Thursday, May 15, 2014

NHS Induction

Drew was invited, applied and was accepted to the National Honor Society and last night was the induction ceremony! So proud of Drew and all of his hard work!

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It was nice to have Jake be able to attend the evening with us--- brothers.

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Walking out of the high school we saw Jake's name has been added to the ACT plaque by the front office.

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Monday, May 12, 2014

Mother's Day weekend

Mother's Day weekend brought us on another road trip to Notre Dame... 
this time to move Jake home for the summer.

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We have been trying to find a new restaurant each time we are in Indiana and had a fabulous seafood dinner at Bonefish Grill in Mishawaka.

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Moving Jake out of his dorm. It is so hard to believe that he is finished with his freshman year already!

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The boys took me out for a great Mother's Day brunch, cupcakes to go, 
and back home in time to have a late dinner of grilled salmon before we sat down to watch 
the Wild play the Blackhawks in game 5 of the playoffs and nice phone call chat with Tyler.


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Tyler, Jake and Drew....my three biggest blessings...I am so proud to be called their mom!

Friday, May 2, 2014

a mess

My last post was on our fabulous long weekend in Chicago for a hockey tournament and then on to Notre Dame to celebrate a birthday. Monday afternoon we left to make the 8+ hour drive back to Minnesota, and arrived home at about 9pm. We were all exhausted but hurried and unpacked the car, grabbed the dog from the kennel and just sat down to watch the Wild game 6 of the playoffs.

During a commercial I ran downstairs to bring something down to Jake's room and when I reached the lowest level my slippered feet went squish, squish, squish. It took me a second to comprehend what was going on...I peaked into the storage room. Standing water. I walked into Ty's room. Carpet totally soaked all the way to the back window. I walked into Jake's room. Carpet totally soaked all the way to the back window. In the 15 years we have lived in this house we have never had water problems and of course it  happens when we are out of town....

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These pictures don't quite capture the extent of what we were dealing with; but Pete, Drew and I got busy moving things that we could, calling the insurance company, calling water clean-up companies, and shopvacing the standing water from the storage room-- but the carpet was way beyond what we could possibly vacuum up.

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This picture shows the wet carpet and how the water was seeping into the drywall.

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Our insurance agent gave us the name of this company who were able to be out on Tuesday to start the clean-up process.

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They boxed things up and moved all the furniture out from both bedrooms.

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Everything was moved to the lower level family room.

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Taking in the mess.

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Vacuums were brought in to pull up all the water.

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Jake's room after it has been vacuumed.

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Next, they pulled all the baseboards off.

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And then pulled up the carpet to rip out the padding.

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Then fans were put in each room to dry underneath the carpet.

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A gigantic dehumidifier was centrally placed. (You can see how wet the concrete is here.) Now we were just needed to wait, with the fans and dehumidifier running for 3 days for everything to dry out.

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They were back today to check on the moisture levels and said the drywall on the back wall was still very wet.

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They would need to remove the bottom 20 inches of drywall and moisture barrier and then continue to let the fans do their work for 3 or 4 more days.

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So now we wait. The basement is a mess right now, the bedrooms are getting worse before they are going to get better, Tyler and Jake are going to be home from college in just days and they have no bedrooms to come home to.....but we count our blessings and know things could have been worse. And so we just tackle what we need to and know everything will be ok.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

hockey, family, friends and food

This past weekend Drew had a hockey tournament in Chicago. The team, the coaches and some of the parents loaded a coach bus early Friday morning.

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Pete and I decided to drive and meet them in Chicago because we were going to extend our trip by a day and head to Indiana to visit Jake.

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The tournament booked our team in a hotel and we found out that it was in the exact same town that some of my relatives live in. In fact we have stayed at this very hotel. We met my cousin Cindy and her husband John for a fabulous dinner at J. Alexander's before Drew's 10pm hockey game.

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It was so great catching up with these two!

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Drew's team played a total of 4 games over the weekend against some good competition. 

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One thing that none of the parents could get over was that they served alcohol right in the rink-- we have never seen that before.

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Saturday night we had dinner at a cute little authentic Mexican restaurant called De Campana in Bensenville.

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Over the weekend we also stopped at Gene and Jude's for our favorite Chicago style hot dog!

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Policemen on lunch break. :)

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And a stop at Johnnie's in Elmwood Park for an Italian beef sandwich.

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3 Chicago policemen in line in front of us- we were beginning to see a trend in the dive places we visited. :)

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These beefs are so good and have been rated {here} as the best in Chicago. And I totally agree! :)

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Sunday, after Drew's last game we headed to see Jake. Notre Dame is just under 2 hour from Chicago, so this was an easy little trip. Jake wasn't home for Easter and it was his birthday just a couple of days before, so we thought we would take him out for dinner to do some belated birthday celebrating. We met him and two of his friends at Corndance Tavern.

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The birthday boy.

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It was a fun night with a lot of talking and laughter and presents and good food. :)

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A trip to ND wouldn't be complete without a stop in the bookstore.

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This view never gets old.

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I had to get a picture of this cute car. :)

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On Monday, Jake had a two hour window between classes and we picked him up at his dorm, packed up some of his things to bring back home for the summer, and took him to lunch. He had a real busy day but it was so nice to see him again before we headed back home.

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It was such a fun weekend filled with hockey, family and friends and so much good food!
The fun ended when we arrived home late Monday night...to a flooded (finished) basement.
More to come on that soon.