Cal's Day in Syracuse

When Cal found out that Maggie was going to go to a baby shower in St. Louis this weekend, he decided that it would be the perfect time to visit grandma and grandpa. They agreed 100%.  Cal drove out this morning and met Grandpa at Black Squirrel golf course in Goshen where they enjoyed 18 holes together.  Normally, they would have played at Maxwelton, but the course was closed due to a golf tournament. Grandpa ended up beating Cal, but he didn’t mind as he had a lot of fun.

After golf, they went back to meet Grandma for lunch and also enjoyed watching Jeopardy together. While Cal was there, he even got to open up his birthday gift a little bit early. I was really glad to hear that all went well and that they had a fun day together. I appreciate that my children still enjoy visiting their grandparents. I know that I loved hanging out with mine, and I am glad that they have carried on that tradition.

Bananas and Peppers

One of the best parts about moving to Florida has been learning about the state’s vegetation and what grows best in the warm humid climate. Since we have been here, we have tried growing a lot of different outdoor plants. We have had success with some like the pineapple, bromeliads and poinsettias. Others haven’t done as well as we hoped, but are still hanging in there like our hibiscus plant.

Recently, Doug and I added two new plants to the backyard. We purchased a banana plant and a jalapeño pepper. We had had banana plants when moved here, but they were in the ground and the cold weather killed them easily. We decided this time to keep the banana plant in a pot, so that we could move it indoors when the temperature dropped below 40° next winter. We hoped that the pepper would do a little bit better than our tomato plant. The snails seem to have stunted the tomatoes growth, so hopefully we can keep the mollusks away from the peppers. The other thing that we did this past week was move the lemon tree onto the rocks by the bromeliads, hoping the flowers would finally pollinate and we would have our first lemon. The good news for us this was that we finally saw a lime growing on our lime tree. Not only did it look healthy, but there were a few other small ones that had started taking shape as well.

I do not know what we will try to grow next. Meg and Nick got a basil plant to put out on their deck that seems to be thriving, so maybe we will try something like that. No matter what comes next, it has been a lot of fun experimenting with gardening in Florida.

New Chairs

I have absolutely loved our new kitchen table. The glass has been a lot easier to clean than I thought it would be, and the pineapple brings up some great conversations, especially now that I know that it’s significance in the Mormon culture. What I don't love about our new table and chair is the seat cushions. The color was extremely boring, and I really wanted to update them. I wasn’t quite sure how to do it, however, as the seats were round and the metal chairs were super heavy. Because of those two factors, I didn’t know if it would be easy to take the seats off and cover it like I did our dining room chairs in Syracuse.

This week, I decided to give it a try. First, I figured out how to take the seats off, so I could learn how to recover them. Then, Doug and I looked for fabric. He suggested finding a pattern for three of the chairs and a plain color for the fourth.  It took a couple of stores, but we did find fabric that we liked. The hard part came next when I worked on recovering the chairs. The round seats made the material pucker, so I had to staple and unstaple the fabric to the underneath of the chairs as I worked my way around each one slowly. The shortest time it took to recover one of the chairs was 45 minutes, while the longest I worked on one was two hours. Thankfully, there was no deadline, and in the end, I was able to recover all four of the chairs.  I love the new look and am very glad to have that project checked off of my list.

Nick Makes it to Florida

Nick arrived late Tuesday night happy to have passed his check ride and finish his training in Dallas. He was also thrilled to finally see his new home in Florida. Meg had worked hard to get their apartment ready and was anxious to show it to him as well as the Baldwin Park area.  Meg and Nick were also excited to be able to get their new driver's license so they could be official Florida resident Disney World annual passholders.

I know that it will take some time for Meg and Nick to get adjusted to a new area and find their bearings. It will also take them some time to adjust to the Florida heat.  In the end I know that they will love the change from life in Chicago. Moving can be overwhelming, but it can also be exciting as it is a chance to start fresh. I definitely cannot wait to hear about all of their adventures in their new home state.

Visiting Northern Indiana

Since Cameron couldn't come down after he finished the semester, he decided he would go back to Northern Indiana, visit grandma and grandpa and see a couple of his friends from Goshen. He left on Sunday afternoon with the hope of making it to Syracuse in time for Mother’s Day dinner. He did make it in time, but not without a little bit of a hiccup. As soon as he got to I-465 in Indianapolis, his check engine light, tire light, and TPS light came on in the van. He called and asked me what I thought he should do. I suggested driving through the city instead of staying on the busy interstate. That way if there was a car problem, he could quickly get to a gas station. Cameron tried my route and thankfully, made it without any issue and enjoyed a nice evening with grandma and grandpa. Today, we found out that our worries about the van dying were all for nothing. One of the sensors had gone out on the tire lights, and it was causing the dashboard to light up. That was welcome news to all of us since we weren’t quite ready to let go of the 2012 Honda Odyssey. Now that it had crossed 230,000 miles, we were hoping that it could make it to 240,000.

