Sweet Summertime

It feels like summer is really here for me. I worked my last day at the garden center on Friday and had a nice weekend culminating in the first free concert of the summer last night. Today I've been catching up on house things, laundry and such, and next on my list is a visit to my neglected sewing room. I have many projects to complete, so that is on my agenda for the rest of the summer. I probably should be looking for another job, but I think I'll just keep an eye on the postings for the school district to see if there's anything there I'd like to switch too. The nice thing about my school job is that I continue to get paid monthly throughout the summer whether I'm working or not. One of my coworkers retired this spring so that she could spend more time with her grandkids. I hope that will be me someday; retirement won't come a day too soon for me. Unfortunately, I think I'm looking at many more years before that happens. Anyway, I made her this little quilt and had everyone at school sign the back. She seemed to really like it and I thought it was pretty summery and a little retro too.

Oxbow Park

DH and I had most of the afternoon free yesterday, so we made a little excursion to Oxbow Park. It's a nice county park with hiking trails, a campground, and a little zoo also. I had taken the kids there a few times in the past, but DH had never been there as he informed me on the drive over. It was a beautiful day for such a trip and we enjoyed looking at the animals at the zoo, the log cabin, and doing the little hiking loop by the river. I'm sure Jeanelle over at Midlife by Farmlight will get a chuckle out of the calf being a zoo exhibit. Where else can we citified folk scratch a calf's ears?? Anyway, my last picture is of a mysterious 8 foot tall week with a red stalk. There were several growing around the river and it was new to me. If anyone knows what it is, let me know. This was kind of the start of DH and I trying to get in the habit of regular exercise. He's chaperoning the kid's youth group trip to New Orleans later this month and will be doing a lot of walking, so he needs to get in shape for that. Both of us have some extra winter poundage to lose, so there's no time like the present to start working on it.

My Trip to "The Cities"

True Minnesotans usually refer to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area as "The Cities" and that's where I had some summer highlights a couple of weeks ago. SD was doing her freshmen orientation for college and since I've been through it all before with CS, I decided to skip most of the parent stuff and head off on my own. While she was having her orientation, I visited several prime locations, some new for me and some that I had visited in the past. Pictured above is the Weisman Art Museum, a wacky building with some wacky art inside. I don't "get" a lot of it. To me, a picture of a cardboard box with other pictures glued onto it (some upside down) isn't really art. Neither is a Petunia that is supposedly a new life form because some scientist put some of his own DNA in it. (An entire room was devoted to this "Etunia") It has a fun gift shop though where I bought a couple of buttons for my daughter's collection that she puts on her purse. On the right, there is a picture up the river where you can see the wreckage of the 35W bridge laid out and the new bridge in the background. I guess the new bridge lights up in different colors at night, but haven't seen that yet.Here's a picture of the stone arch bridge. "A gently S-curving bridge was built by railway baron James J. Hill in 1883 to speed his trains across the Mississippi River. Now beautifully restored, the bridge provides serene transit for walkers, joggers and anybody who wants the best possible view of St. Anthony Falls, whose churning power first made Minneapolis a milling capital." You can see more of the Falls in the picture looking towards downtown. Lastly here is a picture of the Prospect Part Water Tower. It was referred to as a "witch's hat" water tower and was built in 1913 on the highest natural land area in Minneapolis. My son goes by it on the bus every day on his way to work and wondered what it was, so we ventured by while I was there.

It helped that the weather was perfect while I was there. CS and I went and saw the movie UP and then ate at an outdoor restaurant and walked in the St. Anthony Falls area that evening. I thought while I was there that it might be my only vacation this summer and even though it was only a couple of days, it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed spending the time with my kids too. I almost forgot because I don't have pictures, but I also went to Glad Creations, a famous Minneapolis quilt shop and Engebritson's, a Scandinavian shop of epic proportions. I bought a little something at both shops, but could have spent a lot of money if I had it.

Old picture...New post

Wow, this blogging thing is harder than I thought. I look at some of these other blogs that find interesting things to blog about everyday and I feel like I'm not making the cut. In the last few days I've done no interesting sewing to take a picture of. I did some yard work, but I forgot to take any pictures. I was just thinking "I could take a picture now", but realized I can't. Why? Well, I'm wearing pajama pants and the top I wore to church this morning. At 5:45 in the afternoon. It has been a good day and I just got up from an afternoon nap in case you're wondering. If you've never been to Minnesota in the summer, this was one of those glorious days that we dream about in the middle of the winter when it's been below zero for a week straight and all you see anywhere is dirty snow and ice. 75 degrees, low humidity, bright blue sky, light winds...perfect! This afternoon, we went to a friends house for her belated graduation party. It was nice to be with so many friends and have some really yummy snacks while sitting outside in this wonderful weather.

Tonight, we are going to the Sunday night concert in the park. It's hip-hop week. I'm not really into the hip-hop, but I've had fun talking to my kids about the concert. I told them I was going to "get jiggy with it", but they told me that reference was about 15 years out of date. Whatever. Then we starting talking about Will Smith and college son recited the entire intro "rap" to the old TV show "The Fresh Prince of Belair". How he can remember that, but not anything I tell him is beyond me. Well, I'd better go and get some pants on so that I can be seen in public.

Regarding my blog...I'll try harder this week. Oh and I forgot the point I was making that I've added an old picture containing some evening primrose (the yellow flowers) for the benefit of Jeannelle one of my first readers.

Lazy days of summer

Not a lot going on around here, no schedule, no appointments, no ball games, no work.....it's awesome. Looking at the calendar has been strange, absolutely nothing on my calendar for today and tomorrow. Most people go on vacation when that happens, but for a variety of reasons, that won't be happening so I'm just enjoying my home vacation. I think there's a newly coined word for that....oh yeah, the "staycation". That's totally me!
Last night I went to a retirement party for one of the guys from work. He just turned 65 a couple of weeks ago. Working at school, it has always been a little strange to me to go a few months without seeing coworkers. It was nice to see lots of them at the party and and catch up on all the personal news and work scuttlebutt. One of my favorite coworkers got a promotion and will be moving to a different school. Isn't that the way it works? Fortunately we're still left with a lot of good ones...and a couple that it would be nice to see on their way. We don't start back to school here until after Labor Day, so I've got awhile yet to enjoy.
We found out today that college son has to move back to the dorm Aug. 20th to be there for training that starts on the 21st for hall staff. So just a couple of weeks left at home for him. I think he will be glad to get back to school though. Moms have a way of finding little projects, usually undesirable, for kids sitting around not doing much. Today it was painting storm windows. Yesterday, digging a hole. Ha. I'm finally getting around to some of those things too. I cleaned out drawers in my bathroom today. I was in the right frame of mind for throwing things out, so I got rid of quite an assortment of old make-up, expired meds., lots of other icky stuff. I cleaned my husband's drawers too, we'll see if he even notices. We always joke when I get around to a task like that that he should start looking for a pod since the real me has probably been abducted by aliens. Off to clean under the fridge. :)