It's Hot - and did I mention Humid?

Today was gymnastics and of course Grace wanted to sleep in. I woke her up and we made it to gymnastics only a few minutes late. While she was there I ran to the Super Wal-Mart in Antioch to look for a birthday present for a friend of Grace's for her birthday party tomorrow. I didn't find that gift there, but I found something we wanted to get Grace for our trip to Colorado. We got her a Leapfrog Leapster; it'll give her something to do in the car on our trip. Plus if it's something new it'll take her at least 10 minutes to figure out how to use it.

So then I ran to the post office to mail a package to my Mom and came back to get Grace. We had to take the Edge back to the Ford store today and I got my cursory Taurus. It's not pretty, but it's free and it gets us places. Can't complain too loudly. After that we went to pick up the wallpaper for the lower portion of the walls down in the family room. Also we went to Best Buy to get the gift for her friend. Actually what we got will end up being Grace's birthday present; so we'll have to get something else tomorrow for her friend.

Funny thing actually, her friends Dad called tonight to see if we've heard anything about the whole issue with Libertyville Lincoln Mercury. I've been worried about that myselth (the spelling is for Ella) so I called again today to Lisa Madigan's office in Chicago and the message again said they were out of the office. I then called her office down in Springfield and they said that the office in Chicago is where the file is and they couldn't provide any more information. So I guess I'll just have to keep calling or wait for her to call me back since I left a message yesterday.

After that we just took it easy; Grace's friend from across the street came over for a while and then they both went across the street for a while to swim in the little pool they have. Then after Julie made it home we had dinner and I ran out to the Hainesville Village Board Meeting. Good thing I wasn't late as the mayor started 2 minutes early. The big discussion tonight was about the budget. Basically it will be unchanged from last year, with a few exceptions of course. There will be a commercial development at the entrance to our subdivision on Rte. 120. I wondered because a week or so ago they surveyed and marked it so it seemed logical. They talked about the bike path that they are going to put on Hainesville Road from Washington Street down to Rte. 120. Apparently the portion of the path that will go from Washington Street down to the old "Softball City" location will be started in the fall and the portion south of there won't be started until next year.

HainesvilleFest '07 is sounding exciting as there seems to be more activities planned for this year but they need more volunteers. Also August 7th is National Night Out - more info to come later. Apparently IDOT is publishing results of a field test on July 5th and 12th with bidding beginning on July 26th and tentative approval by the board on August 21st (I'm guessing it's repaving.) Also there was a wetlands meeting last Wednesday with little attendance and another is scheduled for Thursday at 7 pm. Trustee Walkington is hoping for more attendance. Personally I had no idea.

By the way, the high here today was 89° with 95% humidity and the dew point is all the way up at 70°.

Saturday and Birthday Parties

Grace got up super early today - 6:20 - which really sucked because I didn't go to bed until like 2am. So I was a little tired today. Julie had dance class and then after that Grace went to a birthday party for a friend of hers. His party was at My Jump Place in Lake Villa. She loves going there and was very excited. We got there a few minutes late because "somebody" was taking their time getting ready. After we'd been there a few minutes Julie came to watch Grace and I got a little free time.

I went to Staples and made some copies of a book I borrowed from the library about southwest interior design for ideas of how to further decorate our first floor since it's an Arizona theme. After I returned the book to the library, I went to Menards to get a new weed-trimmer attachment for my weed wacker. For some reason it stopped working. The edger attachment still works fine, but not the trimmer. But of course they didn't have any. I'll have to look somewhere else for that. I did get a new thistle feeder bag to feed the birds with since the one we have has a gaping hole in it that lets the seeds fall on the ground in big piles.

Then I went over to my Dad's house to install Microsoft Office 2003 on his new computer. It came with a 60-day trial of Office 2007 Home & Student which isn't enough for him (doesn't include Outlook) plus he'd have to pay a lot to keep it after the 60 days. This took a while to do because in the interim he was using the new version of Outlook Express that comes with Vista called Microsoft Mail. So I had to import his old mail file (.PST) from Outlook and then try to import the mail from Microsoft Mail. This proved difficult as following the instructions didn't work. I had to make it up as I went along. After this, I went home and Julie had just gotten home too. We just hung out and ordered a pizza - YEA! I don't get to do that often, as Julie doesn't really like it.

While I was at my Dad's house, I had turned on the Cubs game just a few minutes before Lou Piniella went on his tirade that got him ejected. That was exciting. Can't wait to see how he is at the Cubs game tomorrow as Grace, my Dad and I are going. YEA!

Friday!

So today was Friday - YEA! Grace slept in. I know you're surprised. I sure was - ha, ha! By the time she got up and I got up and showered, it was 11:00 or so. She was watching TV and came downstairs at like 12:00 or 12:15 and wanted to have breakfast. I said you slept through breakfast, it's time for lunch. She wasn't too happy about that, but asked for a grilled cheese sandwich (she only has 3 or 4 choices on her menu.) I said we don't have any cheese (we didn't go to the grocery store this week) how about a peanut butter and sandwich (as she likes to call it.) She finally agreed, so I made one for her and one for me (did I mention we haven't been to the grocery store?) and we had lunch.

I then called a friend to ask what her child would want for their birthday since Grace is going to their birthday party tomorrow. We ended up talking for over an hour and a half, maybe two hours all together. We were talking about our kids and our kids friends and their parents and about how to bring up kids and just a lot of stuff. We never seem to have much time to talk since we are both busy. So it was really nice to talk to this friend.

So after that, Grace and I went to Wal-Mart to get the gifts for the birthday party tomorrow morning. She was a bear in the store. She wanted this and she wanted that and can she have this, AHHH. So I explained that if she didn't ask every 3 seconds for something and that if she helped me pick things out for her friends that we'd get her one thing when we were done. That worked pretty well, but I didn't put a limit on what she could get, so of course she picks a $15 item that wasn't marked with a price. I know that somewhere in the store they have a scanner that will tell you how much it is so we set out to find one. We finally find it on the other side of the store and it doesn't work. So by this point I'm like I don't care how much it is, lets just get OUT OF HERE! So we check out and spend lots of money and leave. I dropped a book off at the library and we came home.

Get home and she watches another episode of Fetch with Ruff Ruffman. Then her best friend from across the street comes over. She really hasn't seen her all week since we've been so busy. Then I look out and see her friends Mom and sister coming over too, so I meet them outside and we were talking. Then Julie comes home and the girls come outside to play chalk on the sidewalk. So we were all outside talking and having a good time and then we realized what the time was and were trying to hurry to get to Julie's parents house. Unfortunately we got over there pretty late - after 7:00pm. But dinner was good and dessert was good and (I was starving since I had only had a peanut butter sandwich) we had a nice relaxing time. And another week is in the books.

But did you catch the Cubs game today? I didn't see much of it since we were at Wal-Mart during most of the game, but holy cow! Apparently either Carlos Zambrano (my favorite Cubs pitcher) is getting really frustrated since his season hasn't been going well or maybe he just didn't like the way Michael Barrett the catcher was calling the pitches, but they actually had fisticuffs in the dugout and in the locker room. It'll be interesting to see how Lou Piniella deals with this. He's a real class guy and I really respect him as a coach. Hopefully he can get this team turned around. I'd say he's had a pretty good impact already even though their record doesn't really show that. I wouldn't think Carlos was upset with Michael for the passed ball (even though that really screwed up the inning) since there really isn't much you can do about that, but you never know.