The Boy & The Pooch

Wearing the kiddos out...

That was our intention tonight.










After that we all settled down to watch the olympic trials. We are so excited this year is the olympics and the kids are really starting to get it more than in years past. :)

That's all

Wall procrastination...

Here's my favorite pictures from yesterday. :)




As always Email people will have to click the like to the blog to see it. :)

Our bad...

Today would have been a perfect day to work on 'The wall'

Yes, we are still working on that thing. It's been extememly wet this spring and it seems every time we schedule it in- it rains and it's a muddy mess.

But today would have been perfect. Not too hot- not to sticky.


Yet, we were eating breakfast today and neither of us felt like it. Jim was coming off a mega hard week at work and we had the stomache bug rip through the house and so it was agreed that an unplanned day trip was in order.

So we pull out George (our GPS) and we start thinking of places to go that
a.) are cheap/free
b.) are not too far away *see A*

Gettysburg sounded awesome- yet it was a little too far away.

New York City would have been awesome, but it was way too expensive to even park the car, let alone anything else.

Philidelphia- Nah. We've got a Sunday at the art museum coming up soon & we were there not so long ago.

Lancaster- Couldn't think of anything at all that would qualify as cheap/free.

Bushkill Falls- Eh, too far away.

Hawk Mountain- Doable, except they would charge $20 bucks to get in which is teetering off the cheap end for us. Don't want to eat into our vacation fund if we don't have to.

Blue Marsh- an area run by the Army Corp and it's only $3 to park.

So that's where we went.




We, or I should say *I* took scads of pictures. :) (Jim let me have the fun today) I'm going through them and putting them in a slide show format to view later on- just gotta find some good musice to put them to

All in all, it was much more fun than building a wall. :)


For now, That's all!

Owwwiee....

See us? We look so happy. Our first swim of the summer. It's also the point where I'm just about done baking in sun.

I have such bad sun burn it's not even funny. So much for SPF 50! It's from last year so it's possible that it's past it's prime. But then again, the kiddos are not a big ole lobster like their momma, so it's most likely just me.

*Sigh*

Anyway, while I was baking in the sun helping Lilly learn how to swim which I mighgt add she is doing Awesome at- much better than last year that is as long as she had her noodle. Anyway, while I was noodling with Lil, the other two water bugs were getting daring:





Can I just say how much I love the DSLR? No way our point and shoot would ever get shots like this :)

That's all for now!

A week in review

Just some things that happened in the computer less week.




* Abby got straight A's on her report card.

* Caleb got 4's in reading, and Three's in everything else and passed the year only visiting the principal's office once!

* Lilly got assigned into full day Kindy in the fall so that means I can go back to work soon!

* Abby started the County band summer camp and is loving it!

* The Bean lost her first tooth and has several others that are loose

* Caleb and I cleaned his room and I didn't find anything as exciting as a stink bug collection- however, I did take out 3 trash bags of Junk. The boy is a pack rat and one of our goals this summer is teaching him how to organize.

* I came down with the a stomache bug that both Jim and Lilly picked up. It was not a pleasent experience

* Jim Passed his CT3 written exam and is on his last ride out today and gradutates his training course tomorrow!

* I scrapped- more than usual:

We're Baaacckkk....

We went a whole week without the computer. Not fun. I guess I could've hooked the old computer back up- but we weren't expecting it to take so long.

Dell overnighted a new hard drive and when I went to put it in the screws for the cover were stripped. So, I know that I"m gonna have to send it back at this point and I get on the phone to iDell once again and try to explain what the problem is. I don't think he understands what stripped screws means and has me go through this whole process of putting in the other screws I had taken out to make sure the screw driver they sent me was working properly Huh? If the screw driver was not working properly I would not have gotten them out you think? But they must hold high value to their screw drivers- as this is how it came to me:



No joke!

Anyway. After another hour conversation about this screw that won't come out and being put on hold so he could talk to his manager about what he should do about this problem, they decide that I have to send the computer to dell to get it out.

Thankfully, they anticipated this problem and along with the Scredriver and the box with the hard drive they sent me a custom made box just for my computer so that I would not have to wait for it a second time.

So off the computer goes and we get it back on Monday. I install the new hard drive and am following the directions to installing windows- b/c at this point I'm sick of being on the phone with them.

However, it's not working- so I call tech support- wait 20 mintutes for my idell techie and as I'm explaining the problem we get disconnected. So I call again. This time As they are transfering me to TS- I get a message that they are not answering phone calls at the moment and to call back again.

So, the third time I called I got a hold of them and after explaining what I was doing in the manuel that they sent he was clueless. He had no idea what manuel I was refering to and it turns out that it's an old version and missing an important step.

