Weekend Report

I spent the last weekend with good friends from my hometown. About 2.5 years ago my best friend that I have known since Kindergarten (and attended through high school and all the way through college) invited me to join her family at a scrapbook retreat. It is held in March and September at a Catholic Retreat Center. The event begins at 4:00 on Friday afternoon and concludes at 3:00 on Sunday afternoon.

We get two days of uninterrupted time to scrapbook, visit, eat, reminisce, eat, visit, eat...well, you get the picture. There are cabins to stay in onsite. My friend has 4 sisters (3 of which came), and her mom and a cousin. My husband was at a meeting close by so I stayed with him the first night and at my sister's the second night.

I was able to get 35 pages done this time and was very happy with that, as they ready to be loaded into the album (THEY ARE DONE!). I always have grand plans of getting stuff organized better and picked out ahead of time, so I am more productive. The last week before the retreat, my husband was out of town 4 of 7 days, so there were lots of extra chores to be done around the farm, so the organizing wish didn't come true.

One of my goals was to complete all the little groups of photos from various years that I hadn't completed for the albums for my kids. A trip to Ft. Wayne in 2005, Christmas pictures from 2007 and a visit to the Ranchwife from 2006. The only group of photos that didn't get completed from those years were our trip to Austin, TX in 2007 (because either I didn't print them all or I can't find them). I ran across them on my computer the week before and didn't manage to upload them to Walmart to get them printed. Now I can't find them again. Now I can get a fresh start on 2008 photos. I have them all printed and sorted, so next time I get a chance to work I am ready to go.

Unfortunately in my rush to get them into their respective albums today, I forgot to take a picture of any of them to post. Oh well, guess you will have to come visit and look through them. :)

Iowa Mamapalooza 2009

This picture shows most of us, however, one mom had to leave early.

With concerns about impending snowstorms, nearly a dozen Lutheran homeschooling moms descended on rural Hinton, IA two weekends ago. We arrived from several Midwestern states: Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota and Minnesota. Two other moms planned to attend from Wyoming and Illinois but late winter snowstorms prevented them from coming.

We had a little wine (okay a lot), a little chocolate (same as before), great food, lots of time to visit. We did some sightseeing on Saturday, stopped by a candy store and then ate a delicious meal at Luciano's. My favorite restaurant, by the way!! Then back to rural Hinton for a rousing game of Apples to Apples and Catch Phrase, before we headed to bed.

Sunday morning we attended our hosts rural church for services, then returned for a quick lunch before everyone headed home. Old friendships were renewed, new friendships were made. We laughed a lot (so hard that we cried). We stayed up way too late and when I returned home I promptly took a 2 hour nap. Anyone that knows me well, knows that I never nap, so I must have been exhausted.

We had great fun and I look forward to doing it again soon.

Facebook

My sisters have been wondering if I was ever going to join Facebook, being the internet junkie that I am, they were surprised. Thursday night I came home to a message from my sister, saying that a classmate was trying to find me. She sent me her email and I contacted her.

We haven't seen each other in at least 13+ years, more likely 15 years. She had moved and I couldn't locate her when we planned our 20th high school reunion. Long story short, she is now living within 2 hours of me!!! We have maybe even more in common now than we did back in high school. How cool is that?

We look forward to getting together soon!!

So I am now on Facebook, are you?