Sorry once again

Things have been quite hectic around here lately and so blogging has been the last thing on my mind.

Starting where I last left off would be Tuesday the 4th. Grace had school that day and other than that, I can't think of anything else. Wednesday she had her first test of dance class and gymnastics on the same day. Plus she had a play date with a friend from down the street. She didn't seem overly tired on Wednesday night, but come Thursday morning - watch out! She was cranky. I'll try it again this week, but if she's just as cranky I'll want to move her back to Mondays.

But her friends are in this newer dance class and she really likes being with them so for that reason I'm even more torn. I don't want to make her change and not be with her friends but at the same time, she was a real bear on Thursday morning getting ready for school. I'll wait until this Thursday and see what happens.

While Grace was in school Thursday morning I mowed the grass and some silly bunny rabbit three babies right in the middle of my front yard. So I had to mow around them. On Friday Grace and I found one of them out of the nest and we were putting it back in when I took this picture. Keep in mind it's only about 2 days old - eyes aren't open yet. Unfortunately the other two didn't fare so well and got those out of the nest and we put this one back. I haven't checked on it since. Hopefully it's alright. As soon as it's gone I'm reclaiming this part of my yard!



Thursday night was the beginning of the football season! YEA! We ordered a pizza for dinner, I enjoyed a beer and then had football to watch. What more can a man ask for? It ended up being a pretty good day!

Then on Friday Grace had school and we both got adjustments at the chiropractor. Grace only needed a couple of adjustments in her neck. She was good everywhere else. That's great news. Me, however, was a mess. He was adjusting just about every vertebrae in my back and neck. My foot has gotten much better. He did adjust it a little, but said it would continue to improve; and it has! It is much better now although not quite 100% yet.

Saturday Grace had her first soccer game. She's playing little league soccer with the park district. She seemed to have a great time and played pretty well for the first time I would say. But when they were done she was upset that they "didn't win" and that she didn't score any goals. They don't keep score, we told her that; but that wasn't good enough. She hadn't scored anything. So we tried to explain the whole "team" concept and that each player doesn't have to score for the team to win. She still wasn't happy. We'll see how that goes next week too. It's only a 6-week "season." There are also 2 other girls on her team out of 7 players.



After that we had some lunch and then took Grace over to Julie's sister's house. Lake Villa (Lakes High School) was having their homecoming parade and we were dropping Grace off to be in the parade and while she was doing that we had a "date." It wasn't a traditional date by any means, but we had a good time. We loaded our bikes on my Escape (es-KAH-pay) and went to Independence Grove Forest Preserve over in Libertyville. We rode there for a while and then went out to dinner at this new mexican restaurant in Round Lake. The service was horrible, the food was great; will we go back? Probably not, but time will tell. Maybe as carry-out.

So we were all done with our date and went to pick Grace up but she wasn't ready to go. They hadn't had dinner yet at her sister's house and of course Grace wanted to stay and eat there. We tried to get her to leave but she wanted to stay. We don't know why because her friend from across the street who has been out of the country for the last two months came home while we were on our date (their flight landed early - go figure.) So if she came home she would have been able to see her. But that didn't convince her either; so we waited.

Then on Sunday it was time for MORE FOOTBALL - like ALL DAY! YEA! We went to church with Julie's parents as it was Grandparents day. Grace say her friend from gymnastics there and they were being silly with each other throughout the service as best they could without getting in too much trouble. Then we had lunch at Panera Bread and came home in time to see the early games. The Bears played at 3:15 pm, but they lost. They didn't look particularly inspiring to me. Plus now I hear that Mike Brown is out for the season (he looked great when he was playing) and some other Bears are injured too. Lets hope they can figure out the problems and turn this season around before their record prevents them from making the super bowl again this year.

My sister came over in the afternoon and her and Julie scrapbooked for several hours and then she stayed for dinner. It was a great day - just wish the Bears could have won.

So now I'm up to today, Monday. Since Grace is going to dance class on Wednesday this week we didn't have any plans. I needed to go to GNC to buy some vitamins and we went to Wal-Mart and got a new frame for the picture of Grace we're putting in the upstairs bathroom. I had already bought one and put the picture up, but somehow it fell and broke so now I have it's replacement that hopefully won't meet the same demise as the first frame.

I was looking into what battery I could get for my new battery backup sump pump system online today. I was hoping I could use an Optima battery as they are regarded as one of the best batteries you can buy. I was reading the requirements in the manual for our battery backup and didn't really think I could use one but thought I'd check with the people at Optima before making that decision. I sent them an email at 12:45 this afternoon and they wrote back at 4:52; only 4 hours later! Anyway, they basically agreed that if the battery backup system's requirements are not flexible that they wouldn't recommend it. That's honesty! More great customer service! And I thought that was gone with today's "all about me" attitude.

So I guess I can just buy the battery they recommend and be happy with it. Hopefully I can do that tomorrow. That and a few other errands while Grace is in school. I'll write more tomorrow.