Saturday, June 27, 2009

fireworks and a 5k

summer fest is this weekend in mishawaka and if you like small outdoor festivals it's definitely the best place to spend the evening on a hot summer night. the festivites start on thursday but we usually don't go down until friday because that's when there's usually a band or some other sort of performance and some of the best free fireworks around. last night the communit theatre put on "fame", similar story line as the movie but i think it was supposed to take place after the movie. definitely not the best performance i've ever seen but it seemed like the cast had a good time and it gave us a good reason to sit in the shade and enjoy some fresh air. the kids had a good time playing in the open field and afterwards we were ready for fireworks:
the show was amazing and i gt some great pictures
paige got scared and curled up on tab's lap and then promptly fell asleep. i still have no idea how she slept through the finale of the fireworks.

then after getting home after 11 i did a few things around the house and went to bed. woke up at 6:30 to meet at lisa's at 7am to go do our 5k. we've been walking to prep for the walk but had no idea how hard it would be to do it that early in the morning. it took us 1 hour and 1 minute, which, is not a diaster since we've never walked it before and we each came in 3rd in our age groups (thankfully we're in different groups!!!) we'll definitely have to pick up the pace for next time. i'm hoping we can get down to 45 minutes for the next one. i found out that the walk for logan center is on august 1st and if you get a group of 5 to walk together they give you a discount on the entry fee. if any of you are interested let me know! all in all we had a great time and did better than we thought, neither of us died or collapsed and we had enough energy to have pancakes at the lion's club breakfast. good job seester!!!






Tuesday, June 23, 2009

best days ever

the past two days i got the fun task of taking my nephew to football camp at notre dame, such a tough job having to be on campus around some players and coaching staff. i took a couple hundred pictures, some good and others not so good but here are a few for everyone to see. we had such a good time yesterday that lisa was convinced that she needed to come as well. ty's great traning was topped off by him getting to rush the field and all of us taking a tour of the locker room today and getting to hit the play like a champ sign! best day ever and i got to share it with my sis which made it even better:)

Monday, June 15, 2009

so many updates, so little time...

it's been a couple weeks of crazy but i thought i should at least update everyone on what's be going on around the bc (bennett compound). i am still unemployed but we have gotten more done around the house and i'm still applying like crazy. i've got a couple of contacts that i'm hoping to hear from this week so keep your fingers crossed. the beauty of the situation though is that i've been able to spend some nuch needed time with friends and family and spend time searching out what i really want to be involved in. one day last week i got to take my nieces to the park by my house and no trip to the park would be complete without taking the dog so here's the girls with their favorite horsey doggie:

we had a great time playing on the swings and the slides and rockne did great laying in the shade, not running crazy all around. casi found a caterpiller that she tried to keep as long as possible but before leaving the park she put it in a tree to roam freely. we also did some shopping for my grandma's kitchen redesign that we're working on but didn't have much luck, i'll blog about that later.

i've also be able to spend some much needed girl-time with my sisters and mother-in-law. my sister-in-law, dr. becky (couldn't resist calling her "doctor", ha) has 2 psychology offices in michigan but spends most of her time at the office in st. joe, a historical home that, after many years and lots of $$$ is getting close to completion. it's a beautiful place and i hadn't gotten to see it yet so getting to see the office was awesome and needless to say, she's been crazy busy so it was great to spend time together just relaxing, shopping, eating, etc and all in beautful st. joe! plus, both of my sisters-in-law and i are similar in size so some of the clothes she was planning on getting rid of fit me and i got some great sweaters and tops from her (thanks becky!!!) and sara got some new shoes, love the free clothes swap! the other great thing about her being in st. joe is that, as you probably know, st. joe's downtown has great shops and restaurants and is a great place to spend the afternoon even if it is raining to much to go to the beach, i guess we'll just have to go back again soon to enjoy the sun and sand! the restaurant she chose for us was basically a chinese subway/salad bar of sorts, you choose your own stir-fry ingredients, turn it over to the chef (this guy): and bam! a few minutes later you have a delicious bowl of food and other than narrowing down the countless choices it's very, very easy. They also have this amazing flatbread (called roti bread) that comes with your food, absolutely amazing as you can see from the pics below:
mine
sara's
becky's
and the way cute to-go containers full of leftovers
which made a great lunch
after lunch we drove through a few of the subdivisions to look at the super cute beach houses that cost way more than they should:
shopped around a bit, went to lots of cute boutiques and art shops and a good florist/gourmet gift shop where i bought an amazing cheeseball mix and my mother-in-law got some really good dip mixes. you can't go to st. joe without getting icecream at kilwin's. everyone's was delicious and even my nephew tyler found his favorite, chocolate peanutbutter:now, i know it looks like he's wearing lipstick but its really just chocolate smeared all over his very cute face. after returning to becky's for some coffee and the clothes sorting mentioned earlier we returned to mishawaka for dave's birthday (dave is sara's husband, tyler's dad). our ride home was great and we had a special treat, seester sara seranaded us with her version of delta dawn, accompanied by tyler, take a listen:
i won't mention which number birthday it was for him but we had a great time. the food was great and after cake and presents we discussed their family goal for the summer, to walk 500 miles (combined). sara had mentioned that they routed a few streets in their neighborhood that were 1 mile routes and since they had to go take care of a neighbor's guinea pigs anyway we went for a walk. other than the one 'skeeda bite i got (as paige would say) i had a great time.