Besides visiting grandma and grandpa, going out to dinner, and playing a lot of buck Euchre, Cameron was also able to play golf multiple times with Keagan, watch Bethany‘s match against Wawasee at Maxwelton, and hang out with Tristen who had just finished his freshman year at Goshen College. Cameron was extremely happy with his trip, and I was glad that he took the time to go before he left for Greece. Hopefully, he can return to sometime in June for another visit, but if not, he should have even more time in July. Since I know that he strongly prefers living in Bloomington to anywhere else in the world right now, I was happy that his visit went well and then he still enjoys many of the fun things that he did while growing up in Northern Indiana.

Charlie McCarthy

Growing up, my brother really wanted to be a ventriloquist. One year he asked for a Charlie McCarthy puppet for Christmas. I had seen the puppets in the JCPenney catalog, but I definitely didn’t feel the same way that he did about them. They never made any of my wish lists as I always thought they were a little bit creepy.

As I got older, I started watching scary movies and soon realized that I was not alone in my opinion that puppets were frightening. Even television shows, like Goosebumps, and the Twilight Zone featured puppets that were villains. I was glad to see that other people agreed with me and wasn’t surprised to find out that no one in my family liked puppets either.

Recently, my mom asked my children if any of them would like my brother's Charlie McCarthy puppet. Each one of them quickly said no as had Doug and I years ago. After deciding that no one wanted to keep him, we all started to brainstorm about what to do with Charlie. We talked about selling him at this summer‘s garage sale, but we honestly didn’t know if anyone would purchase him. I suggested throwing him away, but then Doug reminded me what happened to Tele Savalas' character in "Talking Tina" when he threw that doll away. I didn’t want a repeat of that Twilight Zone episode, so instead I suggested eBay. There were several other Charlie McCarthy dolls listed online. Maybe there was a market for my brothers as well.

After giving all of our ideas to my mom, she said that she should have just buried it with Bunk years ago. That made me realize that we should actually cremate Charlie McCarthy this summer, have a small service and spread his ashes at the cemetery. I told Cameron, Cal, Meg, Brett and Doug about it and they were all on board right away. My mom said it was a good idea but thought that she would just bury him there instead. I squashed that idea right away as I knew Charlie would come back to life and kill us all if we did that to him just like in the movies. No matter what happens it has been a lot of fun to think about as we downsize some of my childhood memories.

Mother's Day

Doug and I had decided to go to mass yesterday, so we could spend today enjoying Mother's Day.  Unfortunately, the weather had different plans for us.  We had gotten a really bad storm yesterday and another one was rolling through this morning cancelling our plans to go to Gainesville.  Even with the changes and the lingering discussion from last night, we still had a nice time together and I enjoyed my Mother's Day celebration very much.

The three of us decided that lunch would be first on our agenda.  Meg had not been to Cheddar's in a long time, so we tried there first.  The line was out the door, so we thought it was best not to wait.  After discussing several more options, I finally picked Milano's.  Meg had never been there, and I had enjoyed it the past few times that I had gone for Christmas parties.  Doug was a little bit skeptical as he remembered the Italian restaurant differently than I did.  We gave it a try anyway and were incredibly glad that we did.  

Since Milano's wasn't set to open until noon and it had started to pour, there wasn't much of a line to get in at 11:45 a.m.  Meg kept laughing that we were "rope dropping" an old person's restaurant for lunch.  It did work as we were quickly seated after they accommodated those with reservations first and were very pleased with the service, the food and the atmosphere.  Each one of us had a traditional pasta meal with my spaghetti and meatballs being just as delicious as the last time that I tried it, and we all had plenty of leftovers for dinner tonight.

Next on our list was a long walk at Shalom Park.  The weather was perfect for it and the sun started shining as soon as we arrived.  It was a fantastic afternoon which we finished by shopping at Heathbrook Square.  Once we got back home, I opened my gift from Cameron, REM's Life Rich Pageant, one of my favorite albums.  Brett's gift was set to arrive tomorrow, Meg had a birthstone bracelet that she was making for me and Cal had sent me a beautiful bouquet of tulips to enjoy this week. Those gifts along with the wonderful day that we had plus the new stone dishes that Doug gave me last week, made for one of the nicest Mother's days that I could remember.