Christmas Fun and Happy New Year!

Christmas was fun and I think the boys loved their toys! (Boys love toys, don't they? haha!)

All wrapped and ready for them to arrive! The workbench we got Maxwell was too big to wrap so I just draped wrapping paper over it and didn't even bother with Levi's car stroller!

They loved all their gifts and we had so much fun watching them I didn't take any pictures!

Here's one from earlier that Shauna took!

New Years Eve I worked and was so tired from my lack of sleep that my boss sent me home at 12:30! I must have looked pretty bad. 

We totally missed midnight! I went to bed a 9:00! Rich set his alarm for 10 minutes to midnight but I told him if I was sleeping soundly not to wake me up so he didn't! I woke up at 2:53, went to the bathroom and right back to sleep until 8:30. I sure needed that!

My staying away from my phone and tablet  and just reading a real book at night is helping a lot! For the past 5 nights I've fell asleep easily and slept all night. When I get enough sleep I feel like I can conquer the world!

This weekend I took all of the decorations down and stored them away! I enjoyed them this year and hated to take them down, especially the tree. 

Anyway, that's it for now. 

Mr. Levi James says Happy New Year!

And this guy is going to be 3 years old on Wednesday!

Until the next time....

Delayed Christmas

Christmas Eve was very nice at my brothers house. Most of  the family was there. Chris did not make it home from New Hampshire and Shauna and Brad like to spend a quiet Christmas Eve home with their kids. But we did see my niece who we hadn't seen in a couple of years!

We spent Christmas Day at Shauna and Brads. They usually host Brad's family so it was fun and lots of grandson time and good food!

We intended to celebrate Christmas with our kids on Friday but we ended up having plumbing issues so we had to delay it until Sunday. Luckily, the park is responsible for anything under the ground, which is where the blockage was so it didn't cost us anything!

We took a walk around to look at Christmas lights in the park.

This house wins best decorated every year. I didn't get a picture but the man who lives there also goes up and down his street changing the lights in front of every house to alternating red and green. He asks permission first of course! It looks very festive!

Today I did something I haven't done in a long time. I went to the library and checked out a couple of books!

I used to read in bed all of the time and since I bought a kindle a few years ago I would  downloaded books onto that. It's convenient for traveling or taking to work.

Sleep is always an issue with me and reading has always been a good way for me to fall asleep. However, reading  from a kindle does not help at all, in fact it has the opposite effect and keeps me awake!  I thought I would go back to reading real books but I don't want to buy them because I have enough books already, so the library is perfect!

Of course, now I need a reading light because I don't want to keep the lamp on and disturb Rich sleeping. Luckily they now have rechargeable reading lights so I'll have to get one of those!

Tomorrow we are celebrating Christmas with the kids and I can't wait to give Maxwell and Levi their presents!

I'll tell you about it next time!

Until then...

Wrapped and Ready

Well, its December 22 and I am pretty much done shopping and wrapping. I finished my shopping yesterday which is pretty much my MO for Christmas!

Today I wrapped everything up.

I'm working Monday and Tuesday and then I'm off for the rest of the week.

In the evening on Christmas Eve we will go to my brothers house and Christmas Day we'll spend at Shauna's house because they are having Brad's family over.

We are celebrating our Christmas with the kids and grandkids on Friday the 27th. Everyone is off of work and it just works out better this way.

We went to downtown Detroit last weekend to walk around and see the big Christmas tree at Campus Marcius Park

They last night we went to downtown Plymouth to see the Christmas Tree's that light the walkway though the park.

Different business sponsor the trees.

I thought this one was clever.

They put up a Nativity Scene also, which surprises me anymore in this day.  It's life size and pretty neat!

These guys were outside yesterday enjoying the mild weather we've been having!

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and we will see you in 2020!

Until then!

Christmas Decor

Tis the season!

We were excited to put some decorations on our new deck this year. We didn't go crazy but we did have a lot of lights from last year. I used to use them on our Christmas tree but we have a new, lighted tree this year. I think it looks nice and right in front is the perfect spot for the lighted wreath!





Speaking of Christmas trees, last year our tree was actually being held together by the light strings! It was at least 19 years old and definitely on it's last legs! After Christmas was over I threw it in the garbage, then went and bought a new tree for 75% off!

It's a Martha Stewart Living brand and let me tell you, she does things right! This lighted tree was so easy to put together and even came with a foot pedal to turn the lights off and on! Plus at 7.5 feet tall its the biggest tree we've ever had.

Although I love it, I'm not a huge fan of just the white lights. I'll leave it for this year but maybe next year I'll add a couple strings of colored lights too!

And of course is my snowman collection.

p0-o



This one is the newest one we got at Bronner's over the summer when we bought the ornaments for the boys. 

