Crochet Me Crazy

Feels like I stay so busy! Alison and I are going to classes at the YMCA 3 days a week. We go to Zumba on Monday and Wednesday and Tuesday to Body Step. I'm trying to lose weight! I need to lose at least 20 pounds! We bought a scale and I didn't even realize how big I am until we bought that scale! EEEEKKK!! I really don't like Zumba class. I love the body step class but it doesn't fit into the schedule of Alison's days off except on Tuesday. Well, one day a week is about all I could do of the body step class anyway. It's very, very hard and works your whole body. I pretty much walk around soar every day since we started do this.

I almost went to Body Step this morning by myself but I ended up talking myself out of it. I think I could do it again today...I'm sore but not as bad as I normally am. I'm tired and it's been so long since I've had a day that I didn't have to go anywhere I just want to stay home today. I *should* go today...that's the class that I really think does you some good. I haven't really lost any weight that I can tell but I can tell that my legs are firmed up a bit and I definately have more stamina getting through the class. People come to that class all the time and leave because it's HARD. I just modify my movements...I figure as long as I keep moving, it's doing me good.

Last week, we got word very last minute that Jeff's parent were coming for the weekend. They came on Friday and left Monday morning. We ran around to antique/junk shops while they were here and we went to the Marble Falls Rodeo Saturday night. Here's some pictures from their visit.



Alison got a "new" car! We spent two days the weekend before last driving to San Antonio looking at used cars. We looked at a couple and she ended up deciding what she wanted was a hatchback. We ended up going to Hertz Car Rental Sales where she bought a 2016 Hyundai Accent Hatchback with 37,000 miles on it for 9,200. This is below blue book for this car. Even the bank had it valued at 12 thousand and something when she got her loan. It's cute and she loves it. She's keeping her Jeep for now. She's not ready to part with it yet. If she decides to sell the Jeep, she'll be able to pay off the car but she's doing the loan for the purpose of building some credit. The local bank here has been so awesome to us. They ended up financing 100 percent of Alison's auto loan. They really liked Alison and are so proud of her situation at her age. She was supposed to put 20 percent down...which she has but when we went and bought the car, they ended up financing 100 percent just so we could drive it home that day and not have to drive back to San Antonio. And this was before we had even signed a paper with them yet. But we've been in and out of that bank alot talking with them about this loan. We asked the dealer...we haven't given you a check for the down payment yet...they said, "Oh, the bank said they were financing 100 percent!" So we went into the bank the next day and they said she could either put the 20 percent down and lower her payment a bit or just apply that down payment to the principle and keep her payments the same. She elected to put it towards principle. She's getting a great rate on insurance through our Allstate coverage because I've had that policy since I was her age so she's good to go.

I got Brennan back over here to stay and finish school. Ana and Michael left him when they came while Nana and Papaw were here. We're on lesson 30 of 36 lessons now. Nana worked with him a lot while she was here. Nana has been a Kindergarten and 1st grade teacher in Christian schools all of her life and she is an OUTSTANDING teacher. It was great to have her here working with Brennan. She was impressed with his reading and handwriting. I told Brennan if Nana says you're doing good...then you're doing way above average. She said that he will probably be above his class in public school next year. Brennan is probably glad to have me back instead of Nana because Nana has very high standards and she was relentless and never gets tired of doing school work! LOL!

I haven't really had any time to crochet but I did decide to pick back up the thread tablecloth I started over a year ago! I got a new dining table last week. Well, it's new to me anyway but it has a heat spot on it so I'm going to finish this table cloth and put it on my table and put a piece of glass over it.



My garden has stalled out on my tomatoes. The big ones anyway. I'm getting the tomatoes that are already on there but there are no new blooms so I don't know if we'll get more after all these are ripe. The cherry tomatoes are coming in fast though. The zuchinni is producing and my yellow squash was going strong. Then last week all of a sudden the yellow squash started looking bad. We're not sure what's wrong with it. We did mow in there because the grass was so tall. We had to pick up plants and try to get around them. It's like a jungle in there. So not sure if that hurt them or not. We'll see, I guess.

Oh, I got a new storm door! As handy as Jeff is, he has had a really hard time getting that thing in. Our door frame was a bit too short. He had to do stuff to make it work and then the door knobs hit after he got it on so he had to move the door knob on the house door. It's finally in though and I love it.



Oh, and I lost a chicken!! Nothing got her...I just went out there one morning to let them out and one of them was just dead. It was after the weekend that we were gone a lot shopping for cars. The only thing I can figure is that she died from heat exhaustion. Maybe too many days of me not being here to keep and eye on them during the heat of the day and turn the sprinkler on for them. Chickens don't sweat so they can die if it gets too hot. I see them panting out there so I go turn the sprinkler on for them. They will get in that water and keep cool. Now Jeff has put up a misting system in there. I was having to leave the sprinkler on so much that it was over watering that particular area.

Jeff came home with some cucumbers that one of his customers gave him from her garden. I'm not a fan of cucumbers but I do want to make pickles so that's what I did today.



These are just refrigerator pickles. No canning involved. I would do real canning if we had them growing in our garden. We'll see how they turn out. I've never done it before.

There's no shortage of projects that need to be done around here. I went outside and started peeling the string or whatever is it off this table Mrs. Hayward left on the porch. It's a metal table. I'm going to paint it. Here's my before picture.



And just for grins, here is an updated picture of my front yard from my porch. Everything is nice and green now that he has the sprinkler system going. Needs some work though because it's missing spots.