A numbered list....

 A list of random things I've been up to lately....

1. Well, I managed to sell one of the pairs of pants I posted on Poshmark.  And honestly, I think I sold them because I priced them too low.  But $12 profit is better than $0 profit.  But the other items I posted are just sitting there looking sad and lonely.  I think with reselling, the key is volume. So I guess I should post more items and see what happens.

2.  Do any of you play Wordle?  I love it!  I've been trying to get Dan to play but he won't.  Peter plays every day and we text our results to each other. Sarah plays it but doesn't really care one way or the other.  For those that don't know what it is, read this. I love this game because there's only one word each day and everyone gets the exact same word.  I've been playing for about 2 months now and have only missed it once!  I take my Wordle very seriously!  :)  Further proof that I need a job....

3. Sarah and I went prom dress shopping recently and she didn't see anything she liked at the mall. So a week  later she went to some other stores with a couple of her friends and also didn't like anything she saw. So she came home and ordered three dresses online. The first one finally came yesterday, and while it is really pretty on her and fits well, it's white and see through. And the material is weird. So, that one is going back today. 

The other two were ordered  over a week ago and have yet to ship so we are getting a little nervous. The prom is at the end of April and whatever dress she chooses will most likely need to be shortened.  I think we've decided that if those dresses haven't shipped by the end of this week, we will be going shopping again.  

4. I continue to struggle to lose weight. I've been doing low carb for over a month now and it's not working. I miss the good old days when I could skip carbs for a month and lose 7 or 8 pounds. Those days are long gone. So I've decided to try a simple low calorie approach. I've looked at quite a few calorie calculators online and have determined the amount of calories I think I need to eat per day  to lose one pound per week. Hopefully doing it that slowly will mean I can keep it off. I'm also trying to up my water intake to 90 ounces per day.  ***excuses herself to go to the bathroom AGAIN*** And I've also been doing online workouts every morning.  Hopefully I will see results by the end of the spring.

5. This was my lunch yesterday:

It looks weird but was actually very good. It was a cup and a half of quinoa/lentil/rice blend from Aldi topped with salmon, cucumbers, and sriracha sauce.  Very tasty!

6. Dan was complaining that our kitchen faucet was dripping while running. The water would come out in a stream like it was supposed to but it would also drip from the sides at the same time. The screen over the faucet head was broken in a couple of places so I'm assuming that was the cause. There was also a chip on the outside which didn't effect the operation of the faucet but didn't look too attractive. 

Dan was looking up the model number to order a new one. I remembered that we had a previous issue with the faucet and Kohler sent us a new hose assembly for free which Dan was able to successfully replace.  I contacted Kohler about this latest issue and they are sending us a new facet. The only problem is that they will have to make a new one and that can take up to 60 days. That's not a problem since the current faucet works.  It's like I always say, "If it's free it's for me!" 

7. On Saturday, I took Sarah to have some Senior pictures made. I found a photographer with the cutest little greenhouse that she uses as a backdrop.  Sarah took three outfit changes and while it was chilly, it was sunny thankfully. The photographer took a bunch of shots and I can't wait to see them!  Hopefully she will have the sneak peak ready soon because Sarah and I are getting anxious to see them.

8. I read about these Solve-A-Mystery kits you can order from a company called Hunt A Killer. Each month you get a new box with clues to the mystery.  Each "season" contains six "episodes" so basically you get the story line and clues to solve one murder in 6 boxes. 

I love Dateline, The First 48, and all those type shows so I really wanted to give it a try. You could   order a full season's subscription and they would ship one episode a month, or you could order all six episodes at once if it was an older one, or you could just order one box to see if you would like it. I ordered just one box because Dan wasn't quite as excited by it as I was and I wanted to see how fun/complicated/intriguing it was before committing to more money.

We "played" it on Sunday afternoon. It took us about an hour to read over all information/clues that came with the first box.  Each box has an objective you need to complete in order to move on to the next box. We got background on the victim, "met" a lot of the local town folks, learned some history of the town, etc.  It's kind of a neat concept but the clues were kind of obvious and Dan had the first objective figured out minutes after reading and watching all the info. (There's also an online component.) It was a wee bit cheesy as well so we've decided not to get any of the other boxes. 

If anyone has any fun things to do as an old married soon-to-be empty nest couple, please let me know because murder mystery boxes just aren't going to do the trick.

8. I'll leave you all with a picture of  The Easter Buddy. :)

 

Sunsets and Poshmark.

