I'm not very good at math...

...but a large percentage of this meal came from my parents' hard work.

Burger, onions, tomatoes, peppers and pickles courtesy of my parents. Sweet corn, courtesy of Target.

Sunday night people came over to play book lovers memory and watch the VMA awards. The game was fun, the awards were terrible, and the snacks, drinks and company were awesome.

Monday= free coffee from the gas station in Central City. Tuesday= new creamer day. Yummm.

Thought my Granny would think I looked especially librarian-ish today.

Ah, Saturday

This has got me all riled up. I renewed my plates, and instead of sending me a little green sticker, they sent me new plates! That say Linn County! I am NOT ready for Linn County plates. I want to keep Story forever. This is seriously hard for me.

My Saturday at-work to-do list.

My Saturday after-work treat.

Not sure who Catherine Calhoun is, but she isn't me, and I definitely wasn't alive in 1979, much less graduating from Coe.

Selfie w/ Pacino. He still loves climbing on my shoulders.

A parent at school wants to remove a book from the library, and is quite possibly just never going to return it. I was tweeting about it today when the author offered to send us a new one. I love Twitter.

Exhausted

Friday night found me eating frozen pizza and in my pj's by 7:30. Here are a few pictures from the past couple of days:

I was playing with my robot at home, and Pacino didn't know what to think.

He was freaking out one morning about something in the window. I think it was the string from the blinds (that he broke) but who knows. He was up there crying and finally I just had to leave!

I wore this watch today. The battery is definitely dead, but it looked cute with my outfit, so who cares, right?

Almost bedtime...11+ hour days make this girl tired!

Yummy Treats & Fun Poses

A lot of people think that their grandma is the best baker in the world, but unless your name is Gage, Taylor, Benjamin, Bailey, Cati or Renee, my grandma wins. The only debate with my Granny is which is better: m&m bars, or Texas brownies? I think my vote goes with the m&m bars, but its tight. 

Here's a fun school picture--we had animal print scarf day last Friday:

My Weekend Photos Show...

...that I forgot school is now in session. I had very good intentions of cleaning my house and working Friday night and Saturday. But, my good intentions weren't good enough. 

Here's the recap of what really happened:

After school Friday, some teachers went to Mulligan's. I had volleyball practice, but there were still a few people left when practice was over, so I headed there with intentions of one drink and some food. Then, the Coors people showed up and started raffling off money to people drinking Coors. So we had to order a couple rounds of those. 4 hours later, I made it home. Whoops.

Saturday morning I slept in, then was about to get started with the cleaning when Courtney texted me asking if I wanted to go with her and the boys to the farmer's market. Of course I did! She gave me ten minutes to get ready, so a hat was the choice of the day.

Next, it was off to the pool. It was too nice outside for cleaning or working, get real. Plus, my tan is going to fade fast if I don't get one pool day a week!

As if that wasn't enough procrastination, I convinced Emily, Becki & Katie to go to the sweet corn festival. It is one of my favorite things of the summer.

I eat pie about twice a year, but this was pretty good.

I can't go to the sweet corn festival without playing BINGO, and convincing my friends to play too. We played 3 games then gave up.

We got the free space! Woo!

The corn was pretty good. It was the first I'd had all year.

Corn-sword fight with Emily.

I love, love my corn.

And then there's Sunday, the last day of the weekend....

How can a person get out of bed with this snuggly guy?

Then, to my cousin's 2nd birthday party. She loved the presents, but the singing card was definitely her favorite.

My favorite part was watching Granny read Press Here. She cracks me up. 

(Sorry for the sneaky photos, Granny.)

Entertained the baby by turning on the camera and she watched herself drink her bottle.

Now it's 9:30pm, I'm eating popcorn and drinking tea and need to eat my Texas brownie before it gets dry. Oh, and put in some grades and update a website...whoops.

I have the feeling its going to take a couple of weeks to get into school mode.

Whew

I forget how time consuming life gets when school starts! I've been at school until after 6 the past three nights. Today was our first day, and surprise! the CBS 2 news channel shows up.

Click here to watch the clip. They are talking about the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) initiatives that the state was offering last year. There were several grants that schools could apply for. We used those grants for our Lego League teams and high school robotics teams. We also got another grant this year that will be building sumo bots and going to Ames in the Spring for competition. Central City really does a good job of providing these opportunities to our kids, and as the report card on the study showed, not many rural schools do.

If you're counting, that's twice I've been on the news in the past couple months :)

We had book club on Tuesday night at Teddy's Barn and Grill in Anamosa. It is a super cool place.

 

I had a fried mushroom that looked an awful lot like a mustache. 

Then, we went to the Edinburgh Manor. It is supposedly haunted, but I don't see any faces in the windows, do you?

Since today was the first day of school, we had to take the obligatory first day picture:

And we tried to show our victory by jumping, but the picture is a little blurry:

I'm sure I'm missing 6,000 things that happened this week, but I'm tired! More to come this weekend, I'm sure.

 

Eat, Drink & Be Happy

First of all, it has been a LONG time since I've posted! This week has been crazy. It was the last week before school starts. Gasp. I don't like admitting that. However, I am very excited for school to start and to see all the kiddies again.

But, here's a recap of my last weekend before school. It was pretty stellar.

Kicked off the weekend on Friday at lunch with some Chic-Fil-A after delivering 2,946 books to Half Price as a donation from my school library. Well deserved chicken strips.

Friday night entailed this delicious pizza from Vito's. Definitely in my top 3 pizza places in CR.

Saturday morning's breakfast was a treat from Katie that she found at Theisen's of all places. This was stellar.

My Granny thought I was dressed especially librarian-ish on Saturday. Prepping for back-to-school, I guess!

One margarita Saturday night with some of my favorites co-workers.

A peach for breakfast on Sunday.

The pizza on Friday night was accompanied by this Roscato wine. Yummm.

There were a lot of people in my house on Saturday. 11 grown-ups, well, 10 and a teenager, plus two babies and a cat. Full house!

Sunday brunch at Riley's. Never gets old.

Sunday afternoon at the pool...gonna miss this...

A treat afterwards...

And another treat after that while doing some reading for work. 

I'd call that quite the successful weekend. Life is good.