~Patrick's Open House~

Patrick is my nephew and Godson. He has earned a 4 year academic scholarship to Michigan State's engineering program. Yeah Patrick!! Plus, he's just a great guy. Love 'ya Peejmonster.

Here's the graduate, relaxing in between greeting visitors.

Patrick & my Mom.

Patrick & his Godparents, Uncle Andrew & Me.

Supporting the home team, Go Spartys!

Patrick's not only going green for the team, he's going green for the environment. This is his new on campus ride.

The post open house, pre-postparty chill out. L to R: Brandis, Jenny, Camela, Helen & Sammy. And lets not forget the pups in the background, King, Gizmo & George.

Cousins

Laura came to visit briefly with her girls one Saturday before we moved. Here's the pix of the kids sitting still momentarily.
Back row L to R: Mitchell & Peter
Front row L to R: John, Roslyn, Elise & Laura with Julia on her lap















And of course this pix includes George as Julia was petting him.

Jim's B-day.

Here's a month belated pix of Jim and his big birthday present ....
a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar.

Hey, hey they're the Monkees!

Here's a pix of Peter & John making monkey bread, a recipe that Pete learned in his "life skills" class (a.k.a. home ec). It turned out so well that they are banned from making any more of it because it's irresistibly fat butt. Butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, bread dough ..... mmmmm. Not to mention it made Roslyn look like a monkey.

RIP George Carlin

George Carlin died Sunday of natural causes. He was a master at verbalizing the obvious logical things that most people missed because they were too obvious. Here's one of his ideas:

George Carlin's Solution to Save Gasoline~
Bush wants us to cut the amount of gas we use. The best way to stop using so much gas is to deport 11 million illegal immigrants. That would be 11 million less people using our gas. The price of gas would come down.

Then bring our troops home from Iraq to guard the Border. When they catch an illegal immigrant crossing the border, hand him a canteen, rifle and some ammo and ship him to Iraq .
Tell him if he wants to come to America then he must serve a tour in the military. Give him a soldier's pay while he's there and tax him on it. After his tour, he will be allowed to become a citizen since he defended this country. He will also be registered to be taxed and be a legal patriot.

This option will probably deter illegal immigration and provide a solution for the troops in Iraq and the aliens trying to make a better life for themselves. If they refuse to serve, ship them to Iraq anyway, without the canteen, rifle or ammo.

Problem solved.

GI Bill 2008

You can help petition W to pass the new GI Bill, instead of vetoing it like the numb-nuts that he is. Just click here and add your name to the petition.

The new bill will cover 4 years of tuition at the most expensive state school, $1K a year for books and a monthly living stipend for all vets that have served at least 1 day of active duty since 9/11. There's all sorts of other perks for the vets in the bill. Please truly support our troops by helping get the new bill passed and pass along a link to everyone you know.

Red Wings win the 2008 Stanley Cup in 6!!

Tradition has it that the players of the winning team take turns bringing the Cup home with them for a while and showing it off. Some have eaten their morning cereal out of it, others have placed their babies in it, Stevie Yzerman is said to have taken the Cup jet skiing. If you won the cup, what would you do with it?

History lesson.

Today Ros & John were watching a t.v. program. There was music playing in the background when the camera panned back and showed a turntable playing a record. (See below for you young pups.) Roslyn's reaction was, "What IS that thing??"

Just put me in the museum.

LaGrange, Hinsdale, whatever.

Pete's hockey coach, Anders, is close family friends with Mike Nylander (both from Sweden) who used to play for the Blackhawks, but last season signed a 4 year contract with the Capitals. Mike rented out his house in Hinsdale, but the renters were leaving this month. It was going to be empty so he wanted Anders to move into it at no cost, which meant that Anders' house was going to be available to rent. We were going to move into Anders' place in LaGrange next month, but Mike found a new renter for his BIG place in Hinsdale. Sooooo, Anders and his family are staying put and we had to do a last minute scramble to find a place to move into. Craig's List to the rescue. I found a 4 bedroom place in Hinsdale with a huge yard at a reasonable price and a great landlord who is letting us sign a 2 year lease that we can renew for another 2 years after that. We're supposed to sign the lease on Wednesday. Once that's done we can register the kids for school and I can send out the new address to everyone.

Oh yeah, the other news is that the tenants for our Crystal lake house signed the lease yesterday and we're supposed to get it back from them today.

