever since I've moved into my house I've wanted a garden. This year we finally decided we will have a garden. Gregg wanted a boxed in garden so we discussed how we would do it and kept talking about we need to get the lumber to build the boxes, but never got it done all spring. Some neighbors have been building and had a pile of lumber in their yard for many weeks and I kept on telling Gregg that he should ask if they are getting rid of it and he went a couple of times and no one was home. Finally one day I saw them loading it up to bring away and told Gregg to go ask what they are doing with it. Most of it they were bring back to the store for a refund, but there were these 2 - 2"x12"x26' boards that they said they couldn't bring back and did we want them for $20. He told us that he had paid $75 each for them. We didn't know for sure if we believed him but we thought $20 was a good enough deal and we took them. A few days later the guy who fixed our house after the last hail storm stopped by and asked us why we had them and Gregg told him the story. He told us they are worth about $150. So we had our boards for our boxes.

Then I started bugging Gregg about dirt - call and price dirt, call and price dirt. He finally called a couple of places and we decided we would get dirt from the same place that I had bought the black dirt for my yard when I moved in and we would get it as soon as we got back from memorial day weekend. As soon as we drove in the driveway from our camping weekend our next door neighbor came out and brought us our mail and asked us if we want some black dirt for free. His next door neighbor had done some yard work and needed to get rid of the rest of the black dirt. So Gregg hauled over the black dirt and we built the box for the back yard and we had a garden spot. Now we've planted it and the plants are starting to come up. I'm so excited. Here's a picture a few days after we planted it and you can see the lettuce coming up already in this picture. Now all the plants are coming up. We just finished putting in another box on the side of the house, but I'm not sure if it's too late to plant stuff in that one.


One more topic. Gregg is a shopper and he loves garage saling so they usually hit a few garage sales a week. Meikiina is a shoe girl. She loves, loves!, shoes - especially high heeled shoes. She always wants me to buy her high heeled shoes and she wants me to wear high heels. She called me at work one day when they got back from a bunch of real good garage sales and told me all the treasures she had found. Then she told me about how she found these high heels that she figured would fit me and she told me she really wanted to get them for me. Oh, how she wanted to buy them for me. She told me that she thought they would look so nice on me, but that I would put them and she could just imagine me going up the stairs and just waddling like a duck. Yeah, they were nice, but she was just scared that I would just waddle, waddle like a duck. I was laughing so hard at work, and trying not to let her know I was laughing. Honestly, she wasn't saying it to be mean, because I know that she wouldn't have a clue that it could be a mean thing to say. She was so sincere. She always want to buy thing for me and gives me all kinds of little treasures to take to work so that when I look at it I can think of her and know that she loves me. Who knows. I just got a good laugh and I'm laughing again as I type this.

At the end of the conversation Meikiina says to me, "Oh, and Mom! You have to talk to Brynlee!" I asked her what about. She told me about a comment made by Brynlee. They are at a garage sale that apparently didn't have a lot of stuff that Brynlee was interested in and so she announced very loudly, "What a bogus garage sale!" Meikiina told me that the lady looked at them and had a sad look on her face. But the comment is very Brynlee style. I don't have a clue where she heard the word 'bogus' but I think maybe she was trying out the word. We talked to her and tried to tell her that that is a very hurtful comment and that you can't say something like that in front of someone. You don't have to like the garage sale, but you don't say anything about it when you are at the garage sale. When you go and get in the car then maybe you can say something , but it's not ok to say something that will hurt someone's feelings - not even garage sale people.