I could have screamed. So we get it fixed and it takes a while for windows to install and I'm told I'll get a call back in forty mintues. He hangs up the phone and no more than 5 minutes go by and the computer is re-installed.

So I wait. And wait. And wait. 2 hours go by and I call his groups extension and no answer.

After 4.5 hours I called the Tech support line again and had to explain AGAIN what the problem was- this time to a "manager"

Bottom line is that the next time we are going computer shopping- we are gonna have a catch phrase that goes like this:

"Dude, we are so NOT getting a Dell"

*sigh*

I just hope our computer adventures are over for the time being.

Bad things happen in three's...

Yet again, for the third time in 4 months our computer has crashed.

I get on the phone and wait to speak with the lovely tech support over at iDell.

iDell is a 'jen-ism' Just my way of refering to the fact that the barely understandable tech support all live in India but Mysteriously have american names. The same support team who I had to wait 36 minutes on hold with. They kept playing a recording telling me to log onto Dell.com to try and fix the problem myself and avoid the long wait time. Just another slap in the face because I can't open Windows that would allow me to get online- and if I could open windows there would be no reason for me to be on hold because that would mean our computer would actually be working. Duh!

Anyway, the lovely iDell Techie decided we should upload the same upgrades to Vista as last time- which obviously did not work as demonstrated by the blue screen of death that was flashing at me. I couldn't take it any more. I had enough and I let them know it. I was nice (as I do realize that this is not the techies fault) and Big Sexy was with me and said I did well at controlling my temper but being firm and sticking to my guns.

Let's just say I got what I wanted. Dell is sending us a new hard drive- hopefully one that is not crash happy like the present. I am told that this new HD should solve the problem- as they don't think this is a vista hic-up that everyone has upset with.

*sigh*

Thank God we learned our lesson after crash number two and invested in a brand spanking new external hard drive-who I call Max. Max is the man. He doesn't crash and burn. He is worthy of holding onto my pictures and files unlike PC.

*sigh*

Lesson learned is that the next time we are computer shopping we have offically been pursuaded to go to the dark side and invest in a Mac.

Not only do they have these super cute commercials




But I hear they don't crash as much and really, what more could you ask for?

Melting

Hot, hot, hot!

I hate this heat. I'm ready for fall already.

Some pictures of our newly one year old niece in birthday cake action:






And this one is just too cute considering her Daddy works for Coke!



That's all!

His own sense of style

I guess you could say this is Caleb's version of the feather boa.

He found this tie in Jim's closet and has been itching to wear it for ages. His teachers are probably going to be cracking up when they see him. At least he doesn't have his purple mohawk that we have planned for the End of school next week. That would be even funnier.

Cut-off's and A tie. That's Caleb's style. What a cute kid. :)

A nice way to end the school year.

OUR Abby won the Zeswitz award.

It's an award of musical excellence that was given to one student in each of the grades.

And OUR Abby got the 5th grade Z award. After only playing the clairinet for since September. Yup, That's our Abby- musical genious in training.


And for some reason the Feedblitz did not send out the email with the field performance video on it. So if you havent' seen Middle school band field show or Caleb's train song, click this link to see them.


That's all!

A Murphy's Law kind of weekend.

So- we don't have anything planned for this past weekend. We figure it's a perfect time to get working on the retaining wall out back.

So Friday night we check the weather report and it's supposed to rain- but not to worry- it's not *supposed* to start until late afternoon.

We really should not trust the weathermen at times like this. We get up on Sat morning get breakfast- get our dirty clothes on as we are heading out side the heavens open up and it is pouring and starts thundering and lightening.

Yeah. Thanks Mr. Weatherman.

This rain lasted most of the morning and completely ruined our weekend plans. Saturday was out and Sunday as well, b/c Carrying 20+ lb cinderblocks down the back stairs in the mud is just not going to happen.

So I decided to move the dining room table out of the way so we can at least start moving the cinder blocks to the back patio. It was at the very moment the table decided to give up & die. Yeah.

So we move to plan B- and we head to Ikea in the rain.

On the way the windshield wipers stop working. Yup- still raining.

But we found our new table. It's a heavy butcher block table with a hideaway leaf taht extends it to 105 inches.

Perfect- except it is too wide to fit in the trunk. So we have them deliver it to the house on Sunday and Jim puts it together.



This is my dining room today. You may notice that there is no table. Yeah. Well that's b/c the table is here:



The table is mostly preassembled and you have to put together the legs. As Jim is putting them on- he realizes that there are screws missing in the preassembled parts. No worries- he finds some screws that will fit and tries to put them in- and they won't go in.

Why won't they go in? Because there are screws already in the table- they broke off and there is no way to get them out. I'm not kidding. We had to box it all back up and now we are waiting for Ikea to come and pick it up and deliver a new table.

So yeah. That's my weekend. I hope y'all had a much better time!