Dan made it home from Switzerland on Thursday night.  Peter was supposed to spend Friday night with some friends but the host was sick so that got cancelled. I felt bad for him because he had been wanting to see all of these friends together since the beginning of his break. Sarah hung out with friends at the baseball game on Friday night and text me this cool picture of the sunset:

 It was funny because Dan, Peter, and I had gone on a ride through downtown Winston-Salem after dinner and Peter, who was driving, had just looked in the rear-view mirror and exclaimed, "Look at the awesome sunset!"  And then proceeded to predict that his Instagram was going to be full of girls posting sunset pictures...and two seconds later I received this picture from Sarah!  Who later went on to post it on her Instagram!  :)

This was the shot I grabbed from the car.  It was cool but I refrained from posting it on Instagram. :) 

Saturday was the usual errands, housework, and Mass and Sunday was lunch at Mom's and then the drive back to Raleigh to deposit Peter to N.C. State.

And now it's back to regular life with Dan and work and Sarah at school and Peter in Raleigh.  I'm attempting to sell some things on Poshmark.  I tried listing some things on there last year and literally after over a full year, I finally sold one item a couple of weeks ago.  But Peter pulled out a few pairs of nice jeans from his closet that don't fit him and I decided to give it another shot before  just donating them like I normally do. If anyone of you has had any luck as a reseller, let me know all of your tips and tricks!

I can't keep track of who's here and who isn't!

 It's been a really weird week around here! 

Dan headed to Raleigh last Thursday after he left work to pick up Peter who is on spring break this week.  If you will recall, this semester Peter has no classes on Friday so his break technically started on Thursday afternoon.  

Sarah completed her Winterim on Friday.  While she enjoyed both experiences, the main takeaway was that she felt like working for a non-profit like Victory Junction would be more fulfilling than working for a for-profit company.  We talked about that at dinner and Dan told her that he felt the same way after leaving the army and working in the corporate world.  It took him a while to realize that both are good and equally important and that while working for a non-profit may seem like it's benefiting the world more, we have to have businesses to supply us with our needs and wants and then those business are able to provide wages to the people (and their families) that work there. At least that's how he rationalized it. 

On Friday evening, Peter headed to Greensboro to see a metal concert.  He went by himself because he knew none of his friends liked that kind of music.  He's been to that venue before with Dan a couple of years ago. It's basically a small club that has different bands performing. He had a great time and said he was glad he went by himself. He enjoyed the show without worrying about anyone else having a good or bad time.And thankfully he was home before the storms started. We had heavy rains, winds, lots of thunder and lightening so I was glad he was home before all that started!

On Saturday morning, Sarah was off to Raleigh to watch the Bishop McGuinness girl's basketball team play in the NCHSAA 1A Championships.  She had a great time hanging out with her friends all day AND the girls WON!!!

I love this picture of the student section even though Sarah isn't visible - she's way higher up in the stands.  (Also, it should be noted that I took these pictures from the Winston-Salem Journal webiste as I was not at the game.)

When Sarah got home we all went to dinner and it was so nice having everyone together! Since she got home pretty late Saturday we went to Mass on Sunday together and it was so nice doing that as a family as well.  Then we had lunch at mom's after church and it was so nice that we were all together. Have I mentioned that it was so nice having everyone together and under one room? :)

But it was short-lived because on Sunday evening, Sarah went to spend the night with a friend because Monday was a teacher work day and they were going prom dress shopping Monday morning.

And then, Dan left Monday evening for Switzerland.  Yep - that's right!  His first trip since January of 2020.  He was struggling as he was packing and getting everything ready for the trip because it had been so long.  He used to travel so frequently that everything was second nature to him.  But since it had been so long he kept saying that he felt like he was forgetting something.  

He headed to the airport Monday after work and arrived in Switzerland in time to do a little sight seeing in Lucerne.  He was hoping to be able to take a cable car up Mt. Pilatus but the weather was overcast and the views would have been obscured (and I'm not sure if he had enough time anyway) so he toured around the city instead.

He had meetings on Wednesday and he will be spending all day today on a plane but will be back home tonight!

Peter went to dinner with a Colton on Monday night and last night the kids and I went to Chipotle they both love that place! And tonight Sarah will be going to the hockey game with Cheyanne because she doesn't have school tomorrow. 

So that's why I say it's been kind of a weird week - Peter was home, Dan wasn't, and Sarah's always coming and going.  But hopefully this weekend we will all be under the same room for a couple of night before we have to take Peter back to State.

I definitely sleep better when we are all under one roof! 

Winterim

All this week, the Senior Class at Bishop McGuinness has been participating in Winterim.

Winterim is a comprehensive study of seniors’ interests and career opportunities. Each of the seniors shadow two career professionals for 30 hours. The students begin in the fall by completing research about careers of interest, writing business letters to potential professionals to shadow, learning basic professional etiquette, and participate in  Zoom interviews with the professionals. And then after the week of shadowing, the students give a presentation to a panel of faculty members detailing what they learned. 

