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Archive for Around the House

A 50th Birthday and All the Surprises!

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Renee Spindle

A few Saturday’s ago my loving, wonderful family celebrated my brother’s 50th birthday, Party House style. The theme for this party was, You’re Our #1 Son, Brother, Dad, Oinkle (uncle to those of you who have never been here), and Boyfriend.

This theme was originated by my Mom because of this picture. And we made these cool decorations to go along that theme.

Each #1 had pictures of Son,Brother,Dad,Oinkle,Boyfriend

Everyone signed this for the #1 Birthday Boy!

We also recreated an elementary school event that my brother always enjoyed called “Hot Dog Day”. He had told his girlfriend, Elaine, what a great childhood memory this was quite awhile ago. Elaine made sure to email my Mom and I so we would not forget the idea. We all agreed this would be a great theme to include for this festivity. Here’s the awesome banner our resident Cricut department created (thanks Erica & Mary!):

Hot Dog Day happened once a month or so. On Hot Dog Day we did not have to bring our own lunches to school. We would get fill out our own order blanks for hot dogs, chips, and a cup of ice cream. Of course you could order as many as you could pay for, and that was a treat unto itself. The hot dogs and buns were steamed, and tasted oh so good.

For our party we got a nifty hot dog steamer, some authentic Jays potato chips, and the vanilla ice cream cups with wooden spoons. And my niece recreated the little order blanks for all the party goers to fill out so they could get their dinner, served by an original “Hot Dog Day” lady, my Mom.

When my brother walked in and saw the hot dog day sign. He let out a whoop!, and filled out an order blank! 3 hot dogs and 3 ice creams. He was so surprised, and it was so much fun to see how excited he got.

We had a terrific party filled with lots of laughter, fun, pictures, and wonderful DVD montage that my sister and her husband put together. Then there was the sweet, loving toast from my Dad to my Mom. My sister and I got all teary eyed. (tissue please)

This was also a weekend filled with surprises. Let’s see it went something like this; my sister and her husband from Montana arrived here at the party house Friday night (total surprise, no clue they were going to be here). So when we were getting phone calls from family members on Friday night we had to keep this all hush, hush. Then Saturday came and the surprises kept on rolling. My sister and her husband surprised my parents, my nephew from San Luis Obispo surprised his Dad (aka the birthday boy), and then we came in the house, and my brother got surprised by my sister and her husband. Jim jumped so high in the air when he saw Laura it was like he just started as the center for a Millburn Mustangs basketball game!!

For me the best surprise of the day was when my brother arrived. He was the last one to arrive (he planned it that way), and when he got out of the car he had on a tuxedo with a bright blue vest and bow tie. He made a grand entrance. There was lots of clapping and whoops and hollers. He really made his party day special. I’m not sure how this can be topped.

We’ve had lots of family surprises over the years, but the surprises that happened at this party will go down in the history books for many years to come. The only thing missing from this page in the family history book was my Travel Man. (A tissue for me please.)

My sister wins the prize for the most family surprises. She always shows up at a family event when you least expect it, but you’re wishing she was there with you. Thanks for making the trek Laura and Steve. An epic party like this would not have been the same without you here.

4 comments Posted in Around the House, Family, Travel Man

The Sweetest Gift

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Renee Spindle

This little Miss gave her Papa (aka Travel Man) such a sweet gift today.

He is in Thailand, and tries to Skype with us whenever possible. We got a Skype call this afternoon, and Miss Madison just happened to be here with me and she was also awake.

I brought her over to the computer with me and she focused right in on her Papa. He was talking and cooing to her of course. And then it happened. She broke out into the biggest, sweetest, most precious smile. I know it made his week, and helped just a smidge with the fact that he is so far from home.

We’ll see you next week Papa! Happy Weekend everyone.

5 comments Posted in Around the House, Family, Travel Man

Planning a Party – Facebook Style

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Renee Spindle

For the past two weeks the ladies/girls (sorry twenty something’s you will always be my girls, even though I know you are fine young ladies) in our family have been planning my brother’s fiftieth birthday party. It has been such a fun time.

First I need to give you a little back story. The ladies/girls in our family have a private group on Facebook. We call it Renee’s Revelers. Girls only, no boys allowed. We use this page to encourage one another, vent about life, and just generally have lots of chatty, girly fun.

So this turned out to be a perfect location to do our private party planning so my brother could not find out what we were up to. Tee-Hee!

