Funny Story....Kind Of.......

I cannot believe I forgot to write about the wonderful end to our vacation......

So we got all packed up and stopped at the dump station to dump our tanks on the camper. As Rick pulled in he told me to jump out and make sure he was lined up right to dump. So I jumped out and helped him line up. Once he was I ran around the back of the camper to get to the truck to let the dogs out for one last break before driving home. As I got to the door I heard the click as the doors locked because Dexter had jumped up and landed on the lock button. I looked up and saw that Rick was also out of the truck and told him unlock the doors since my keys were in the truck in my purse. Well he gave me that oh shit look and said his keys were in the truck! So now the dogs were in the locked truck and we had no way to get them out. Of course to make it worse it was already hot out. So I walked to the Ranger station in hopes that they would have the tool to unlock doors, of course they did not :( So the Ranger called a lock smith for me and said he would be there in about 15 minutes. So we waited and waited for what seemed forever. When the guy finally got there he was just a dick! The first thing he did was to go to the truck and say to the dogs "good puppies you made me lots of money today" Then of course he had to say it about 10 more times before he got the door open. It was somewhat funny the first time but not at all funny the 10th! So $60.00 later the truck door was open and I had two dogs that were very happy to escape.

On to other things....When we got home I took a look at the driveway and pretty much wanted to cry. The acorns have started to fall. They are everywhere! You cannot even walk on the lawn without the fear of twisting an ankle. It is like walking on marbles. The deck is covered in them. Last night it sounded like it was hailing as they hit the roof all night long. So on top of all the leaves we have to deal with this year we get to deal with the acorns too. Thanks God they are only bad every other year. I guess this is the price we have to pay for the shade we get from the trees all summer.

Enough for today
Later
Sharon

Excellent Weekend

 Totally don't know how this picture turned out so good because the sun was in my eyes and I did not have my glasses on so I just aimed and shot the picture and here it is!

                               Amy, Liam and Josie and the top of our "short" hike

 

                             Everyone making our way down from the "short" hike

                                                  Hiking and happy that it is down hill!

                                       Enjoying some sweet corn for supper

                                    Jese and Oliver hiking up the steps

                                                   Josie

 Not really a good hiking trail for a 6 year old, 4 year old and two 2 year old's but we made it. Notice the cute panda bear back pack I have on. Josie was wearing it but after a hour of hiking up it got to heavy for her.

 Josie hitching a ride from Grandpa Rick

                               Eli was not to ready to smile after hiking forever......

                                                  Eli and Oliver loved to run

                                         Eli liked swimming much better the hiking

                                    Eli and Oliver playing on the beach

                                                         Another shot of us hiking

                                                Rick and I on a morning hike

 Rick, Cassie, Amy, Christa and I went for a hike. This is us trying to figure out just where the hell we are....

                                   Rick and I checking out the prairie

                                   Liam checking out the little waterfall we found

                                                               Josie the fashion star!

                                            Josie leading the way on the hiking trail

           Eli was in love with this little girl....I foresee lots of broken hearts in his future :)

                                                Josie and I at the top of our hike

                            Some of the steps we got to go up on our hike

                                                                    The White Water Creek

                Amy, Christa and Cassie after they "rock climbed" up to the cave

                                         Cassie and I on one of our hikes

                                           Oliver and I checking out the beach

                                                     Adam with the only trout that was caught 

                       Rick, Christa, Cassie, Amy and me on our morning walk

                                                  Rick on the hiking trail

Morgan thought since we were camping it was just fine to jump up on the table when ever no one was looking and clean it up...naughty dog!


What an excellent weekend! Everyone was able to make it for at least part of the weekend but Nick. Poor Nick got a new job and they scheduled him to work the weekend and he could not get anyone to switch with him. So he missed out on all the fun.

Rick did not have to work on Wednesday so we took off a day early and headed down to White Water State Park. After getting set up and checking out the park a little bit it started to rain so we held up in the camper and watched Downton  Abbey. I had it downloaded on my Kindle so we finally got to finish watching it.
Thursday the kids all started to come in, First it was Christa and Oliver, then Amy, Adam, Liam, Josie and Eli and lastly Cassie. Jese came in on Friday.

We had pretty nice weather all weekend. It was  hot during the day but cooled off at night enough so it was not to bad for sleeping for the kid who were all in tents. 

We did a ton of hiking. Liam and Josie wanted to go on a hike too so we all headed out for what was suppose to be a somewhat easy one mile hike. Well we may have taken a wrong turn and the hike may have ended up being 3 miles long. The kids did pretty good since it was not a kid friendly trail. Poor Adam and Jese had to carry Eli and Oliver most of the way.

Cassie, Amy, Christa, Rick and I also went on a long morning hike and again we may have gotten a little lost! The map they hand out is so bad and none of the trail are really marked. You get the a intersection in the trail and there is no signs telling which trail is which. So like all good hikers we just pick which way we think is right and keep on hiking. Most of the time we were wrong :)

On top of hiking we got to do some swimming. We even took the dogs swimming. Dexter has always loved the water. Morgan was not so sure of it but we did get her out swimming. Oliver was more interested in the sand then the water. He thought it was go be a good idea to put a big handful in his mouth and try and eat it. He discovered he did not like it and lots of crying ensued :)

On Saturday Adam and Jese took the kids on a tour of the fish hatchery while we went on a hike so in the afternoon we left all the kids but Liam with Amy and Christa so we could do a little trout fishing. Adam was the only one to get a fish. Those trout are hard to catch!

