Everyday Randomness

Time To Do Some Baking

Wow I really don’t know what I’m going to do with all this stuff.

When Grandma said my SIL and I could split the kitchen stuff, I really didn’t think there’d be much to split.  After Hubby’s parentals finished cleaning out Grandma’s apartment today they were supposed to take the boxes that didn’t fit in the truck last night to their house.  We had planned to go to their house tonight so I could load the rest of the kitchen stuff in the Blazer.  I was thinking there would be maybe 3 or 4 more boxes.

Boy was I wrong.

My MIL decided to be nice and drive all the way out here (45 minutes) to deliver the stuff that was left for me to pick up, so she didn’t have to take it out of her car then load it back up in ours.  Now I see why.  I have 13 boxes of nothing but kitchen stuff sitting in my office right now…on top of the stuff I brought home last night and put away today.

I’m not talking a couple pans in each box.  I’m talking one box is full of nothing but cookie sheets.  Another is full of nothing but cake pans, another is cake decorating stuff…the list goes on and on.  I really don’t know where I’m going to put all this stuff…or if I’ll ever get around to using it for that matter.

My number one priority is to go through my cabinets and throw away everything that I really shouldn’t be using anymore…like my old cookie sheets that get lined with foil when I need to use them because they’re rusted.

Now I can pull out all the cake decorating stuff my Grandma gave me last year, too.  I haven’t use it b/c I just haven’t felt like investing in the pans I’d need to bake the awesome cakes.

I need to work on my icing rose skills again.  I learned to make those when I was really young…it was how my Grandma kept me busy in the summer.  It’s been years since I actually decorated a cake though.  My Grandma has also retired her skills due to her hands.  The last cake she decided to make was my wedding cake 5 years ago…the one you see pictured.

I’ll know I’ve got a better photo around here somewhere.  I’ll share it when I find it because I don’t like this one as much.  This was before she had everything adjusted, so the cake looks like it’s leaning a bit.

30 Jun 08 | Family & Friends, Personal |

It Went *Kaboom*

I mentioned in a comment to Karen that there is a reason why we have to work in the hay fields every summer. As much as I’ll use any possible excuse to drive my dad’s truck, bailing hay isn’t an excuse I like to use.

What’s the real reason?

The summer before we got married we needed a truck to move our stuff from our apartment to our new house. My dad let us borrow the truck he had at the time for a couple weeks to get everything moved.

Well one weekend a friend of ours asked us if we could help him move his Grandma in with him. She couldn’t take care of herself anymore, so he wanted her living with him. She offered to give us all the furniture they couldn’t use anymore for helping. We would have helped anyway, but we were more than happy to have the furniture. We were paying for our own wedding, we couldn’t afford the things we needed to furnish the rest of our house at the time, and the furniture from our apartment belonged to my sister-in-law.

We grabbed my dad’s trailer and spent all day Friday moving his Grandma then we hauled the furniture she gave us 2 hours to our house. Our friend asked us to drive back to his house, spend the rest of the weekend with him, and wanted to know if we could help him move his boat out of storage since he no longer had a truck to pull it.

Sunday morning Hubby and our friend got up bright and early to get the boat, but things didn’t go so well. The truck started messing up as they were pulling the boat up the interstate. There was a recall on that truck, something to do with a vent hose being too short, so when the truck began to overheat it blew all the fluid out. Hubby got it back to the house and parked it, but it was too late. He ended up blowing the motor.

I had to call my dad with the news, then my dad had to drive 2 hours downstate to get us, and he had to pay a tow truck to follow him. My dad knew we couldn’t afford to fix it, but the local shop gave him the run around about the recall saying the problem wasn’t the recalled part but the fact that the temperature gauge wasn’t working properly, so Hubby didn’t know it was overheating. My dad ended up paying for it and we promised to basically help him with hay for pretty much eternity. lol!

What a way to pay him back, huh?

We can sit back and laugh about it now. My dad jokes about the summer we blew up his truck, and then I casually remind him that 2 weeks before he married my mom my dad accidentally set my Grandpa’s (my mom’s dad) truck on fire. The joke is to marry into my our family you have to kill the truck first. LMAO!

