Dave's Daily

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Mowing Season

Mowing season has officially begun. I went out last night and filled up my gas cans (one 5 gallon can for the mower and one 1 gallon can for the weed eater). While at the gas station, I also filled up my truck. When all was said and done, it cost me $50 (It's currently $2.49 a gallon here)!!! Ouch! With it getting to the end of the month, cash is getting a little tight!

With all the rain we've been getting, the grass is really starting to grow. Some of the neighbors have already started mowing and I need to also, but when it rains every other day, and tonight we have church, it's hard to find a time to do it. I'm hoping to mow tomorrow night, but it's suppose to rain again tomorrow. I'll probably have to raise the mower to not bog it down when I mow. :-)

Also, the house next to us is for sale. It's been on the market for almost a year now. The owners have already moved out too. Last Sunday (25th) was yet another open house and one family stayed quite a while looking at it. They came back again last night and looked it over again. That's usually a good sign that they are really interested. So, we'll see how it turns out. It looks like they have four kids (2 older teen girls, one son a year or so younger than ours, and a toddler daughter). It will be good to get more kids in the neighborhood as my son is always complaining about having nobody to play with.

Blessings!

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Spring Break Review

My son had all of last week off for Spring Break, but as I mentioned in my last post, I only took off last Wed. (21st) through Friday.

Wed. morning, the whole family had our annual dental checkup/cleaning and I have to say, "Look Ma, no cavities!" :-) We all had great checkups! It was my daughter's first time "in the chair" for a cleaning and she did GREAT! Much better than I expected. Since she has been having to go see the doctor quite a bit due to her UTI's, she hasn't been getting along them too well, so I was a little worried. The dental hygienist was wonderful with her and made her feel comfortable. She gave her little sunglasses to wear to block the overhead light too. Our regular dentist passed away last year after our last visit, so we got to meet our "new" dentist. He was very friendly and seems like a nice guy. Afterwards, we stopped by Target to let our daughter get a little toy since she did such a wonderful job.

Thursday (22nd) morning, I had to go to my annual physical. Boy, so far, Spring Break hasn't been all that fun!! At least I didn't have to wait a long time. Just about the time I got my gown on in the examination room, the Dr. came in. Also had some blood drawn to check out my cholesterol levels, etc. I also had a small cyst frozen off on the right side of my face. The Dr. said it was some skin damage from the sun. After I got home, my wife headed out to the nearby town's big mall for a day of shopping while I stayed home with the kids. She doesn't get away by herself very often, so it was a nice break for her.

Friday (23rd) was our big day. We left home about 9am and headed to the nearby town as they have a "Going Bonkers" place. Think of the McDonald's play place times 10. This place is huge with climbing gear taking up a large part of it. There are also arcade games and you can buy food there too. I found out later that there is also WiFi there, so I'll have to bring my laptop or PSP next time. :-) My wife dropped me and the kids off there while she did a little more shopping at a nearby Kohl's and Wal-Mart. My parents also met us there for some visiting time. For lunch, we headed over to Chuck E. Cheese for more food and fun. The kids had a lot of fun. Just so we could finish out the day, we went to Long John Silver's for dinner after we got back home. We watched a cool movie called "Unidentified" on our SkyAngel satellite system after we got home. It was about UFOs, or was it? :-)

Saturday (24th) we had some really nice weather and I got a little bit of yard work done (sprayed some weed killer), but mostly played with the kids (basketball w/son and sandbox w/daughter).

Sunday (25th) was a normal church day, except I had to help serve communion as one of the normal guys was gone on vacation. I don't get to do that very often as I'm always working in the TV ministry booth, so it was kind of neat.

Monday (26th) Spring Break is over and we're all back to the normal routine of school and work. Bummer. It was a really nice time off and for once didn't seem to fly by even though I was having fun!

Blessings!

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Spring Break

This week is Spring Break for my son so he's out of school this week. But first, a recap of this past weekend... :-)

Friday (Mar. 16th), I took off at noon to get ready to head up to my mother-in-law's house. We left town as soon as school was over that afternoon. We got there about 6:30pm. One of my sister-in-laws, her husband and one of their daughters were also visiting from Indiana. Friday was also my mother-in-law's 73rd birthday. We had a nice evening with a nice dinner and a few hours of watching basketball. :-)

Saturday (17th - Happy St. Patty's Day!), my wife, her sister and husband and daughter went sightseeing in the old town where they grew up. I stayed at my mother-in-law's house with our kids as I really didn't feel like driving around. That evening was the big family get-together to 1) celebrate my mother-in-law's birthday and 2) well, just to get together. There was probably close to 30 people there at one of my wife's niece's house. They had pre-ordered a couple of weeks ago a bunch of BBQ meat/ribs from a famous BBQ restaurant chain there in town. My mother-in-law was paying for it too. :-) When it was time for it to be delivered, they didn't show... One quick call to the place and there was a mix up of some sort. The manager finally brought the order after awhile and said, "Oh, there is no charge for this." WOW!!! We got an order of over $200 worth of food for NO CHARGE! This restaurant chain is opening a store here in my town (today actually), so I may have to check them out. The food was excellent! Anyway, at the party, all the girls talked and all the guys watched more NCAA tourney basketball on the big screen and we all pigged out on great food.

Sunday (18th), we headed back home after brunch. My wife's sister and her family also left to go visit his folks. Since we got home kind of late, we just went out to a local Mexican restaurant. Again, more excellent food.

