Crafting Fools

Enjoying our lunch on Courtney and Paul's patio.

Here is the7 foot quill feather that we are going to use for Alissa's pen with her guestbook.

Here are Courtney and I in front of one of my favorite stores.

Here is Courtney with her newly designed cigar box purse.



John and I went up to Oshkosh Saturday and Sunday this past weekend. It was our last weekend to get things organized and touch base with Courtney (Paul was playing frisbee way up north this weekend) before the wedding and Tizzy's homecoming. The house looks like it is more than ready for a toddler to move in. Courtney and I hung up all her little clothes and it filled up her closet! I also played with all the new toys to make sure they work properly, they do! We now have our Taurus wagon piled full with Paul's band equipment which needs to be transported down to Bloomington for the wedding. Luckily we still have room for all of our luggage, a wedding dress, and numerous other items.




Now on to the crafting fools which would be me and Courtney (John wanted nothing to do with this enterprise). We had done some looking in a few artsy shops in downtown Appleton and happened to notice that they were selling cigar purses for $45.oo and these collage type pictures from $149.00. Well we decided these were things that we could do so off to Hobby Lobby and who doesn't like a Hobby Lobby? We purchased the necessary items and the large 7 ft. quill pictured above and headed back to Courtney's beautiful front porch where we set up shop. Courtney whipped out a cigar purse in about 15 minutes. She is great with a power drill. (Just a a side note here she made a big wooden sandbox for Tizzy which has a bench on the side and is filled with the most lovely soft white sand which looks straight off the beach at St. George). Anyway she also made a hanger out of an old looking doorknob which turned out very nicely and then we proceeded to the collage things. I love cutting from magazines and putting everything together, in fact, I have been doing that long before scrapbooking (which I also love) became popular. I also was quite the modge podge queen in my day so that is what we used to cover the collages. I did find out, well actually I knew this, that I don't have the patience for gluing, painting, or cutting straight so I will be on the searching side of this business. Courtney will do the rest. Courtney is bound and determined that we are going to sell these things online and in a local Oshkosh store so we shall see where this endeavor goes. Any little money would help while John is job searching. Today he has a few interviews set up in the area. This is just not something that a man his age should have to be doing, but it is what it is and we push on just waiting to see what God has in store for us. We know it is something good!

Message of the day to Tizzy: The house is all ready for you, Tizzy. I cannot wait to see you in all your cute little outfits and to show you how to use all your fun toys! We talked about you so much this weekend. It was almost as if you were already home. It won't be long now!

Happy Trails to us

Our friend we met along the way.

Ready to roll.

Today we didn't let the lay off stop us from our planned bike ride on the Bugline Trail in Merton. We are like the postal service, neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night shall keep the postman from his appointed rounds and neither lay offs nor anything else will keep us from our scheduled bike rides!

The Bugline runs from Merton to Menomonee Falls through some wooded areas and marshy land.. The trail also goes through the city of Sussex so the variety of scenery makes it a fun ride. We discovered a nice beach when we took a small detour off the path. The one downfall was the bugs. I almost wished I had a bug sheild over my face at times. At one point a deer fly got down my shirt and bit me, that did not feel good, I squished him for that. There was also a lot of dust because of how dry it has been and because there are quarries located along the trail, but a quick shower fixes that problem. We rode over 24 miles in about 2 1/2 hours so that was pretty good pedaling.

Hamburgers on the grill and a few beers rounded out our day. Tomorrow we go up to Oshkosh to load up band equipment for the wedding. I will let you know how that goes!

Note to Tizzy: It won't be long now!

A bump in the road

We hit a slight (we can only hope) bump in this road we call life. John got laid off for the second time from the second company. The last lay off was Christmas 2006 and he found work again by the new year, so that wasn't too bad. We are hoping that this one will also be short lived and John will soon be back to work and bringing in a check. In the meantime we tighten the purse strings and move on. We remind ourselves that there are far bigger bumps that can happen on this journey and comparatively this is not such a big bump. John has already applied for a number of jobs. Our hope is that he can find something closer to home so the commute is shorter. Maybe it is time to pursue our (okay, mostly my) dream of opening a Teacher's Store here in Watertown. Who knows where this bump may send us.

Great expectations for a teacher

Here is my afternoon class from last year. I hand picked this group for my class and they did me proud. They are all off to kindergarten this fall and I will miss them.
Today I was at school from 10:00 A.M. - 8:30 P.M. for our registration. I felt like all I did was eat (we ordered out for lunch and had fund raiser brats for supper plus snacks during the day) and wait around for my students to come and visit my classroom. I predicted correctly that one particular family would be walking in at 7:55 even though they had all day to come and sure enough in walked mom, dad, and four kids. They proceeded to trash the room and overstay their welcome, but I was gracious and didn't let them sense my impatience. One funny comment that I wanted to document came from one of my new students. She had been watching the gymnasts at the Olympics and ask her mom to teach her to do the balance beam. Of course mom said she wouldn't be able to do that because she didn't know how to do those tricks on the beam. Sophia told mom not to worry because Mrs. Damman would teach her! Liek her mom said, she has high expectations for me as a teacher. While I may teach her to walk on a balance beam that will be the extent of my teaching. I have not yet mastered the beam beyond walking on it! Funny stuff and it makes me remember why I love my job!
It looks like my holding pattern is over. I am almost positive that I will be having an afternoon class but am hoping it will just be meeting on Tues. Wed. and Thurs. I will find out more details tomorrow. I will also be working on my beam routine tomorrow!
Note to Tizzy: While I enjoy watching the gymnasts I am always thankful that my girls never showed an interest in the sport. Seems so dangerous to me. I am hoping that you, too will find other sports and activities in which to participate, but I know if gymastics is your thing I will support you! I am secretly hoping for another swimmer, though.

