Linda's Sunflower

It's been a busy holiday! As evidenced by the top photo, I am getting ready for a garage sale next Saturday. I spent the day getting things together and marked. The stamp sets are for sale, the Longaberger basket isn't! The second photo is our deranged 9 month old kitten/cat, Muffin! She has a thing for water, so Kaitlin filled up the bathroom sink this morning while preparing to paint. Muffin had a great time playing in the water. The third picture is Kaitlin in action painting the bathroom BRIGHT turquoise! I'll post another picture after she gets everything back up on the walls, etc. It's definitely eye-opening! The kids are all working tonight. They enjoyed a few days off work since they all asked for Sat. & Sun. off thinking they were going to visit their Grandpa in Oklahoma. Since their plans fell thru, we all just hung out together for a few days. Music for today: Damn Yankees, a mid 90's group made up of Ted Nugent, Tommy Shaw from "Styx" and J...

The kids and I had great fun tonight playing UNO. Since they are all working now, we rarely have time to play games. We had quite a few laughs, especially at our in-house comedian - Kaleb! He's quite the cut-up, could probably be a stand-up comedian someday. We made a trip to Home Depot this morning to get items needed for Kaitlin's painting of the bathroom in the basement. I picked up the paint the other day - Mike mixed it for us. It is bright turquoise. We are accenting with lime green and orange towels, and a bright pink shower curtain. I'm anxious to see how it will look when it is finished. I will try to post a picture (if I remember)!!! I am getting things together for a garage sale. I keep changing my mind on whether or not I really want to do one. Our neighbors, Paul & Tokeah, are having one; and they offered to let me put things in theirs, but I think I've just decided to go ahead and do one here. I don't have tons of stuff, but I do have some scrapboo...

Yes, Corby made a cheesecake tonight! It's actually for me to take to work tomorrow, for my friend's birthday! He makes awesome cheesecakes, and since they are so rich, I rarely have him make them for us at home. Heck, none of us need the calories! Anyway, it's a chocolate chip cheesecake with a brownie crust. My mouth is watering just thinking about it! I'll have a small piece tomorrow, and then let Cindy take the rest home. The kids met me downtown today so Brandon could open a checking account at Intrust. We closed out his account at Emprise last week, because they don't have banks in Manhattan, and Intrust does. In fact, Intrust has an ATM in the K-State Student Union building. He should get his debit card in about 10 days, so he will be set. My latest book is Sunrise, by Karen Kingsbury. She is a wonderful Christian fiction author, and has written several series that I have thoroughly enjoyed. The latest - the Sunrise Series - continues the lives of characters ...

Today was graduation Sunday at church. The juniors hosted a reception during the Sunday School hour to honor the grads; who set up tables of their high school achievements. I took the same things I had used at Brandon's party last Saturday, so it was an easy set-up. They then honored the graduates at the 11am service. It was a nice ending to a week of celebrating Brandon's graduation. We went to his friend's house last night for a graduation party. Brady will be rooming with Brandon at K-State. They have been friends since 6th grade at Allison. We enjoyed watching the powerpoint his folks had made from his days as a baby up to graduation. It's back to work tomorrow after a week of vacation. I wish I had another week off!!!! Oh well, at least next weekend is a 3-day weekend! Quote for the day: "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be FELT with the HEART." Helen Keller

Today is bittersweet. We closed on mom's house. It was nice to get the house sold and get mom out from under the electric, gas and water bills; but it was a bit sad knowing we wouldn't be celebrating any more holidays or birthdays there. Because we got such short notice on the closing (we found out Tues. afternoon); we don't have everything out of the house. We will be going out this weekend to finish getting the junk out. My brother, Terry, will be hauling it to the dump in Benton, where he lives. He can take things to the dump for free. There is an old stereo in a long wooden unit - has to be around 35 years old, as I remember it from high school (yes it's been that long)!!! Needless to say no one wanted to buy it at the estate sale, so we're hauling it to the dump. There is more trash/junk in the garage. Terry is hoping we can get it in one load. After that we will leave the key on the kitchen counter and tell the house goodbye - and thanks for the memories! My c...