on sunday we had pizza instead of chinese and josh, matt & pat got to play halo 3. lauren, my dad and i had a couple bottles of wine and had a nice evening. we found out just before we ate that denise had just boarded her plane for dublin after giving a paper at a conference in new york and since i haven't heard anything since then i'm guessing it all went okay, come home soon denise, i want to take you to the chinese place in st. joe!!!

monday was the start of my 5k training (5k walking that is) for the summerfest race which is in a little less than 2wks. lisa definitely is and i think my mom will be walking too. since it was blazing hot outside we did a shorter route, 1.5 miles but we may go on the longer route wednesday.

i guess that's all for tonight since the horsey is licking my face asking to go out. have a good day everyone!

Sunday, June 7, 2009

bfs and updates

tonight was bfs (breakfast food sunday) still my very favorite day of the week. we had pancakes, eggs, bacon and fried mush. for those of you that don't know what it is, probably the best food product ever invented by those in the deep deep south that is often forgotten by those of us this far north. it's made from cornmeal and when you buy it in the store it's in a tube, like those 1# of hamburger tubes. you take it out of the tube and cut it into 1/4" slices (like slice 'n bake cookies) then put the slices into a hot pan with melted butter. fry 'till crispy on both sides and eat with syrup. if you like grits, picture them in small dense patties and then fry them, it's amazing! thepackage says you can also put gravy on them but i don't think that's a good idea, they're best with syrup. i also floured my bacon which, if you haven't tried, then you should. the bacon stays nice and crispy and doesn't shrivel up, best made with the thick cut, from the deli bacon. after dinner we played scene it! and then chip, josh, pat & denise played l4d, or left 4 dead, basically zombie shooting in team form. thank goodness josh got that second xbox cheap from microsoft, now two people can play downstairs on the projector screen and two can play upstairs.

as far as updates go, since i haven't posted anything in a while, in case you haven't heard i lost my job last wednesday and have applied just about everywhere that i can think of and have also filed for unemployment, let's hope i either have a job or verification of my unemployment by next week so i can stop stressing. on the upside we are finally getting some projects done around the house since i'm not working 45-50 hours a week so a lot of our painting is getting finished. we started last week in the garage and thanks to pat and chip, the ceiling and upper cabinets are painted and all that's left are the walls. the wall our bathoom door is on has been painted green and we've purchased the paint for and patched the walls in the baby room, no we don't have a baby but once we do he will sleep there so that's what i'm calling it. lisa and i also got the paint colors picked for grandma's kitchen so once we find material for curtains we can start on that project since that is her mother's day gift. i have also been working quite a bit on amazon's mechanical turk (a place where people can do small tasks that computers can't do and make a bit of money) and have made close to $40, not too bad for just short of 2 weeks worth of an hour or two a night playing online, taking surveys and listing things for them. i think i'll go this week to look into donating blood plasma but we'll have to see about that. i think that's all for tonight but i promise to post some pictures of our projects once they get more in progress. for now, check out my freshly made bed and let me know what you think should go on the wall above our bed, it's been blank for 3 years and i can't figure out what to put up: