Hold on tight.

So sorry that it has been almost a week since I have posted anything.Things around here have been very hectic lately.
First off Cindy is finishing up her high school days. Her Graduation announcements / invitations are obviously being received as RSVPs are starting to trickle in.Tomorrow is her last official day of school and then she has Practice on Monday and Tuesday.She Graduates from the career center on Wednesday and then from High school on Sunday June 8th. After Sunday we will have to finish up preparations for her party. For the most part we are set but once RSVPs are counted I have to order a cake and those kind of little things.
Other than Graduation things Mike's auto accident mediation was Tuesday.Lets just say that due to no fault of ours things were called to a screeching halt .This little SNAFU now has the whole case up in the air. We may go back to mediation, we may just go to pretrial next month as scheduled or we may have to deal with setting everything back another month or so. Of course everyone ( Mike & I, the lawyers, the mediator, etc) is frustrated but God is in control, not us , so that is how it goes.
Physical therapy from my accident isn't going much better.I am told that my sports medicine doctor is going to personally talk to my Physical therapist ( his employee) about actually implementing what he prescribed three weeks ago. Oh life is grand !
But hey, next week I will watch my first born receive a diploma for all of the work that I have been making her do for the past fourteen years. OK she embraced preschool without my making her but beyond say forth grade or so I became the slave driver that I am today. Can you believe that yesterday I gave birth and eighteen days from now she will be eighteen? It sure seems like yesterday. Besides that it couldn't have been eighteen years ago because I am certainly not thirty nine years old already !( Hey, go with me on this one.... You too can drop eighteen years if you want to :-) OK well, before one of you send the men in the white coats to my door I better wrap this up.Don't worry if you don't hear much from me in the next couple of days, I assure you I will flood you all with pictures within the next week or so.

I have been admonished for leaving this one out

At the WITNESS prayer service Cindy and Matt were both asked to share with those present ( the rest of WITNESS,families, Parish council, alter Guild, and a few other organizations) a few words on how God has and is working in their lives. This was a total surprise to them both so there was no time to write it out or think about what would sound best. They both did a wonderful job. Cindy chose to mention a rather humorous phrase that we as a family have used many times. "God speaks to us in many ways every day. Usually he whispers in our ears but sometimes when we don't listen, he must throw a brick at us. Cindy went on to talk about a couple bricks that had recently been thrown in her direction. Below is a picture of our priest which just happened to be taken when Cindy mentioned this little quote

More pre graduation celebration

A week ago we got a letter in the mail asking for Cindy and the family to please be present at the Career center's board meeting on Monday as they wished to recognize her for placing in the regional and state competitions of Skills USA. In the same envelope another letter asked us to attend an honors show on Wednesday to view projects of students who have received awards. The main part of this show was Multi Media students showing their art portfolios but they wanted Cindy and a couple others to make a display to show along with her metals and again be recognized.In the middle of this on Tuesday night a church group that Cindy and Michael are involved in , WITNESS, ( Winning In The Never Ending Search for Salvation )had a dinner and prayer service to honor the two members who graduate this year. Since Cindy does have a job and our family does try to maintain some sort of life,we have had to decline on some of these things. In this grouping Cindy said No Thank you to the Wednesday night honors. First off because she would have to make up a display that she had no time or interest in doing . Secondly because she had mandatory Graduation practice and assembly at her home school this morning . Thirdly was because the honoring at the school board meeting was to say the least lame. Cindy's main instructor was not even told about Cindy receiving honors and was in the room across the hall grading papers while the whole thing went on . We ran into her on the way out and she was so disappointed that she was not asked to at least be present.
We did however make sure that we were at the WITNESS event though. It was very nice. We were fed a nice meal, and then went into the church. ( there was a video made with pictures of the two Graduates from birth to now but it malfunctioned. We were promised a copy when it was fixed)Inside the church this group did a wonderful prayer service honoring Cindy and Matt.


Below are some pictures from this week's events



Cindy receives a certificate at the Board meeting Monday


Pictures from the WITNESS event Tuesday



Why we felt so special :-) Our Table





The cake Congratulating the Seniors and welcoming new Freshman members




Hey Father...... who'se thumbprint could this be ?



Cindy reads the first reading



Cindy & Matt speak of their lives and church




Cindy & Matt stand at the alter with their candles that were lit from their baptismal candals signifying that they have been led by their parents and God Parents but now is the time to start leading for themselves




The WITNESS prayer service as all of the group present prayed over Cindy & Matt

The announcements are in the Mail !

Graduation anouncements are almost ready.Now what?

As promised , Mike and I worked on Announcements this past weekend.They should go into the mail tomorrow. So far I have thought of only a few people that I forgot to invite so that is why they didn't go out today.Once they go into the mail I have decided that my next project ( or not) will be a card box for the party. Last year after Graduation season I bought a square card box really cheap but I sort of feel bad that this box is no mortar board hat replica that are always so nice.I don't remember if I had one of these hat boxes when I graduated or not but most Graduation parties that I have been to do. Honestly, it really doesn't matter, I guess . It isn't like someone is going to sigh and say Poor Cindy has this crappy square box but she deserves sooo much better ! In the end ,what would I do with a box after her party if I did make it ? Would I put money and time into making something that would just be thrown away ? I probably would try to save it for Michael & Robby to use but where would I put it ? Would it end up getting so beat up that it would be unusable anyway? Oh decisions, decisions ! Maybe I will just skip the box and do a slide show of Cindy's life pictures. No, I will probably leave this sort of thing to Mike. Hmmmmmm it is a good thing that I don't have to prepare any food. Not that I can't cook or anything, I actually consider myself a very good cook but if I am having this much trouble deciding on a card box, can you imagine how tough planning a menu would be ? I think I will blame my indecisiveness on my concussion. It has been nineteen days since the accident and with PT and muscle relaxers my headaches are backing off. The doctor estimated that I would still have problems thinking for about sixty days after until my brain completely heals. Was my brain right in the first place though ? Oh so much to ponder. square or cap shaped...... I think I'll sleep on it. Goodnight all !

Robby goes fishing

Since Michael has been fishing a couple times, with Pops, this spring, Robby has been itching to go. Sunday he finally got his chance and made good use of it. He hooked the biggest fish that has come out of that lake in awhile.Now he is also hooked:-)



Robby and Pops with "the big one"



Robby with another

Am I early ? Am I Late ? Am I on time?

When we received Cindy's Graduation announcements a few weeks ago I noticed that they were wrong. The confusion started because Cindy will graduate from our local high school next month, however she is now and has been attending the local Career and Technical school for the last two years. Because Cindy was not in attendance when the home schools announcement company came and passed out information on ordering announcements and the school never thought that these kids who attend the CTC would need this information, she never got it. In the meantime a company decided to print CTC announcements and passed out order forms at the CTC . This company never informed the students that these were not announcements with their home schools name but rather CTC announcements. Well because this was the only order form that we got, and there was no paper explaining that they were CTC included with the order form,I didn't think about it , ordered them, and of course paid through the nose for them.Fast forward to about three or four weeks ago Cindy got the announcements. We figured that there was a small mistake that could be corrected so I called the company and found out that a simple exchange was not possible. The man did offer to refund my money , which I should have accepted but then I wouldn't have any announcements so that wasn't real good either. I did call the man who was the sales rep for our home school( after I got his name from a family whose daughter still attends the home school ) but instead of offering to sell me some announcements that I wanted he screamed at me ( as if it were my fault ) and asked why this other company gave my daughter an order form. ( The question on my mind was .... Why didn't he ? ) Anyway, I just gave up and accepted what I had , set them up and went on with my life. The other day I looked at the box as I was thinking it was about time to send them out and the etiquette on the box stated that I should wait until two weeks before graduation to send them.It stated that I should wait even longer if we were having a party ( why yes we are ) more than a week after Graduation. I didn't think much more about this until I was talking to my Mom last night and she said that she hadn't received announcements for the five other Graduations in the family yet and wondered why everyone was running so late.Then my brother called this morning asking why he didn't get an invitation. I told him that I hadn't gotten them out yet and he told me that he has gotten three others already and that I needed to get a move on. Cindy also informed me today that her friends had gotten theirs out and asked when I planned on getting hers out ( no she made no offer to help.) So here I set wondering.... by the box I am still early, by Cindy I am on time, and by my brother I am late. I have decided that I will try to get them out by early next week so for those of you who think I'm early, Your welcome for the "heads up" . For those of you who think I am on time... Yea of course I know what I'm doing. And for those of you who think I am late I do apologise. Now I think I will get back to getting announcements ready.