Friday Blogging

Happy Friday to all who are reading this!  Hope your day to the weekend is grand!

Neutrinos

The two of the three neutrinos left our house last Sunday.  We really had a great time with their visit.  We did get the chance to go have a fantastic dinner at the Asylum up in Jerome.  I did not have to even think about using my favorite BYH phrase because the service was amazing…along with the food.  Here is the three neutrinos at our goodbye dinner.

I think they had their fill of scientific discussions…at least I hope they had the chance to solve all of the problems of the universe and quantum physics!

Today we have a couple of “worker guys” (Jason’s title…LOL) at our house fixing some things that we had on our to-do list.  Jeff and David (supervising) are working on the deck and the other guy by the AC is trying to get the Nest thermostat to work as expected with an air pump setup.

So I decided to do some work also, and make banana bread — the house smells amazing!!

Friends and Places

As I was walking this morning, I was thinking about friends.  I realize, and it is my own doing, that I really don’t have friends in this park.  And I say it is really my own doing because I kind of enjoy the solitary environment here — I can work on whatever project I want (I have now completed 3 diamond paintings) and my time is my time.  I certainly have acquaintances here, especially anyone that owns a dog.  But there are not real friends like the ones I have in Minnesota!  (Kathy, Carrie, Michelle, Carrie, Ashley, Candy – friends that you catch up with and feel like you never left….and of course my family that are back there)  But I am not saying this because I want to feel sorry for myself, I am only self assessing if this is a good thing or a bad thing?  I do get sad spells here and wonder if I did more or reached out more to people here if that would help, but then you always get caught up in the politics of a group like you have here.  Plus there are established little groups here that are hard to break in to especially when you are a snowbird.  So it was just a self observation that I had this morning….I LOVE my friends in MN and am not sure I feel the need to have the same level of friends here.  I certainly say hi to people, I am not a snob, but wonder if AZ with be my peaceful place and MN will be my community place.  Here I can be an introvert and in MN I can stretch myself to be an extrovert!  🙂  I have to think about this more…is it important to have friends at all times, or is it ok to decide how you want to live in one place and then in another.  I have sort of committed myself to try to join at least one golf league back in MN, so I will even stretch my wings a little more there!  It can be so peaceful here, sitting on the deck (expect when you have a guy running the belt sander…LOL) it just seems to be what I want here.  Oh well, we will see how this plays out as time goes on.

Names

I was thinking the other day about names.  Our brother and sister-in-law were scheduled to come and visit this week, but while visiting the grandchildren in San Francisco, my BIL got a terrible cold and just wanted to go back home to Milwaukee rather than visit.  I don’t blame him at all!!!  Can you imagine having a stuff, runny noise, coughing, sore throat and you have to try to be sociable??  No way!!  But I was thinking about my BIL — he is a III and his son is a IV and his grandson is a V, but they all go by different names (Lou, John, Jack).  You just do not see that too much anymore where a name is carried on from generation to generation.  It really is kind of cool.

I remember when I was in high school and I found out that I was wrong about what I thought my middle name was.  I always thought it was Cecilia, but in high school learned it was actually Cecile!!  Any paperwork I filled out for schools would have the wrong middle name.  I cannot fully remember, but it was either my mom or my older sister, Marcia!!  I was quite surprised to learn I was wrong all those years!

And speaking of middle names.  Although people may not always name their kids after someone in mind and often try to be unique with the first names.  We were unique with first names, but tried to have some significance with the middle names.  We knew we wanted to name Jenny, Jenny, but since there was already a niece named Jenny (Jennifer), we did not want to use Jennifer.  So we created our own spelling of Jennette — I wanted to 2 n’s in there, not the traditional spelling of Jeanette.  Wow did I have to fight to get that correct spelling all through Jenny’s school years.  Now there are so many unique spellings I don’t think schools would just go ahead and make what they think is the “correct” spelling anymore.  I wanted a middle name that sounded good and my dad suggested Katherine, which was a great or great-great grandmother.  It seemed to fit perfectly.  With Jackie, we knew we wanted her to be Jackie, not Jacqueline….another battle with the schools and doctors office as they asked me for her Full Name….not her nickname….LOL.  And her middle name of Rae, seemed to sound so well together with Jackie — kind of a musical tone to it.  Rae, after my dad Ray.  Well then Jason came along!!  First we knew it had to be a J name or he would feel out of place with his J sisters…LOL…so Jason seemed perfect and than adding David, after his dad was a perfect fit too.  (Plus his nickname of J-Bug really fit in well too!!)  So I think we passed on a little with the names of our kids, or at least we hope we did!!

Last week was Jackie’s birthday and they all had a great dinner at Crave, celebrating with her siblings and also Jermar’s family.  Wish we could have been there!!

Basement Project

Not sure I have talked about Jackie and Jermar’s basement project…I think I have, but it is starting to move more forward.  With all of the St. Louis Park inspections finally passing they now have sheet rock on the walls and ceilings and it is coming together nicely.  This was the project that they hoped to have done by Christmas, not knowing that SLP had a fleet of inspectors that are determined to fail the first inspections!!  This is Jermar doing some work before the Super Bowl last week, then he and Jaxen taking some timeout to watch some of the game.  (You can see they will really enjoy their new walk-in closet once it is done since now their closet is in the family room!!)  At least there is good progress now and can’t wait to see the final results.

Last week Jason was in a conference in Colorado and said they served this??!!??  Do you think he is making this up or real??  I think someone had too much wine to drink and accidentally put their corndog in their drink rather than putting it on their plate!  🙂

Snapchat

I know I have posted snapchat pictures in the past, but our kids really enjoy using that app.  I think Lisa, our niece, is the snapchat junkie….LOL…cause she uses it all the time.  The pictures are usually good for a laugh.  Here are some they did this week!

Well I think I emptied the brain cells I wanted to for today.  Now I have room for more stuff that I can dump again next week!  LOL  Hope you all have a great weekend, and can take some time to enjoy everything around you!

TIFN

Oh and I guess it got a little warm up in MN this past week.  Enough that Jaxen could go splashing in some puddles on their sidewalk and take a walk with his mom outside.