What a day! Today was Brandon's 18th birthday and his graduation from Heights High School! WE ARE SO PROUD! It seems like only yesterday we were watching him toddle around and dancing to Garth Brooks! It seems like only yesterday he was entering middle school, and excelling there! It seems like only yesterday he was entering high school, and continuing to excel. Now, he's ready for the next phase of his life - COLLEGE! Short quote tonight - fitting for Brandon and all 2007 graduates - "I WILL MOVE THE EARTH" -- unknown

We had Brandon's graduation party yesterday, and had a wonderful, bittersweet time! We had an open house at the Community Bldg. at the park, and friends and relatives came by to wish Brandon well as he graduates from Heights and heads off to K-State in the fall. The first picture is our family, the second one is me and Corby with our "little" boy! Obviously he didn't get his height from either one of us! HA! The third picture is of Brandon and Diane, my best friend's daughter. Brandon and Diane have grown up together. We have some wonderful memories of these two when they were little. They were almost inseparable. We had a co-graduation party - and set out photos of the two of them together. They don't see each other as often anymore, as they've gone to different high schools, but we are still family!!! Last night we took Brandon and his two best friends, Owen and Brady, to On The Border for their graduation dinner. OTB is Brandon's favorite restaurant...

Well, the refrigerator IS on the blitz! We have a repairman coming tomorrow. I hope it doesn't cost an arm and a leg! Fortunately the washer was an easy fix - but don't ask me what it was! Corby had our neighbor, fix-it-man, Paul, come over and look at it and they fixed it at no cost! It's been a very busy week at work. News has been outdoing themselves with coverage of the tornado in Greensburg and the flooding throughout Kansas. And of course we had to have even more space in tomorrow's paper due to President Bush's visit in Greensburg today. Hopefully things will soon get back to normal. I'll be busy the next few days trying to get ahead since I'll be on vacation next week. I am reading "The Fifth Vial" by Michael Palmer. I've read all of his books, and this one is pretty darn good so far. I'm about halfway through. I love to read, and in reading my niece's blog tonight, I realize that I tend to read fluff. She and her husband read ...

It hasn't been a good day for us! Woke up this morning to a refrigerator that wasn't very cold. We moved everything out of the freezer to the chest freezer in the basement, and put the things we could salvage in coolers with ice. Corby then spent several hours sucking dirt and dust out of the vents and around the condenser, etc. After several hours of cleaning he plugged it back in and it seems to be working. We haven't put everything back in there. Will wait until morning to make sure it is working. Then this evening our washer quit. I was down to about 3 loads of laundry left to do, and it stopped before spinning the load of boys work shirts. Kaitlin and I had to squeeze water out of the entire load so we could put it in the dryer. Corby looked at it, and thinks it's the pump. He's hoping Paul, our favorite neighbor and handyman, can help him fix it tomorrow night! I had to go down to work today to add pages to tomorrow's paper due to the tornado in Greensburg...

Every year the Heights Music Department puts on their year-end program - Puttin' on the Ritz. This picture of Kaitlin is actually from last year's show. I was unable to get a picture of her this year. They performed the show the last 2 nights, and we went to last night's show. It was wonderful! All the kids did great! Kaitlin's group, the Concert Choir, performed several times. Their first grouping was of TV shows from the 50's-70's - Happy Days, Beverly Hillbillies, Laverne & Shirley, The Addams Family, and I Love Lucy, among others. It was really cute - they danced a bit and did some funny things during the songs. Their second performance was at the end of the show - they sang "How Do We Say Goodbye" to honor the seniors. Right before they sang they did a slide show of the seniors - showing a baby/childhood picture and then their senior picture. Brandon's friend, Brady, is in the jazz band (they were awesome!), and his baby picture was really...

I couldn't resist posting another senior picture from Brandon's gallery. Perhaps because we scurried around the last few days to get all the information together to apply for a scholarship from our church. Today was the deadline, and I was at church at 4:30 hand-delivering the application. Nothing like "cutting it close!" Our best friend, Melody, was gracious enough to write a letter of recommendation; and Brandon's Arch CAD teacher wrote the other letter. That and his official transcript were the last pieces of the puzzle. Now we are praying that he gets some money - his college education is going to be expensive, and we just don't have much money to help him. He's going to have to make it on scholarships, loans and working. I know he'll be successful because he's proved to us the last few years of working at Leeker's that he has a good work ethic. That's one thing he got from both me and his dad. We are very honest, dependable hard worker...