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May 8, 2015

IT'S FRIDAY, MY FAVORITE DAY!!

Wow! What a busy week I have had!! I put in four days at the Master Gardener's plant sale last week. The sale on Saturday was a great success with lots of customers and we managed to bring in $12,000 for community nonprofit groups and scholarships. It was a tiring four days but a lot of fun.

Now that I have had time to rest my aching feet and back, I am now getting ready for our Nehalem Bay Garden Club plant sale this weekend. I spent some time cleaning pots that I had planted for the sale and marking prices. So today I recruited Dave to help pick-up and deliver plants to the sale. I hope we have as good a turn out as last weekend.

Last Sunday, Dave and I got up early and drove to Beaverton to watch our thirteen-year old granddaughter Paige and her Cascade Football Club U-13 team play for the Oregon Youth Soccer Association Championship Cup. They won a very intense and hard-fought game and will soon be off to Boise, Idaho to represent our state. She is so much fun to watch play soccer and we wish that we could see more of her games. Then, as if we didn't get enough soccer that day, we also watched our ten-year old granddaughter Jaysa play. She and her teammates are still developing as a group but it was fun to see how much she had improved since last year. What Jaysa does best is her gymnastics. She placed first in her routine at the Metro Gymnastics Center last weekend.

While I am speaking of granddaughters, we found out that our oldest granddaughter, Ashtin broke her hand in a basketball game that she was playing in last week. It's driving her crazy that she will have to miss four weeks of her season until that heals. We really feel sorry for her - not only because of the injury - but also because she was playing the best basketball of her life when she got hurt. And last, but certainly not least, our twelve-year old granddaughter Jadyn was fantastic in a musical production over the weekend at the Convention Center in Portland. Team Synergy wrapped up their competition with a platinum and a first-place award.

I guess I can quit bragging about all my granddaughters now, but I want them to know how proud we are of all their accomplishments. I wish I could be able to go to all of their events to watch them.

I got my new dishwasher installed on Thursday. The old one had a faulty control circuit that allowed it to overflow every once in a while. It was getting old, so we decided to replace it instead of repairing it. This one is the same make as the one we replaced: a KitchenAid. The old one lasted 14 years, so let's see how long this one will last. I am sure that they don't make them like they used to.

We had to make a couple of trips to the doctor this week. The first trip on Wednesday was a two-fer; Dave had to have some tests and his sister Leanna had to have a liver biopsy, so we scheduled them for the same day in Beaverton. We left our place at 6:00 a.m. and got back home around 5:00 p.m. - a full day. I was trying to keep tabs on both Leanna and Dave and making sure that all we found each other at the end of the day - it's a big hospital. Leanna's doctor wanted to do the biopsy on her liver as she had a question about the result of one of her earlier tests. As it turned out though, she is fine and they found no further problems. That was a relief. Dave, however was another story. A couple of weeks ago, we found out that he has cancer again - prostate cancer this time - and so the doctor wanted to run some tests to make sure that it hadn't spread. He had a CT scan and a bone scan on Wednesday and then we had to return to the doctor's office the next morning for the "cancer" talk. The doctor was pleased to report that luckily, it appears the cancer has not spread and since this cancer is slow growing, he will need to start on radiation and hormone treatments. He will do this back at his old stomping grounds at OHSU, so here we go again. But he isn't going to do that until this fall, after we get back from our trip to Europe and Great Britain. Dave told the doctor that he needed to have his treatment built around our trip, because we are definitely going! The doctor agreed, but then he is retiring in a month and it will be up to the doctors at OHSU to determine what the treatment will be. He sees them next week. Our thoughts on all this? It is what it is - we dealt with it before and we will deal with it again.

I had mentioned last week that a few Goldfinches had arrived for the summer. Well, "few" isn't the word I would use any more! It seems like they brought all their buddies with them and now I can't fill the feeder fast enough! Dave made this video of all the action.

I like to fix special meals to celebrate holidays. On Thanksgiving and Christmas, I always prepared traditional dinners. Other holidays have their special meals too. On St. Patrick's Day, I always do Corned Beef and Cabbage and so when Cinco de Mayo rolled around this week, I stayed with the theme and we had tacos!

Between all of this, my yard is going to weeds. I haven't had much spare time to get out and do any of the yard work. The plants that I bought at the plant sale are still in their pots so I have to get busy and get some of that done. I am sure that everything will be waiting patiently for me when I get to it.

We are spending Mother's Day with the girls and their families. We have three birthdays next week, Monday is Leslie's birthday, Tuesday is Jaysa's birthday and Wednesday is Jason's birthday - so let's celebrate!! Happy Mom's day to everyone and I hope you have a great day!!