My role for this party was Project Manager. Once we had decided on a date, and the theme it was time for the brainstorming to begin. There were separate posts on our page for decoration ideas, food ideas, and entertainment. I will be the first to admit that the threads of comments got a little crazy after the first couple of days, and it got kind of crazy to follow. The other girls will attest to this too.

Then I plowed through all of the comments and made a to-do list, and a who’s doing what list. That was a Word document, and it got posted back to the Renee’s Reveler’s group so everyone would have an easy read of what was happening. Also that way I could have an accurate checklist to keep us all in line and on track. This was a really fun way for my sister in Montana to stay connected with what we were planning, and throw in her two cents.

The other fun project that evolved on the girls page for this party was photo posting. My sister was putting together a DVD montage for my brother to document his first 50 years here on planet earth. We used the Reveler’s group to post pictures for my sister to download and add to her collection. She would let us know a specific time period she needed a picture from, and the research group( i did not do much picture hunting) would peruse their photos and post it for her.

We had a great afternoon of making party decorations together once all of the to-do’s were in place. The group effort by the ladies/girls was tremendous.

We had such fun we’re looking for our next project to plan together! The party planning and decoration creation, and food planning was a great success. More on the party later.

How did your last big party planning go?

2 comments Posted in Around the House, Family

Have you heard of this new fangled thing called a Roku?

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Renee Spindle

Since we turned the page to the new year my house has been battling colds collectively, and while resting and staying hydrated Travel Man and I have gotten totally hooked on our new Roku device. This is a video streaming device that allows you to stream tv shows and movies through services such as Netflix, Hulu plus, Amazon Prime, and a host of other “channels”.

This is beginning to change our tv viewing lifestyle immensely. Of course this has been an ongoing process for the last few years. What with the advent of being able to record tv shows, and then watch them without having to stop for the commercials. We do our very best to avoid the commercials, but it’s funny because then when you’re watching a show with the commercials you get soooo impatient.

It’s been very eye-opening to come to the realization that we can be so very selective in our tv viewing, and movie watching. Travel Man has said for a few years now that the cable companies need to sit up and pay attention. It’s his opinion that the cable companies should allow their customers to pick the only the channels they want to pay for, and be billed accordingly. Maybe he’s on to something.

Plus we keep getting hooked on certain tv series, of older show that we had never seen before. We’re presently in the middle of watching Doc Martin. A series on PBS for 5 seasons from 2004 to 2011. Apparently there will be a sixth season in the near future. Of course while Travel Man’s on the road I won’t watch anymore of this series, I will wait until he’s back home for a few days. Since we have our Roku, and our streaming sources we can watch this whenever we want to, and commercial free I might add.

As far as I can see the only drawback to the Roku is I can’t watch my favorite baseball team on it. Hmmm…. Give up my baseball games. I cannot bring myself to do that. Baseball games are part of my summer life. So that means we will be keeping our cable service for a while longer. I can see a point down the road where we could completely get rid of the cable though.

Travel Man’s a total gadget guy so he’s always reading up on the latest and greatest electronics. I just follow his lead and learn about all the new fangled goodies from him and ask lots of questions.

What’s the newest electronics gadget in your household?

5 comments Posted in Around the House

Is Your Household Battling this Cold Thingy?

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Renee Spindle

Ok New Year’s fans it’s only the second week of the New Year, and I’m tired of my family being sick. We all have had a cold and cough for the past week or so, every single one of us. Sneezing, coughing, kleenex, cough syrup, cough drops, Emergen C. I did not have a big enough stock pile for all of us to have colds at the same time. Yikes!!

Break out the Lysol, Clorox wipes, and hand sanitizer. This thing has got to go away, enough already. This is southern California for heaven’s sake. Land of sunshine, and warm weather. We should be at the beach or Disneyland, not sitting at home sniffling, and coughing. This cold has been seriously eating into my New Year’s resolutions to get fit, and healthy. What’s a girl to do.

What we’ve been doing is watching a ton of movies, and we got hooked on this PBS series called Doc Martin. My parents recommended it, and we are hooked. And of course we’ve been drinking lots of water, eating lots and lots of soup (most of it home-made too!), getting plenty of rest, and just taking care of one another.

Travel Man is scheduled out of the country next week, I’m only slightly worried because he got the cold thingy first and is a few days ahead of the rest of us, and finally feeling pretty good. I know he’ll be fine, he just has to remember to drink lots of water.

Let me know how the cold factor is fairing in your neck of the woods. Is your family flying through winter unscathed by the cold and flu? Or is your house a cold battle zone? I’m off to get some kleenex, the soft variety of course. Hope you all have a great weekend.