Last week of April

Last week of April 2006:
We have spent this week recovering from the Riverfest weekend. We had loads of fun last weekend but it totally exhausted us. Here is a photo of Tanner doing the rock climb thing at Riverfest. Also above is a pic of Rusty’s farewell performance with Deadly7th at Riverfest. It was great to see an actual crowd there for their performance, was a heck of a way to go out with a bang.

Here is a pic of Tyler and a bunch of girlies. Anyway. My kids learned what a funnel cake is, and learned a lot about the value of money. Tanner blew $26.00 of the $28.00 he had saved up. (He blew the other 2 on chips from the machine at school this week). And by Sunday evening he was wishing he hadn’t. Tyler has used his creative mind to find ways to get friends or family to pay for things for him so that he doesn’t have to spend his own money. So now we're not only trying to teach him to save money, but we're also trying to teach him not to be a BUM. Hehehe.
Monday night we had baseball, Tuesday night I had bonko and the guys got together with Ken for some Starcraft LAN games. Wednesday we stayed home and I cleaned the bathrooms. Thursday was baseball, and today (Friday) is our designated family restaurant night for this month. (The 4 of us eat at a restaurant on or around the last day of every month.) I’m not sure yet where we’re going to end up eating this time, but I’m just glad to be NOT cooking.
I guess this week we have basically all turned towards the RPG game stuff to occupy our time, or maybe just to relax I guess. Tyler and Tanner have dove off into “Kingdom Hearts 2” together. Rusty and I are playing “Resident Evil” together. I say “together”. He’s the one actually playing, I just print out the walkthroughs from the computer and read them so I can tell him where to go and what to do next. (Mom says that’s the only reason I like it is because I can tell him where to go and what to do and he’ll actually DO it!) We figured we’d start with Resident Evil 1 and move through all the sequel games, or at least until we get tired of it. It’s just a darn good thing that all 4 of us have the same affliction for video games. Some say that video games are a waste of time, or rot your mind, or whatever. But I think they are a good thing when you make it a family thing to do together. It’s more healthy than just sitting and watching TV together I think. At least with video games you are interacting with each other.
This coming weekend (beginning today) will mark our first free weekend in seems like forever. I’m looking forward to being home and having the time to do things I need to do around the house, which unfortunately includes mowing grass. We’re going this evening to buy Rusty an early Fathers’ Day present – a new gas grill. The one that Dad bought us about 8 years ago has finally bit the dust. It was down to having only one side of it working, but we still used it. Then last weekend the dog knocked it completely over and, well, it’s just time to retire it. I had planned on getting him one for Fathers’ Day. But then I have these steaks I bought that I wanted cooked this weekend…..thus, the early Fathers’ Day present. I intend to update this blog every Friday, or maybe sometimes more than that if there is something particularly exciting happening. Maybe I can even get Rusty or the kids to write in it sometimes, too, who knows. I hope this ends up being something as fun as I think it will be.