So, once again it all appears to be working out just as it's meant to be. Anyone want to help us move in mid-June??!!

Chicago is #1 .....

... for the nation's highest average gas prices, $4.07/gal. UGH! There's even a station at Fullerton & Ashland that's selling gas for $4.49/gal for regular and $4.69/gal for premium.

Birthdays!!

First off, I want to wish a belated 7th birthday to my niece, Ella! Although her b-day post is late, she actually received her present from her God-father, U. Jim, on time. That's a rarity for us! I wish we could have been there. Happy Birthday Ella!


Next, a big Happy Birthday goes out to my nephew Shaggy (a.k.a. Rudi). Now you and Errin need to move to Chi-town as planned!!

Like God-mother, like God-daughter ...

Today we had the HD music channel on in the background and the band Cream was doing a reunion concert. Roslyn walked in the room and said, "How can such old guys make such nice music?".

Flashback about 20 years or so and I was babysitting my brother's kids. We had VH1 on in the background and the video Kokomo by the Beach Boys came on. For those of you who don't know, that was the only song of theirs that was getting airplay in the 80's because it was written for a movie soundtrack. Having never seen the band before, my niece, Melissa, took one look at the Beach Boys and said,"Wow, look how old that new band is!".

And that is just one more reason why they are a perfect God-mother/God-daughter pair!!

Question:

If April showers bring May flowers, what does April SNOW bring??

Answer: A VERY annoyed Gail.

Yes it was snowing today. This weather SUCKS!!
See below for an overdue update of our lives.

Update.

Besides the snow, here's what's going on in our life:

1. Our house still is not sold, but we have 2 parties that are interested in renting.
2. Last week we decided to definitely move to Phoenix so I could attend MWU College of Dental Medicine.
3. This week, United announced that it is going to double the number of planes that it's retiring. Continental Airlines no longer wants to merge with UAL because of the "corporate climate" and just how crappy it's doing financially.
4. There's no way to predict when Jim would get a bid to L.A. or S.F., which would mean commuting to Chicago for a year or more.
5. This week we decided to stay in Chicago-land and I will attend UIC College of Dentistry. This is the last of our "final" decisions as I officially withdrew my acceptance to MWU this morning.
6. As I got off the phone with the Dean of MWU-CDM, it began to snow. God really does have a sick sense of humor!
7. We'll be moving to the south side as soon as we can rent out or sell our house here in Crystal Lake.
8. Our first choice suburb is LaGrange, but Westmont, Downers Grove, Lombard & Elmhurst are on the list also.
9. We will forever be North-siders, so No, we will NOT become Sox fans. Go Cubs! Besides, the odds of the Tigers and the Cubs playing each other in the World Series are slim to none. And as they say, Slim just left the building, so I have no conflict of interest issues.
10. We're excited to be about an hour drive closer to Michigan for our trips home. I guess we'll be shopping at the Bolingbrook Ikea now instead of the Schaumburg one. Yes, Chi-town has 2 Ikeas.
11. Peter is ecstatic to be staying here and will play for the Chicago Mission again in the fall. He'll have to do a lot of his travel with families on the team because of my course load. So all of you Michiganders ... I know it will mean a lot to him to have you at his Detroit games.
12. And speaking of Detroit games .... Jonathan, you're still in charge of keeping an eye out for the 2008-2009 Red Wing's schedule. We'll need to plan our annual Euchre tourney/Red Wings game now that nobody will need to fly to Phoenix for the game!

Scholarship.

So, today I was working on my financial aid package for school this fall. I knew that going to dental school would cause us to hemorrhage money, but when you see the cold hard numbers in writing, only one word comes to mind, and it rhymes with DUCK. Time to brainstorm and research alternative financing.

What about grants, you say? Well, finding free money is like, uhm, pulling teeth.

How about scholarships, you ask? Sadly, I've been unable to find any scholarships for "middle aged white mothers undergoing a career change".

Then I had an idea ....

.... a wonderful, awful idea. Why not create a scholarship for myself? One where all the money goes directly to me.

After all, there's more than just tuition to worry about. There's instruments to buy,


and clinic fees,

and text books to purchase.

So tell all your friends and family to donate today to the new official "Send a middle aged, brunette, Polish-Ukrainian, Bull Terrier loving, hockey playing, mother of 4 to dental school" scholarship. Don't delay!!

(Cash, clothing and alcohol donations accepted.)