This was a very nice weekend to wind up a hectic week. I need to accomplish a few things this week before I can enjoy Family Weekend at Loras in Dubuque next weekend. One of those things is getting Reed in somewhere to get his haircut. He doesn't seem to want me to cut his hair like I did when he and Micah were little boys. I don't think I did a bad job of it as you can see by the picture. This is my all-time favorite picture of Reed. He wasn't very good about getting his picture taken and this was the ONLY picture he would allow that day and it turned out great. I think his hair just looks wonderful but he's not going for that style any more. We'll have to see if we can get somebody to give him a respectable cut soon.

I put in a full week at work and pushed to get most of the charges in on Thursday and Friday so there should be little left to do on Monday morning (I hope!). It was a big push but was nice to go home Friday and know that there won't be mountains of charges to enter come Monday morning.

This week I received a surprise phone call from Fr. Dellaert to ask about Brad Broshar. It was so good to hear his voice and catch up on everything. I hadn't seen him since July and had only heard from in a couple of e-mails so we had quite a bit to catch up on. I am definitely going to have to make a Cedar Rapids trip to see my sister and to go and visit him as well in Norway.



This weekend I scrubbed my kitchen/dining floors and cleaned the music room floors and cleaned appliances and countertops thoroughly. That was a good job done and now it looks nice to start the week off fresh. I also baked a few cookies to decorate for Halloween. Mike was chatting with Micah on facebook as I was baking them and he was taunting him with the "cookie info". I suppose I would be a good mom if I were to bake and take some kind of cookies to my son (and maybe even drop some off in Cedar Falls for my daughter) next weekend. We'll see what this week brings.

Saturday evening Reed, Mike and I went to Garner for groceries and ate at Hardees (they had some good coupons in the mail this week!). Lo and behold, who comes in to eat there as well but "his monsignorness", Fr. Hemann. Mike went over to say 'hi' before we left and he motioned for me to come over and sit next to him so we had to visit with him for a while. He is quite the character. He got to talking about Brett Favre and his 'retirement'. Mike said, "Yeah, he's kind of like one of those priests who retire but keeps showing up at masses in all different places." Msgr. laughed and I told him that I suppose he'll really be like Favre and 'sprain his collar'. He got a good chuckle out of that one and thought he would try twisting his collar before putting it on to say that he 'sprained' it. Fr. Hemann retired a few years ago, maybe more than a few, but he is busy filling in every weekend somewhere for a priest who needs to be somewhere else. It really is a good thing that he does too. There's not many like him out there any more.

This week brings the beginning of ladies' card club for the year. Twelve of us gather together on the first Wednesdays of the month for 6 months to play 500. We will start off the year at Cari Formanek's house. It is quite a diversity of ages and backgrounds so it makes for interesting conversation and it seems like so long since I've seen some of them even though we live in the same community.

I also have to get my hair cut and a "protein treatment";) before I head to Family Weekend. That appointment is on Thursday -- maybe I can get Reed in for a haircut while the "protein" is treating my hair!




This afternoon I took some of those cookies into my former (I won't say 'old') neighbors' that always used to come to our house while I was growing up and get their 'pumpkin' cookies for Halloween with their kids. Now when I stop at their house they have all of their grandkids around ready to go trick-or-treating. You know you might be getting older when the kids you babysat have kids!



After that I went to my mom's to visit with her and while I was there, Jake and Kate and Jason's girlfriend's girl, Maris, came to trick or treat. My sisster-in-law, Janet stopped in and we all had a very nice visit. I hadn't seen Janet in months. She recently got a promotion and is head of housekeeping at the nursing home here in Britt. She is pretty happy about that. My mom remembered also that she will be having a BIG birthday this month. Of course she is trying not to think about that one. She will turn 60 this month. I'm sure we can brew up some sort of trouble for her!