Random thoughts and ramblings #2

I seem to have developed blogger's block. Sometimes the ideas for posts come flooding in, as many as three to four a day, but for some reason my brain has no ideas for a post today. Of course you already know that I am excited about the upcoming wedding and arrival of Tizzy, but I have covered as much of that as I can for the time being. I feel like I am in a holding pattern for a bit now.
When Tizita arrives home on Sept 12 I plan to give my blog a new name. I would like it to be somehow related to Jimmy Buffet and of course to my being a grandma, so if anyone has any clever ideas that incorporate both of those things leave me a comment. Once I meet little Tizita I am guessing my posts will take on a different twist.
Holding patterns seem to be the way of life for me. I am also in one at school. As of right now, I don't know if I will have an afternoon class or not. I was hoping for just a morning class this year with time in the afternoon to pursue some other irons I have in the fire, but if they need me I will certainly teach an afternoon class. The hardest part of all this is that I am a planner and I like to be in control. In this unknown situation I am uncomfortable. I need to start planning and organizing for another class. After registration today I should know the status of the afternoon class, so I will use what little patience I possess and stay in this holding pattern for awhile yet.
On that note I am signing off for today. Perhaps the fog will clear and I will fly out of this in the next few days.

Testing one, two, three

Technology gotta love it, right????????????? I just got off the phone with the Charter tech guy after our two laptops would not connect even though our desk computer was connected. After what seemed like hours he was able to talk me through getting this laptop hooked up, but we had no luck with the other one which of course has all my documents, photos, favorite sites, etc. on it. So this is really a test to see if I can publish the blog from here and upload my pictures. Here goes, I hope it works! Yea, Success!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A Ride down Memory Lane

Here is John, self explanatory to those of you who know John well and yes, he his holding is nose!

Here is Lakeland Hospital where the girls were both born. Both births were uneventful. Courtney was born after I had just finished watching ma Ingalls give birth to Grace. Her birth was so easy, I figured mine would be a breeze, too and it was. With Alissa there was no Doctor in that entire hospital so a nurse delivered her. Again uneventful!

The Cup and Pedal restaurant.

Here are some of the beautiful wildflowers we saw along the trail

Here I am all ready to begin the bike trail

This is our first home. It was actually a glorified double wide trailer but we loved it. It seems to have gotten a bit overgrown but with some love and attention it could be nice again. Both our girls came home to this house.

Today John and I took a ride down Memory Lane in and around Elkhorn, a town that holds many firsts for us:

• It was the first time we lived away from one of our hometowns as a married couple


• It was where we met some of our very first and best friends as a married couple


• It was where we bought our first home


• It was where our first and second child were born


• It was the first town we fell in love with as a married couple


• It was the first time we piled in a pick up truck and cut down a $5.00 Christmas tree


• It was where our girls swam in their very first swim class


• It was the first time we had ever discovered all the treasures of Walworth County


• It was where John got his first job and where I first found the beauty of being a stay at home mom

And these are just the tip of the ice burg for us. Elkhorn was such a magical place for us. I still remember the first time we drove to Elkhorn to find a place to live. Neither of us had ever been there before and we were filled with anticipation. We fell in love with it from that day on. We found a great apartment, there was a Value Village, a Lutheran church, a Ben Franklin, a library, what more did we need? And of course, the birth of our daughters was just the icing on the cake for us. I absolutely loved spending time with my girls and the other stay at home moms and their kids. Once a week we would all gather at one of our houses for games, chit chat, beverages, and chocolate. The kids would play and trash the house. We always left the hostess's house with enough time for her to straighten up before her husband got home. What fun memories! I don't ever wish to go back to a different time in my life but if given the chance to go back for short stint I would without a doubt go back to late 1979 when I was pregnant with Alissa and early 1980 right after she was born.

Getting back to our bike ride down Memory Lane. We rode 18 miles on the White River Bike Trail. It is a beautiful trail runs through fields of wildflowers, pine trees, and corn. We had lunch at our favorite spot on the trail, a restaurant in a restored depot in Springfield, WI called the Cup and Pedal. The last time we had been there was three years ago on a trail ride and as things go in a small town like Springfield nothing had changed right down to the same retired couple who runs the place. The chicken salad is so yummy and John recommends the turkey with cranberry mayo on oat bread.

After getting off the trail we took off for our tour of Elkhorn. We like to ride past all our old haunts and reminisce. Some things have changed of course, like our old grocery store Ted and Fred's United Foods is gone and our old swimming pool is now a state of the art aquatic center, but many things are just as we remember them. A ride down Memory Lane is always good for the soul.

After ten more miles around Elkhorn, we loaded up the bikes and took one more journey down the Lane. We went to Lake Geneva to see how the rich people were spending their day. We spent lots of good times in LG when we lived in Elkhorn. It was like taking a vacation without leaving our own backyard. That city has not changed at all, it is still filled with Illinois tourists who call it up north. At least they are still spending their money up here in our state. One nice addition is there is a new 26 mile walking path that goes around the entire lake. It runs right along the lake through many private properties so you can really get a good view of the magnicent homes on the lake. Of course, after 28 miles on a bike we couldn't walk too far on the path, but we did get a good taste of the scenery and plan to go back in the fall sometime with fresh legs so we can walk farther-maybe the whole 26 miles!

Note to Tizzy: Someday Grandpa and I will take you to Elkhorn and give you the ten cent tour. Just one more thing we look forward to sharing with you.