New friends

Apparently there was quite a storm here in Bismarck last night! It was just around midnight last night when I put my book down and turned the lamp off and just after I had my eyes shut, I could see bright flashing light. I could see there was some lightning going on, but didn't hear any thunder for awhile. I vaguely remember hearing some hard rain on the windows just before I drifted off into Never Never Land, not to be awoken (or is it awakened?) until morning! What a mess we had outside this morning! Our garbage cans were blown over and one was in the driveway on its side, there are quite a few little branches in the backyard, and one of Scott's corn plants was bent over sideways in the garden box! There were trees that were blown over in some areas. I'm sure glad we didn't have any trees falling on our house, because I don't think I would have known about it until morning! Gage said the storm woke him up, but Emma had no clue what he was talking about. Apparently the two of us slept hard last night! And speaking of sleeping, I am in complete shock right now because it is 8pm and Emma is ASLEEP! I went to check on her at 7:30 while I was watching Big Brother because she was being awfully quiet and she was already asleep! I wanted to feel her to see if she was hot, because I figured she must be sick or something?

I put the kids to bed a little earlier tonight because I have to wake them up bright and early tomorrow morning to make it to Mandan for a garage sale that starts at 7am! I know that is totally crazy, but my friend Jen, the one we met at the pool yesterday, is having a big garage sale and her daughter Livia wears a bigger size than Emma and she is always dressed very nice and wearing alot of namebrand clothes. Livia is the only child and they are into clothes. I asked her if she would have jeans for sale and she said she would, so I have to get there early, to beat the crowd! I'm hoping she has them priced to sell. Sometimes people like their stuff too much and put too high of prices on things. When I hit a garage sale, I want it to be a BARGAIN!

Last week or so, we had gone to a DU family picnic and while we were there, I had talked to another wife of a DU guy that I hadn't talked to before. In fact, I didn't even realize the guy had a wife AND family!? Anyway, while we were just chatting, she had asked about Gage and Emma and their ages, etc. When I told her Gage would be going into 2nd grade, and Emma would be starting kindergarten at Corpus Christi church she was surprised to hear that. She told me she had some friends from church who have lived here a short time and just moved into the Northridge school district and they had asked Bobbi (the wife of the guy that works at DU with Scott) if she new anyone in the Northridge school district. She said she didn't. I guess this family was needing some help with picking up their kids after school. The mother is attending nursing school at the University of Mary and her schedule and clinical hours are going to conflict with the kids' getting to and from school a few days a week, and the father works some weird hours as well. I told Bobbi to let them know I would be glad to help out if I could. Their older son is also going into the 2nd grade, and their younger daughter will also be attending kindergarten at Corpus Christi. A few nights ago, Kara (this is going to be very confusing now with 2 Karas) called me to talk and see if I was still interested in picking her kids up at school and wanted to know if we could get together to meet. I said that would be fine, because I don't know many people that would just up and invite a stranger to pick their kids up at school. However, I wasn't that anxious about setting up a time to meet, because I thought it would be kind of weird, having this family come over to our house to make sure I wasn't some kind of child molester or something of that nature. They were scheduled to come over today at 2pm. The kids and I did our best at getting the house picked up, thankfully it wasn't that bad to begin with. Anyway, they showed up promptly at 2 o'clock and when we answered the door, their oldest son, Ethan, burst in the doorway and he and Gage were off to his bedroom like a flash! That sure didn't take long! Emma and Casey made friends pretty quickly as well. Kara is VERY TALL! Whoa! She is 6'4" (the same height as Scott!) and I don't believe I have ever stood next to another female who towered over me like that!? I can't remember her husband's name. UGH! I'm so terrible with names. I probably wouldn't remember her name if it wasn't because I already have a friend named Kara! They seem very nice. I told her I didn't want any money, because I didn't want it to be a "job". They were surprised at that I think, and said they would sure like to compensate by watching our kids occasionally as well. Sounds great to me! Anyway, I'm not totally sure of Kara's schedule, but Gage and Emma are thrilled to death to already have some new friends coming home from school with them! (I am too, because now I won't have to listen to them begging me to set up play dates all of the time!) Hopefully this will all work out well.

Not much else going on here. Scott is in Memphis for work until late tomorrow night. He wants us to celebrate my birthday in Tuttle (Great! NOT!). He says if we don't go, we'll have to borrow a baler to mow the yard. I'm sure he is right on that one. I don't have much else that I want to do, so I'm sure we'll be headed to Tuttle Saturday morning. Gage didn't know until a couple of nights ago that my birthday is on Saturday. He seemed a bit upset that he didn't know that and I could see he was deep in thought. I have a couple big ticket items that I've been wanting. I've been saving my Biolife money to buy either a kayak (to use at Lake Josephine in Tuttle), or a Nintendo Wii with the Wii Fit system. Maybe I could get myself in shape by playing with the Wii Fit? I've heard it's pretty cool. I am more apt to exercise if it is fun. I'll just have to make sure and not get Guitar Hero, because I'm addicted to it!