All and all it was a great weekend. It is the first time we have all been able to go camping together as a family and everyone agrees that we will be doing it again.

Later Sharon  

Double Standard

I admit it, I have a total double standard when it come to keeping our closets clean. Rick and I both have our own closet in our bedroom, it drives me totally nuts when I go to put laundry away and Rick's closet is not perfectly neat. Now my closet on the other hand is usually a huge mess. For some reason I can manage to put my laundry away in my closet no matter what shape it is in, but when it comes to Rick closet everything has to be right where it belongs or I cannot even start to put his laundry away. He claims it is because I have way to many clothes and shoes.....I claim that it is because my work uniforms take up way to much room in my closet for me to keep it neat.....

Yesterday while I work I somehow managed to download a virus into my computer, oops....Right now IT is here trying to get rid of it. Good thing we have two computers in the office so I can still use one to update this.

Today is my last day of work for 5 days!!!! We are going to go camping with all the kids and grandkids. It should be lots of fun. Hopefully we have good weather since everyone will be in tents but Rick and I.

Yea he got my computer fixed! Now I can get back to work......

Later Sharon

"Willpower is not an actual Power" -Rue lala

                                                    The Rugroden Family

 After much spinning and jumping around Dexter decided to make a bed on top of all the blankets and pillow

                             Eli on his way to my house in his big boy car seat.

Liam, Josie and Eli playing with play doh at my house....I don't know what I was thinking......

                                                      Liam in his T-Ball picture


I ordered a shirt from my new favorite shopping site Rue Lala   the above quote came in the bag with a shirt I ordered from them. It made me laugh because we all know how much willpower is needed to not spend all day shopping at sites like Rue Lala!

Amy and Christa did a last minute show last Friday so they asked me to pick up Josie, Eli and Oliver in Faribault on my way home from work and take them to Waseca until there daddy's could come get them. I only had them for a couple hours so it was not to bad. Having two 2 year old's kept me busy. They are so funny together now because they actually play together, well when they are not fighting over the toys and pushing and hitting each other :) 

Amy is back to work full time so I helped her out on Wednesday and watched the kids. Since I have not really babysat them for awhile I thought it would we should do something fun. I saw that they had some Play Doh on clearance at Walmart so I bought it up. I figured it would not be that big of a mess. You would have thought Eli would have made the biggest mess but it was Josie. I swear she can make a mess in about 2 seconds! Once I put Eli down for a nap Josie, Liam and I made cookies. I made a big batch so I could freeze some to take with us camping next weekend.

Last Saturday the Rugroden family got together to celebrate the Aug. birthdays. I had to work so we did not get there until 5:00. It was nice to see everyone again, it is not often everyone can make it.

We finally sold our pop up camper. I was so glad to get rid of it before winter. I was not looking forward to storing it again. We bought it for $2200 four years ago and sold it for $2300! I was very happy about that.

Rick had been super busy making strings. Last night he had three people come over and took two more string orders over the phone. He was excited that he got his first string order from someone seeing the R-Strings and Cables name and phone number one of the pens he had made up. It was worth having them made up.

I found a web site  that you can make your own books to have for yourself or to sell. I was very excited about this since I have been looking for someplace to have my first Blog  printed off into a book. My biggest fear is that for some reason the blog would get deleted and it would be lost. It was is basically my online diary. I am doing a book for each year of my Blog. I started it in 2008 and had to move to this Blog in November of 2012. So far I have 2008 and 2009 sent off to be printed. I am going to wait until I get them to make sure I like them before I do the next 3 years. It has been so fun to go back and look at everything I wrote about while I was editing it for the book. My life has had so many wonderful things happen over the last few years. I really have been so lucky.   Anyhow I just wanted to have a copy of it on paper for me. Now when I am dead and gone there will be a little bit of my life written down for my grandkids to read....

Later Sharon 

  

My morning at Carleton College.....

Today when I was checking all the buildings on campus I thought about all the cool things I get to see that most people never get to see or just never really notice when they are on campus. So here are just a few of the things I saw on my morning rounds....

 I have walked up and down these steps hundreds of times over the past 14 years. 

 One of best view from campus, sorry for dark picture but I was taking it though a window and the sun was just coming up

                                 Some art work in Boliou. Kind of creepy all those body parts....

                                                     Back room in Goodsell

                                                         Great old typewriter

                                      I don't think I would like using this adding machine

                                                                     Cowling pool

                                                       I love this staircase in one of the dorms

 

                                                          An old elevator shaft

               One of the many rabbits on campus that greets me on my morning duties 

                                                         Classroom staircase

                                          Part of the pipes for the pipe organ

 I am guessing many people never notice this fish on campus. It is on a drinking water fountain in one of the older building on campus 

                                       I love the old woodwork in the old buildings

                                                    My favorite candy dish on campus :) 

                                                                 Student mailboxes

                                                                  And lastly my office.


Later Sharon