And also my collection of small Christmas trees. 

This is my newest one I got at the Salvation Army thrift store.



I love the little deer!

I used the garland we normally used on the tree as fake snow this year.

And my miniature ornaments are all displayed on this small tree.



This is my newest one. 

I buy one snowman, one small tree and one miniature ornament every year!

And always the ceramic tree that my mom made so many years ago! It was the only decoration my dad put up after she died and I inherited it when he died. 

That's my décor for this year. I'm really into Christmas this year for some reason!

Until next time! 

Ornaments, Thanksgiving and Stuff

Over the summer we bought personalized ornaments for our grandsons like we’ve done every year since they were born. We finally gave them to the boys on Thanksgiving.

Levi’s is a dinosaur and Maxwells is a tractor.


The kids call Rich Bonk for some reason we can’t figure out!

Thanksgiving was crazy and wonderful with 26 people here!


 Good food and good company!

We were even missing a few!

And always my hearts!

Finished decoration today and had fun decoration the new deck!

I’ll show you the next time!!

Until then....

Our First House

Rich and I were married in March, 1977 and in August of 1978 at the tender age of 21 and 22 we bought our first house.

We paid $26,900 for it.

It was a small, 1125 sq ft ranch with 3 small bedrooms, 1 bathroom, no basement and it was on a pie-slice shaped lot so most of the yard was on the side of the house.

It was only intended as a starter house but we ended up living in it for 21 years. We raised both of our kids in that house, and the great neighborhood it used to be.

Sometime during those years we replaced the ugly baby-poop colored asbestos siding with vinyl siding in a light grey.

We rarely had any extra money during the time we lived in that house so improvements were few.


We knew we wanted to sell it as soon as Shauna graduated from high school and as that day got closer we did what we had to do to make the house sellable.

This is what it looked like in early 1999 before we sold it in August.

We got $89,000 for it.

From what I heard from the people that lived next door (and still do) the couple  we sold the house to lost it to foreclosure about 5 years later. The house sat empty for a long time and then finally sold for $25,000, less than we bought it for back in 1978.

Whoever bought it had to put a ton of money into it because from sitting empty for many years the walls had molded from the damp crawl space.

Then it was a rental for a while and a few years ago it was finally sold again, but I'm not sure for how much.

The neighborhood is not like it was when we lived there.

Anyway, the people who own it did a beautiful landscaping job. It doesn't even look like the same house!

See for yourself !

I took this picture off of Google Street View because I didn't want to stop in front of it and take a picture!

I'm impressed! I would love to see the inside. Maybe some day I'll get brave enough to go knock on the door!



Until the next time!!

New Sink

We finally got around to replacing the sink that came with our house.


Again, as with the deck, I say "we" but I mostly mean "Rich" because he does the majority of the work. I'm usually just the helper!


Anyway, when we moved in to this place we went from a nice big, deep double sink in the kitchen to a shallow, lame double sink with no room for anything!

I started looking for a new sink pretty quickly. I knew I wanted a single instead of a double. They are not as common as the double sinks but I found one in the Spring  that was the size we needed and would work in our kitchen. 

But then the deck took over and I figured that was enough of a project for the summer so we put the sink replacement on hold.


Now that the deck has been finished for a while,  I figured it was time for another project for us (Rich).  I bought the sink a few weeks ago and it's been sitting in our living room until this past Saturday.

The first thing to do, obviously, is to remove the old sink. This involved undoing the two water lines, the line from the dishwasher to the garbage disposal and the plumbing from the two drains.


Next was making sure that the new sink fit into the opening. It was a little bigger so we cut a couple inches off around the perimeter, tried it and it still didn't fit so we cut some more and sanded some off and finally got the sink to fit!

Then Rich had to redo the plumbing from a double drain to a single drain. Luckily he was able to do that without having to buy any more pipes.

We did get a new sink connection for the garbage disposal because the old one was scratched and worn looking and I didn't want to install in in the brand new sink.

Then we reconnected the water lines and that was it!

Nice big sink with the sprayer right on the faucet and lots of room for soaking bakeware and whatever else!  It's a bit industrial looking but I don't care. I'm all about the function these days!

So now we've taken care of the two main things we didn't really like about this place; the kitchen sink and nowhere outside to sit. I don't see any big projects in the future. Maybe some painting but we'll see.

We went to Shauna and Brad's for Halloween. Watched Levi so they could take Maxwell out trick or treating. He did really good and looked so cute!

That's it for now!

I feel the Christmas spirit coming on which is unusual for me! I have a new Christmas tree that I bought after Christmas last year and I am looking forward to putting it up!

Until the next time...