Living Better One Day At A Time

This past Saturday, we were invited to go up to Sandusky Ohio to visit Kalahari Waterpark and Resort with my parents and siblings. My dad wanted to take the grandkids up for the night. They rented a 3 bedroom suite for the night and we spent 24+ hours up there. All told there were 12 of us who were there... my mom, my dad, me, Rebecca, Jacob, Benjamin, my brother Josh, my sister Mary, my brother Joe, his wife (whom nobody knew was coming), my niece Lacie and my nephew Ethan. My other nephew Alex (who is severely autistic) stayed back as the noise and crowds would be too much for him. (It was everyone's understanding that my SIL was going to stay back with Alex, however at the last minute she tagged along leaving HER mom with Alex. When we got up there, the look of shock on my parents' faces was enough. My mom later told me that neither she or my dad knew my SIL was coming, even though when I picked them up both her and my brother told me that my parents knew that she was comin…

Happy Monday! I am running on the very tired side! This past weekend, I took the kids up to Kalahari Resort and Waterpark to meet up with my parents and siblings, as my dad wanted to have one last summer hurrah with all most of his grandkids. What ensued was 24+hours of waterpark madness and this mama is tired. Now it is back to Monday and back to reality. Reality being that it is fair week for our area (which means my husband is working crazy hours), time to get Rebecca ready for scout camp and it is my birthday week (my b-day is on Friday)-- not that we will be doing anything but it is what it is.
For now I am taking a moment to join in with the lovely Sandra over at "Diary of a Stay at Home Mom" in her Happy Homemaker Monday meme:

THE WEATHER:::
It has been very humid the last week and hot. We have had torrential rains this past weekend. Last night it looked like a river out in front of our house. Today it is partly cloudy and it is around 77 degrees, but it is still very h…

First of all, thank you for the Happy Anniversary wishes for Bill and I. We enjoyed a laid back day yesterday walking with the kids outside and then enjoying a dinner of take out.

We were able to go walking/hiking because after a week of daily rains, we finally got some dry weather this weekend. There has been area flooding, but thankfully we didn't experience any here at our house. We decided to take the kids out on a walk on Sunday as the humidity finally broke and the sun was out.

We headed out to Gambier to visit the choo-choo and to walk the trail.


One of the first thing we noticed, was that there was a huge tree branch down that just a couple months ago, my brother Josh had sat on.
Then (May):
NOW:

The Kokosing River was running high. In fact, we saw several streams where there had not been any. And where there are usually sandbars, there wasn't any.


We saw MANY butterflies on our walk, a frog or 2, and a worm.






Overall, it was a lovely way to spend our anniversary with the…

July 16, 2005 Bill and I stood in front of our parents, families and friends and promised to love one another throughout all times-- good and bad.




Over the last 12 years, we have been through many ups and many downs. We have seen the birth of our 3 children. We have experienced vacations that refreshed our souls. We have had many happy times. We have been through job losses, pregnancy losses, sicknesses, surgeries (gall bladder, hysterectomy, kidney stones, etc.). We have moved several times. We have been through a ton.



Honestly, life right now is going at break neck speed and there are a lot of obstacles that we are facing. But I am so glad that I have Bill as my partner. Yes, there are times that we don't agree. Yes, there are times that we have different priorities. Yes, there are times that we drive each other nuts. But at the end of the day, when we go to bed, we know that we are in this wild ride together and we love one another and that is the main core of our relationship.…

I find that I am in the season of life where I might not be able to come on here everyday and post in real time. It is easy to schedule posts and work on series (like our vacation) or book reviews, but to actually come on at the end of each day and talk about that day....well with my schedule there is always a chance that that might not happen. So I thought I would start maybe recapping my week, with some photos, on Saturdays. I like to think that this blog is a recap of my life, almost like a diary, so there are things that happen each week that I would like to document but don't always have a chance to. So that is going to be the purpose of these Saturday posts.

So let's see what things happened this past week (July 8-15,2017):
THE THEME OF THIS WEEK WAS RAIN, RAIN, AND MORE RAIN! We had thunderstorms and downpours every day except Friday. The rains dumped several inches of water so we had some flooding in the area. We got a little bit of water in our basement but nothing ser…