So I guess you can imagine how I felt yesterday when we were driving his Dodge 2500, and it started messing up on us. I had to call my dad to tell him it didn’t want to shift out of 2nd when it was supposed to, but luckily he told us he already knew about that, and he’s taking it in for a service next week. *Whew*

30 Jun 08 | Family & Friends, Vehicles |

Long Day

Wow, what a long day today was. We spent most of the day in the hay field helping Daddy, then we were off to Hubby’s Grandmas to finish moving the rest of her stuff out. We were supposed to have her completely moved out this weekend, but the woman has a ton of crap to move. She has to completely be out by the end of the day tomorrow, so my father-in-law took off work to help my mother-in-law finish up.

There isn’t much left to move though. After we finished with hay we borrowed Daddy’s Dodge 2500 long bed to move all the furniture. That was a huge help. We were able to move all the furniture to storage in one load versus 3 or 4 loads with my father-in-law’s little s-10.

We finally finished up our day around 8:30, so we jumped in the pool for a bit to cool off before heading home.  Then I had to unpack the truck which felt like moving all over again.

I ended up with a lot of stuff I need to go through now. I’ve got boxes piled up in my office with a small trail cut out to walk to my computer. The indoor lighting in this house sucks, so I’m going to wait ’til tomorrow to sort through it all.  Bubba’s sitting in the doorway to my office right now whining because he can’t get through to sleep in his favorite spot.  I might have to do some rearranging.

Grandma told my sister-in-law and I to split all her kitchen stuff. The woman is the queen of cheesecakes, so my SIL and I both ended up with a ton of baking stuff. I got an awesome springform pan which is nice since I almost spent $25 on one a couple nights ago.

I also got a ton of baking dishes, cookie sheets, mixing bowls, and the little cupcake and cake pans in various shapes and characters. She also gave me a set of Christmas plates to replace my old ones. Somebody cough cough Hubby put mine in the dishwasher which ruined them. They weren’t dishwasher safe, and the gold edge work came off.

Grandma also gave Hubby and I a ton of linens that are brand new.  She had a closet full of sheet sets, comforters, towels, etc that she bought and basically hoarded.   I’m very thankful for those because I’ve been slowly throwing out towels and sheets we can’t use anymore.  We’ve been in limited supply, to the point where I’m washing towels every other day until I could afford to buy more.  All of our current sheets are mostly wedding gifts that have finally seen their last day, and are now full of holes.

I have mixed emotions right now. It sucks that Grandma can’t live on her own anymore.  It sucks even more that she’s parting with all her stuff.  In a way I feel bad about taking it, but then I see how happy it makes her to still have some control in what goes where.  It makes her face light up to sit down with us girls making lists of the things she wants us to have.

She was so happy to be able to give Hubby a clock he’s loved since his childhood.  The clock belonged to his Mommom who passed away a few years ago.  Mommom gave the clock to Grandma when she visited one year and fell in love with it.  Now she’s passed it on to Hubby, and he knows when he looks at that clock he’s looking at a piece of both of his Grandmas.

I guess all we can do is take it one day at a time now.  We’ve got to be thankful for each day she has left with us, and we need to make the most out of it.

30 Jun 08 | Everything Else |

Beautiful Day

It’s such a beautiful day today. Yep I’m back up at the fields helping with hay again, but I’m not complaining about it today. I took my allergy meds, the wind is putting off a really nice breeze, and it just feels awesome out here.

The rain rolled out this morning taking most of the humidity with it. We’ve got more rain coming in tonight according to the latest weather report, and I hope it pours. We’re in such a drought right now the pond is drying up. Daddy had to drill a well and setup a trough system for the cows last week, but if the springs are drying up it won’t last long.

On top of that no rain means no fireworks. With conditions this dry everyone is afraid to shoot them. Clemson will still have their annual show on the 4th, but they shoot over the lake. We’ll go see that but I always look forward to shooting our own.
<3Jenn

Mobile post sent by JennS using Utterz.  Replies.

29 Jun 08 | On Location |