Sarah has decided that she wants to major in communications so she wanted to find two professionals with jobs that use a degree in communications.  

On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday she shadowed  the Chief Development Officer at Victory Junction, Frances, who also happens to be her Girl Scout leader. Victory Junction is camp for seriously ill children that was created in memory of Adam Petty (son of Kyle Petty, grandson of Richard Petty) after he lost his life at the age of 19 in a racing accident.

Frances was so excited to have Sarah shadow her that she told her that anyone else that needed another shadow experience was also welcome.  So, two other students (who happen to be a couple of Sarah's best friends) joined her which made this even more fun for Sarah.

And since Victory Junction is in Randleman, and all three kids wanted to carpool together, Sarah spent three night at her friend's house which is 20 minutes closer toRandleman so that they could ride together and not have to leave quite as early each morning. So three consecutive sleepovers with her bestie and three consecutive early morning stops at Starbucks was icing on the cake for my coffee-loving girl.

She definitely enjoyed her time shadowing Frances. The days were busy and due to the nature of the job, each day was different. They took a tour of the awesome facilities (which had to be done on a golf cart because the property is so large), sat in on an executive board meeting, attended a fundraising meeting with Bikes for Kids Foundation that Victory Junction was hosting, met all of the leadership team (including the CEO and Director of Marketing and Communications) as well as Frances' staff and learned about what they all did on a daily basis. And she got to meet Nascar legend Richard Petty who happened to be attending the board meeting.

She had such a wonderful experienced and learned so much about how this particular non-profit operates and what she could do with a communications degree in a similar setting.  She also found it enjoyable because she understood a lot of the lingo because of her work with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society last year.

Yesterday and today, she is shadowing Jennifer, the Director of Brand Strategy and Insight at The Variable.  The Variable is an innovation and advertising firm.  And from talking with Sarah last night, it sounds like established companies come to them in need of new and innovative products and the Variable creates and designs these products for the company and then advertise the new product once it is ready for the consumer.  

She sat in on meetings yesterday talking about a new grill concept for Char-Grill. She also met with different people that work with the Directory of Brand Strategy and learned about their jobs.  Sarah was first introduced to her last year at Bishop's Career Day.  She came home that day extremely excited about Jennifer's presentation in particular. So when it was time to start reaching out to people who would allow her to shadow them, Sarah immediately thought of her.   I can't wait to hear what she did today!

Sarah spent much of last year concerned because she didn't know what she wanted to study in college.  But after spending the week with two very strong and very talented women with communications degrees, she is excited for college and what comes after!

March!

It's March!  The days are getting longer and it's finally sunny this week after a lot of rain. And it's supposed to be 71 degrees tomorrow.  Spring is getting close.

Our daffodils are in bloom!!!
 

Lent is also upon us. While ordinary time is my favorite, this Lent, I'm looking forward to eating less, praying more, and just generally trying to listen for God's voice during my day to day activities. Are any of you doing anything special for Lent?

Two Sundays ago, we celebrated the swim season at the end of year banquet.  It was held at a local Mexican restaurant. The owners had some swimmers on the team in previous years and are always very gracious and allow us to meet there.

Sarah and the other captains presented the Paper Plate Awards and they did such a great job.  They came up with an award for each swimmer based on their personality or something funny they said or did during the season and told the story as they were presenting the awards.  For instance, 

This next award goes to someone who is always thinking about the other swimmers on the team. He always has extra bottles of water for those who forgot theirs and he keeps extra snacks in his backpack for the same reason.  This person has also been known to swim extra laps when the coach is mad just so the team can finish practice on time.  This award goes to Sam "The Saint" Smith. 

This was just an example by the way.  As far as I no, no one on the team brings snacks for the other swimmers. That would be nice but also a little team mommish!

I tried to snap some pictures when they were giving their speeches but this is the best I could do:

This past weekend, Sarah had a special project she was working on with a bunch of friends and was gone Saturday night and most of Sunday. So Dan and I decided to go out to dinner after Mass and ended up at 6th and Vine. Their menu was a lot smaller than I remember from preCovid but it was still good.  We split the baked Brie appetizer and I got a fried goat cheese salad.  Yum!  Apparently I have a thing for baked and fried cheeses.

 

This might also be why one of my Lenten plans is eating less....

Speaking of eating less....we have some workers here now repairing the wood that goes around the back door. (I'm sure there's a technical term - frame, maybe jamb?  It has started to decay so we are having it replaced and I am about to starve since it's lunchtime but I can't go in there and start heating up lunch while they are right there.  That would be rude and awkward so perhaps I will start my Lenten fasting a little early. :)

That's all I've got now so I guess I'll leave you all with a picture of Buddy...

What's black and white and red all over???  :)