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Archive for Travel Man

It was History in the Making.

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Renee Spindle

My love of history and my passion for following the game of baseball all converged on one center point last night. It was one of the games that is every baseball fans dream to witness. Last night Travel Man and I, along with our oldest son and his friend attended a baseball game at Angels stadium in Anaheim. It was a great night for baseball. The Angels are our home town team, and have been for over ten years now. It was a Wednesday night game, so the crowd was not huge. It was a crispy, chilly Southern California evening. Travel Man and I had a great view of the field, on the first base side. The boys were sitting field level by the left field, foul pole. We waved to the boys across the stadium crowd a few times, when there was a great play.

Now remember, my description of the game and my experience will be completely different from anyone elses who was there. (That’s why I like to blog) We got to see a bit of history last night. The Angels ace pitcher was on the mound, Jered Weaver. He is in his 6th season with the Angels, and his 2012 record before the game started last night was 3-0. Weaver was dealing with his pitches. By the end of the game he had 9 strikeouts (that’s k’s in baseball lingo). He is a smooth operator on the mound. I just love watching his command of the game.

This game was a hitting fest for the Angels. 15 hits, and 9 runs scored! A great night for the team. But an even better night for Jered Weaver. At the top of the 8th inning Weaver comes out to the mound, with a score of 9-0, the Angels are in the lead. I’m thinking, oh cool he’s going to finish this game out. He had around 98 pitches before this inning started.

He deals the batters once again, three up and three down. This is the moment I realize that Weaver has a no-hitter going. The Angels stay at 9 runs for the bottom of the eighth and at the top of the ninth out charges Jered Weaver. At this point I remember looking at the scoreboard and Weaver started the inning with 111 pitches. For every pitch of the ninth inning the crowd was on its feet. Cheering for each and every strike and out. At the end of the game the Angels had won, and Weaver pitched his first career no-hitter. It was the first no-hitter we all had the good fortune to witness at the stadium. The energy of the crowd was insane. It was the first solo no-hitter thrown by the Angels since June of 1975, that one was thrown by Nolan Ryan.

We will always remember being at this game, as we got to witness a part of the Angels history in the making. Kind of like when you saw Neil Armstrong step foot on the moon, or remembering where you where on the morning of 9/11. This was a completely awesome experience! Congratulations to Jered Weaver, and go Angels!

No comments Posted in Family, Sports, Travel Man

My Domestic Goddess Status – Just an Update

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Renee Spindle

It is almost the end of April, and it has been just about a year since I quit my job in the Corporate arena! My how time flies!! I was crowned by my beloved Travel Man as the Domestic Goddess of our household shortly after I decided to stay at home for a while. Little did I know how much I would love this title. If you follow my stories you know I left my job a year ago to pursue other interests. Here’s a link to my post from last April about my life change-Our Girls Vision Luncheon.

In the past year I have had the opportunity to spend time with my grandson, do lots and lots of baking, do a little bit of sewing ( I want to get more of this done soon!), start and finish some little home improvement projects, take a few trips with Travel Man, try some new recipes, add to our list of family favorite recipes, read more books, and generally have the luxury to just come and go as I please. This has all been so personally rewarding for me. Getting to discover what I love to do again, and who knew that I had a passion for writing. I always felt that I had some stories to tell that people would relate to, but I did not realize how much I would enjoy sharing them.

My Domestic Goddess title was given to me by my loving husband. It is because of his encouragement and support that I am able to do what I want to do. Thanks Travel Man for all that you do.

One of my biggest perils in my new-found title is getting side tracked when I am working on things around the house. Does this happen to anyone else? I have had a few discussions with my sister, who works from home, about this, and she tells me the same thing I am already feeling. If you don’t stay focused on the task at hand you get sidetracked to some other task, and then you have to re-focus to get back to the task at hand. Was that statement too confusing, it made my head spin just typing it. That’s why I am really focusing on my lists everyday. To stay away from the “side tracks”.

Also, I have had the good fortune to just pack my bags and take a few short trips with Travel Man. We went to Reno to visit my parents, and last year I was able to take a long road trip with him from Franklin, Kentucky to home. Lots and lots of fun being on the road with someone who travels for a living.

For awhile Travel Man’s days off were falling during the week, so our “weekends” would be happening on a Tuesday/Wednesday timeframe. No worries for us, we are just able to do what we want to when he is home. Sometimes at Disneyland, maybe out to dinner, a visit to the parentals, some time with the grandson, and hopefully a dinner together with the twenty-somethings.

This has been a great year of re-discovery for me. A big hug and thank you to all of my family for your loving support and guidance. I’m looking forward to more and more new discoveries in this next year, and hope to share the stories with each and every one of you.

No comments Posted in Around the House, Blogging, Family, Organizing, Recipes, Travel Man

Enough of this Coughing Already

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Renee Spindle

Raise your hand if your house is suffering from the dreaded “Spring” colds. We do live in sunny Southern California, but when our weather changes so quickly from hot to freezing (anything below 60 degrees in this neck of the woods), we inevitably get some colds. My house has been under the cold and coughing siege for over 10 days now. First the boys got sick, and now Travel Man is under the weather. The cold and sinus part does not seem to be so bad, but the cough that this cold brought into the house is not good. It’s one of those coughs that is annoying, incessant, non-stop, and just drones on until you have a headache. The Momster here (that’s me) had to pull out all of the stops to help the boys get through the coughing. We were using Throat Coat tea, cough drops, sugar-free cough drops for Zach (as he is diabetic), juice, water, and the humidifier. Zach was coughing so bad one night it kept him awake forever.