Monday (19th), I had to come back to work of course, but Spring Break has started for my son, so he was off. My wife's sister (mentioned above) and their daughter stopped at our house for the evening on their way back home to Indiana (her husband had to get on back home on Monday to get back to work). We went out to dinner again at a nice restaurant. Man, my wife is going to be spoiled! HA! They left Tuesday (20th) to head on back home.

Tonight, I have our monthly church board meeting. We've reinstated the dinners, so I'll get another nice dinner tonight too... Man, I'm the one that's going to be spoiled. We usually have Chinese as that's the pastor's favorite food. And it's good too! :-)

I'm taking off work Wed. (21st) through Fri. (23rd) to take some time off and to do a few "other" things. My wife scheduled our family's dental cleanings tomorrow and then on Thursday, she scheduled my annual physical (real fun!). On Friday, we're planning on doing some fun stuff with the kids though. I may work on our master bedroom some more to get it ready for painting.

Anyway, it's been a fun, few days filled with family, food, fellowship and fun. Is that enough "f" words for ya? :-)

Blessings!

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Summer?

Well, not quite, but today was close. It almost got to 80 degrees today, but the next two days we're suppose to be back in the 50's with rain.

I did get some grass seed down in those bare spots in my front yard and some in the back yard, but ran out of seed. My wife picked some more up yesterday, so I'm back in action! We're heading up to visit the mother-in-law this weekend, so not sure when I'll get more seeding done though.... Maybe tomorrow night after work.

I finally got my truck fixed too. For awhile now, when starting it cold, it would idle rough (had to keep foot on the gas) for a bit before something would "kick in" and then it would run fine. Sometimes it would "kick in" after a few seconds, other times a minute or so. Well, last Friday (Mar. 9th) after work, it never "kicked in" and I almost kicked the truck. I "two-pedaled" it home (keeping one foot on the gas and one on the brake). I got it in to the shop Monday morning and it turned out that the IAC (Idle Air Control value) had stuck/went bad. After replacement, it's been running fine now.

Last Wednesday (Mar. 7th) the sixth grade classes at my son's school did a special chapel service, so we went to watch them. To open it up, the whole class played their recorders (we used to call them flutophones) for a couple of songs. They sang some songs, did some skits and Bible readings. In the afternoon, my son competed in the "Bible Bee" where they asked Bible questions. My son made it to the "final four", but got knocked out on the question, "What was the occupations of Andrew and Phillip?" He answered "Physicians," but it was "fishermen." :-) Still, he did very well and answered some hard questions. An eighth grader won the Bee.

With Daylight Savings Time kicking in this past Sunday, I'm still having a hard time adjusting. It's hard to go to bed and hard to get up.... Wait, that was evening happening before DST started... HA!

Blessings!

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Sinus

Not long after I posted yesterday's entry, my wife called and said she was taking our son to the Dr. as he's been suffering with some sinus problems. Turned out he had a full blown sinus infection, so now he's on the meds, etc. Anyway, due to all that and them getting home late, we ended up not getting to go to the church skating night. Bummer... I just knew I was going to win the limbo contest! HA!

I also failed to mention that back during our church annual business meeting (Sunday, Feb. 28th), I was re-elected as a deacon. Another deacon's term was up also and he was also voted back on the board. So, looks like I get to look forward to three more years of board meetings. Yeah! :-)

The weather was very nice yesterday and so when I got home from work, I went out and put down some grass seed in our front yard in some bare spots. Hopefully, we'll get some nice grass there this year. I've been having problems getting it to grow there. Guess we'll find out soon enough!

Blessings!

Monday, March 05, 2007

Monday!

Hey, it's Monday! I could've used a longer weekend as it was kind of hard getting out of bed this morning. The weekend was kind of chilly and windy though and Saturday we had snow flurries most of the day, so that was kind of depressing since we've been having some real spring-like weather lately. Today is already mid-60's in temp and this whole week is suppose to be great. I just went out for a little walk around the building here at work and almost didn't come back in. HA!

I got a little more done in the bathroom makeover project on Saturday (Mar. 3rd). I took the little cabinet off the wall and removed the wallpaper from behind it. There were some places on the walls where the contractor has spackled, but never sanded down due to wallpaper covering it up. Well, since there won't be wallpaper any longer, I sanded those places down. I'll also have to fix some little nicks in the walls too. Little by little it'll get done... sometime... :-)

Friday night (2nd), after I got home from work, the family and I went out to Pizza Hut for dinner then we headed to the mall as my son needed some new clothes for school/church. All his pants were getting too tight/small. He was in a bad mood and it was a hard night to do shopping. We couldn't do it on Saturday as he was going over to a friends house for most of the day, so it had to be done that night. Anyway, we finally got it done... Thankfully!

Sunday night, our church was holding the monthly "Meet, Eat & Greet" dinner, but we ended up not going. Tonight though, our church is renting out the local roller skating rink again for some skating action! Every Jan., Feb., and Mar., they rent the place out so it's been a lot of fun. Remember when roller skating was a "sin?" :-) Not sure how much longer we'll get to do this as the owners of the rink are wanting to sell... Kind of sad as this the best (the only?) rink in the area and a lot of people really like it. The local Parks & Rec won't buy it for some reason (we also have a nice ice skating rink in town that the P&R do own). Anyway, we'll see what happens I guess. It may be my last time to win in limbo.... (in my dreams....) :-)

March Madness is starting.... Conference tourney's are starting and then the "Big Dance" begins. Unless a miracle happens, the local college team will get an invite to the NIT. Sigh...

Blessings!