Summer

Well the summer has definitely came up on us quickly and is seeming to go by just as fast. The boys have both been very busy with their summer golf tournaments with the central illinois junior golf tour - http://www.cijgt.com/they had five tournaments in june and have had a little bit of a break in july - Their summer has pretty much involved getting up in the morning, doing their daily chores, riding their bikes to the country club, playing 9 holes, eat lunch there and them swim for a couple of hours- rough life huh! Oh to be a kid again - I'm sure they have no idea how good they have it- though I try to remind them frequently. Brady is getting ready to leave tomorrow for his golf camp at the UofI in champaign. The boys have both faired well, Alex had a rough start but not to our surprise as the tournament level does create an amount of nervousness, he has definitely improved from his first tournament to the last one he has played. Alex actually placed first in the third tournament he played in and was interviewed by the local paper (it was in Mattoon) so he was excited. Brady has been pretty consistent usually finishing second or third., but this is usually out of 12 - 15 players in his age group. Work at Hershey has been good, I have been able to arrange my work days around the golf tournaments. Chad had some time to enjoy some of the summer early on , but is now again starting a three week turnaround at the refinery , but this will be the last one for the year. He is looking forward to the fall as he missed out on the hunting he usually does at that time of year and will get to this year. We went to Nashville over mothers day as a get away weekend for me and we had a nice time. I got to go to the Cheesecake factory for dinner - the boys had never been there and the only time I had was when visited Melanie in San Antonio. Between the golf tournaments and work, I have not taken any time to scrapbook and would really like to catch up- still have all the pics from our Christmas vacation.

Earthquake!!

Once again time has went by quickly and I have managed to neglect my blog. I'm sure I have plenty of things I should cover since my most recent entry, but only 2 things really come to mind -Mannie the office cat and the 4:37 am earthquake that we experienced today. I was basically awake lying in bed this morning when it happened and I still can't believe it. It took me a few seconds of the rumbling and shaking to realize what was going on. Chad was asleep but quickly sat up in bed and immediately worried about the many cranes he has at the refinery. When it stopped - they say it was about 10 secs but it felt alot longer to me, I said "was that an earthquake?" Chad then said -maybe there was an explosion at the refinery. I went to the front door window and saw that the sky above the refinery looked normal. Brady then got out of bed a little freaked out, he checked on Alex and he was sleeping away. I was worried that he would be upset that he missed it, but he wasn't and then he (along with the rest of us) got to experience an after shock around 10 something this morning. Overall, I'm thrilled that I got to experience an earthquake, but quite honestly it scared me.

Now on to Mannie (named after a crane brand-Manitowoc). We adopted a cat from the humaine society for Chad's office trailer as they were having trouble with mice and also thought it would be nice to have an office pet. We got her last Saturday - after a 2 week waiting process - she had to be spayed before we could have her. She is the sweetest cat, unfortunately she has been in the shelter since Sept. and was intimidated by her new surroundings. Over the past week this has gotten a little better, but now she has developed an upper resp infection and a GI virus - this we learned after a visit to the vet. So we are giving her antibiotics twice a day and I had to also force some water and food with a dropper as she's not eating much. I'm worried about her - she has been such a positive energy in the office - Chad says all the different guys that come in and out of the office have all been asking about her and giving her attention, so I hope she gets better fast.

The picture above is of the boys in the famous FAO Swartz toy store in NY,NY.

Hello Strangers!

So I go to check out my dear friend Melanie's blog and of course she has just about an every day entry and I feel completely guilty that I can't keep up with my blog. I guess I just lost motivation to keep it going as it seemed that my mother and melanie were my only visitors. But now that I have been at my great new job at Hershey, I am away from all the wonderful ladies that I worked with in the labor room/OB, so I thought I might give it another try and maybe they would also visit and I could keep in touch with them through my blog. So, I am quickly going to say hello to anyone reading this and say that my WH is finishing up another long turn around at the refinery and school for the boys is actually tamed down as neither one of them has a school sport right now. Needless to say thought that they are happy to have nice weather starting so they can get back on the golf course. Brady went out today after we got back from mom and dad's and he played well - 38 for 9 holes. He already has plans to play after school tomorrow. I have so many pics to post so I think I am going to start with our New York pics and share them one by one. This pic is at the Rockefeller Center/Plaza Christmas tree - Christmas in New York was so wonderful and we all loved it so much that I think it will be hard not to go back next December. We have also talked about going back during the summer. We went to Rockefeller plaza twice - the first day we were there and again on Christmas day when we stood in line freezing for 2 hours so the boys could ice skate by the big tree - it was worth it - they had a great time and I know they will remember it forever!