And now my Travel Man has “the cough”. He is traveling a lot right now, and he was driving to his destinations for a few weeks and then last week he got on a plane to fly to Northern California. He usually goes through a routine of wiping down the airplane seats and trays with Clorox wipes, but he did not do so on this flight. I told him that he let his guard down, because he hadn’t flown for a while and was off of his routine, and then he got “the cold”. Luckily he has a few days of down time to get over the coughing.

For myself, I am running around the house disinfecting everything; remotes, light switches, faucets, bathrooms sinks. I refuse to get sick! I’m doing my Emergen-C, staying hydrated, and getting my rest. This Momster will not be getting “the cough”. Keep your fingers crossed for us. I will keep you posted on our coughing progress. Now I’m off to get more cough drops!

No comments Posted in Around the House, Family, Travel Man

We made it to an Angels Game!!

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Renee Spindle

What a feat. 12 tickets purchased, 12 family members all assembled at Angels stadium. This is a family outing that has not happened in years and years.

My family, at the party house, are huge fans of Angels baseball. It has been a long-standing, favorite pastime of most of my family members to enjoy the games on TV, and we also try to make it to the stadium for a game or two in a season.

This past Saturday was one of those times. My son, Bryan, made an extremely early trip to Angels stadium a few weeks ago to buy tickets for all of the family who could make it to the game. This also happened to be our family’s birthday celebration day for myself, and my son-in-law. All in all there was a group of twelve of us that made our way to the stadium for the second game of the Angels open weekend games.

This was a 1:00pm game so we were prepared to be sitting in the sun for most of the game. We donned hats and sunglasses, slathered on sunscreen, and made sure we had our water bottles with us. In attendance at the game were myself, Travel Man, my parents, our niece Mary, son Bryan, daughter Hilary, Evan with his parents, and my brother Jim, with his girlfriend, Elaine. Whew!! What a group! Here’s a shot of almost everyone.

When we got to our seats we were totally in the shade for the first 3½ innings (yay!), good planning Bryan! So we weren’t completed melted by the middle of the game! It’s always fun going to the stadium to see the game. The singing of our national anthem, an F-18 flyover, and the first pitch being thrown out. Play ball!!! Singing “Take me out to the ball game”. What a great tradition.

The Angels didn’t win this game but we had some great family time. Evan is old enough now that he is asking questions about the game, and pays attention to the numbers on the scoreboard. He’s our Angels fan in training.

Everyone got to have their favorite stadium treat. Peanuts, frozen lemonades, hot dogs, and nachos. All those treats that cost wayyyyy too much but are part of the experience. Evan got a foam finger, and we all got fleece blankets with the Angels logo. Really cool. It’s so much fun to get to do a group outing like this. I hope we get to have a few more of these over the summer. When’s the last time you got your entire group together for an outing?

No comments Posted in Family, Sports, Travel Man, Travels

How do we get our home projects (ala DIY) completed?

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Renee Spindle

With Travel Man’s unpredictable schedule at work it is sometimes difficult to get our DIY (do it yourself) projects completed in a timely manner. Now you may be asking yourselves how do you ever get things done around the house? There must be a long “honey-do” list for Travel Man! We try really hard to keep the “honey do’s” to a minimum, but when there’s a project to complete that requires Travel Man’s experience and muscle here’s what we do.

Our latest endeavor is to get our entryway flooring replaced. Now, the first phase of this project is a story all on its own. You know how you get a plan together for demolition, begin to execute that plan, and then realize you need a plan B? Well that’s what happened on this project.

With my Domestic Goddess status in full swing, I told Travel Man I had plenty of time to try to take out the tile. The key word here was “try”. I had a big chisel, hammer, and a multi-function, variable speed tool to begin my project. I was using the multi-function tool to get the grout out-of-the-way, and then the chisel and hammer to get up and under the tile to get it removed. Seemed like a fairly simple task. I can do this, is what I told myself. Well, after the demo of the first two tiles, I was done. This was a project that was going to kick me in the bootie, and I had to ask Travel Man, “What’s plan B?” I much prefer sticking to the painting and decorating.

Plan B was to purchase a hammer drill, and get under the tile to bust it out of there. There was so much mastic under the tile, it was like the previous tile master in this house used all the mastic he could muster for this project. So, the demolition for this project now falls in Travel Man’s lap. Remember I was on jury duty for most of the month of March, so when Travel Man had a few days off he was working on the tile removal. This was a very, very labor intensive undertaking. It also created more dust in the house than I have seen in a long, long time. Dust here, dust there, dust everywhere!

Here’s a few pics of the project so far, and my dusty hubby from the process!! It was quite an undertaking, and took about 3 half days of removing the tile and then I volunteered to get all of the old grout/mastic dollops off of the floor. Now we have a nice smooth concrete pad that we are looking at putting some laminate flooring down on. That’s our next phase, flooring purchase and installation. So once we ( or should I say I) decide on the flooring, we will wait for a weekend when travel man is home to get it installed.

In the meantime I will be painting the entryway, and hopefully trying out some wall texturing. More on that project later this month.

If you have a DIY project to complete how do you find the time to work on it from start to finish? It’s not like the TV shows where rooms are complete in half an hour. It takes much, much longer…and in our case requires a lot of advanced planning. Happy DIY-ing everyone!