Lots of Work Weekend

Seems like it was weeks since my last post, not sure I can remember everything. Nick and I had a couple adventures on Thursday. We went thrifting and had a lunch date. Rob took Ellie to the GGs for lunch. We met up and went to the pool. It was a gorgeous day. We stayed and played for a couple hours.
Friday was the last day of camp for Ellie. She really enjoyed this fashion class. She brought her dress home to continue to work on. They had to chose a cause as their theme and Ellie chose Imerman Angels. The dress is a blue prom dress that we bought from Salvation for her birthday fashion party. She attached small mosaic tiles from the "found" box and she draped leis around the waist. I am impressed at how much she got done in a week. Nick and I went to the park to play and have our last one on one time. We had lunch and cruised to the pool again. The kids were instantly in the water, took Rob and me a bit of time to warm up enough to hop in. Nick was enjoying the slides and growing more adventurous. I guess he tried to switch to his head first while in the slide and caught his eye on something - a nice bruise. Ellie was getting out on the ladder and not paying attention and slipped and had a bloody knee and bruise.
Saturday morning Dad took the kids fishing. The overnight storm left it pretty cool outside and also flooded the pond they fish in. Ellie caught a catfish but Nick wasn't able to cast close enough to hook anything. They went to Toms Thumb instead. They talked Dad into a trip to Bennison's Bakery, too. Rob went up to Glenview to help the Buss family out with their move. He was in charge of removing screws and nails from the walls. I had some time to myself and was able to straighten up the house and do some laundry. I went out and weeded the garden - the newspaper trick kept the weeds out for about a month but they have started to creep up. I picked the kids up after lunchtime. We came home and they played. We went to Glenview in the evening for the Park Lane block party. The kids love to go because the jump house is up, and Brannon has a zip line in his yard. The firetruck came, too. It was such a nice evening. Great to visit with friends.
This morning most of us slept in, Ellie was up at 7. We had a relaxing morning before starting projects. The metal top above our bay window was in need of scraping and painting. It was the perfect day to do it because it was cool out. Rob started doing that while I worked in the yard. The kids joined me for a trip to Menard's to pick up some spray paint and things. I was able to find a hydrangea to drop into an open space under the magnolia tree. We chose a cooper color to paint the bench in our yard. We got some flags for the front yard this week. We came home and Rob was just applying the first coat of paint but it was bubbling up. He ended up having to heat gun scrape the entire thing. The kids played outside. I painted the bench, really like how it turned out. I dug out pachysandra and vinca that had roamed too far and re-planted where we had empty spots. I worked on cleaning up the paint mess while Rob finished scraping. We joked that maybe we would just leave it that way like the front door that never got re-painted. We went to Mom and Dad's house for dinner. Mom had quite a spread - chicken, chik'n, spinach, blueberry salad (with some of our lettuce), fruit, mashed potatoes, and broccoli. The kids made s'mores for dessert. Mom had a vacation present for the kids, Jo and Ole are going away this week for vacation. The boys got bug vacuums and Ellie got an American Girl dog. They all got an art kit and 4th of July light ups. Nick loved his bug vacuum. He and Tony were outside trying to get all the bugs they could to study. We came home and Nick worked diligently getting bugs. By the time we came in he had a cicada, earwigs, earthworms, and many other crawling and flying things. He even had the neighbor's grandkids helping.
Please continue to send positive thoughts...Rob's co-worker found out last week that her 13 year old daughter has leukemia. Her youngest daughter is in school with Ellie. All the collective, positive thoughts are appreciated. Visualizing my healthy and continually healing body and the new normal, Tree