Memorial Day Weekend

These are my Cream Cheese Jalapeno Burgers.... that's right, I ate them both and they were yummy. Like having a Popper right in your burger! We are certainly making them again some time! These are how we celebrated Memorial Day... we were sad it was too windy for Smores with the girls. I swear who ever dubbed Chicago as "The Windy City" had never been to the Dallas area!! It's driving us crazy!

Mariska loved earning tickets at Chuck E. Cheese! We went for her friend's 5th birthday party. It was a blast!

Brynley's favorite game at Chuck E. Cheese's was this little basketball game, she could barely get the ball over the plastic shield, but she loved it!

We aren't sure why our beets turned white. I think it might have something to do with pressure canning them instead of using the water bath method... we're going to try the water bath in the fall and see what happens. But 25 jars of pickled beets from the garden is nothing to sneeze at!

Some were rather large... we probably should have picked them 2 weeks ago!

Sale, Storm

The garage sale went pretty well. We got rid of most everything, except clothes. I was shocked at how little people even looked at the clothes. We had some good, barely touched clothes in there, I think people are nuts. But after a very messy, stressful week, we earned an extra $250 bucks. That will really help us out on our trip to Utah... that's a lot of Happy Meals on the road. Then a friend of mine arranged for the rest of it to be picked up for a sale that benefits charity, so it was all hauled away at no cost to us! That was great. Our house is so decluttered now!

This last week we had a really bad thunder storm go through Dallas. Luckily we are usually either just south or just north of the really bad weather. This storm had a lot of funnel clouds and tornado warnings. It was so weird to watch it pass from our back yard.

Brynley loves songs and singing. She's addicted to Barney and knows most of the songs and the dance moves to go along with them.

Mariska is sad her little preschool is over for the year, but she's pretty excited to be in the Library Reading Club... it's really no biggie. It's just the regular library summer program where you earn tickets for books you read and at the end of the summer you can buy prizes with your tickets. But the word "club" makes her super excited.

We're so excited for our trip to Utah! We leave in just over 3 weeks. I can't believe how fast the time has gone!

STRESS!!

Anyone who knows me, can tell you I'm a "Worry Wart". And that's an understatement. I stress pretty easily about things. This week is extraordinarily stressful for me. We are having a garage sale. ALL of our old stuff is out of the attic and my job this week is to sort, wash and price it all. The washing and sorting is great, no problem. The pricing is where the stress comes in. With our trip to Utah coming up, I'm eager to make as much money as we possibly can... BUT if I over price stuff people won't buy it and we'll make even less than if I price things lower!!! But if I price TOO low then I'll be missing out on money we could have made! Finding a balance between giving people a good deal so they'll buy, but making as much as possible is extremely stressful for me. Brent keeps reminding me that any money we make is more than we'd have with all the stuff just sitting in the attic. He's no help at all! Just kidding, he does help, but the stress still keeps me up at night. And I'm eager for Saturday and this sale to be over so my house can stop looking like this:

I had a dream last night that I was having to swat at RATS with a broom that had taken up residence in the piles of stuff. It was horrible! So anyway, wish me luck on the sale and on getting some sleep until then!

On a happy note, Brent finished his 7th class this last weekend!! Only 5 more to go!! I love to see the number going down. It's going to feel so weird when he's actually done, by that time we'll have been living with reading and homework almost every night for an entire year and a half! Not to mention his staying after work and going in early to fulfill his administrative service hours... It'll be so weird to not have all that to worry about anymore. Well, at least until it's my turn!! :)