eastowners

Current Mood: Happy

Yesterday I blogged about our amazing community experience with Twitter.  Everyday I go outside and see those pumpkins sitting on my porch; I am reminded of the kindness and sense of community we’ve found.  Let me elaborate a little more on why I love the ability this program has given me to find people in my own town as well as accross the country.

I’ve blogged about Twitter before; it’s an awesome way for people to communicate with others around the world and in their own communities talking about daily things in 140 characters or less.  We’ve had many conversations with this group of people, and have been unsuccessful at being able to join them at what are known as GR Tweet-ups.  The group usually meets at a public venue for drinks, conversation, and face to face meetings where we don’t have to limit talk to small posts.  They figured that since we’ve had so much bad luck as of late, and since we hadn’t been able to make it to a tweet-up, they’d bring the tweet up to us…along with some pumpkins for Clare.  I was so overjoyed, and words couldn’t describe how it made me feel to have random people in our community reach out to us like that.  I know Brad has already blogged about this, but I felt I needed to elaborate on how much it has meant to me.  I had no words that night, and am still struggling to find them 3 days later.

All my life I’ve always had friends, and family around me.  Whenever we needed something there was always someone there.  As I grew away from my family by going to college on the other side of the state I didn’t have that.  I’ve always had lots of friends to count on for emotional support, so I didn’t think much of it when we moved up to Grand Rapids, but then the friends we had moved onto their own lives and careers around the country leaving us kind of on our own.  We’ve struggled through life making friends along the way maintaining some of those relationships, but it’s never been the same as having them in the same town and community.  For the most part I figured that if I had Brad it was all I needed, and while he is definitely a good friend & partner in life I’m finding we needed to find a community to live in.

I thought that we had that when we bought our house, but people come and go, the neighborhood changes, and we still didn’t find the community we were looking for.  While neighbors still stopped and talked, it just wasn’t what I had thought it might be.  Everyone comes home, parks in their driveway, goes inside, and stays inside until the next morning when they leave for work.  What happened to the days of going over to “Sam’s house” for a play date and dinner without a second thought?  Today’s time and age has everyone freaked out about “Stranger Danger”, and people are afraid to become a part of a community.  I know that we still need to be aware of our surroundings and not take things for granted, but we also need to have faith in people we know in our community.

Today I think people, at least most people in this town, are finding this in their churches rather than their neighborhoods.  As most of you know Brad and I are not exactly the church-type, so we haven’t found our community yet in this town, at least we hadn’t until Twitter.  This tiny program that allows me to talk to people throughout my day has instilled my sense of community once again.   I now have a group of local people that I can talk to throughout the day about our fine community, and it has helped me realize that there is a sense of community here after all…it just took me 6 years to find it!

I want to thank the Pumpkin Ninja’s for all that they did, even though it may seem like a small gesture to most, it really brightened my mood, and for those that were not involved in the ninja experience I am still greatful to have you in my little Twitter Community.  I can’t wait to figure out a way to show my appreciation for all of you, other than finally being able to put it into words.

Was it a full moon this weekend?  Holy smokes!  Friday started out wonderfully, and we enjoyed our pay day by going out to dinner.  We’ve been cutting back on our dining out at the Eastowner house, and most nights it’s no biggie….other nights it’s painful not to be tempted to just go out and eat somewhere.  The habit of dining out began when I was pregnant with Clare, and cooking and smelling most anything made me extremely ill.  I didn’t have Morning sickness with her, I had 8 month sickness…I kid you not!  Because it was the 2 of us it was super convient most nights, and when we added Clare, it was just toting the baby carrier around.  Over the years we’ve slowly began cutting back on our eating out habits; sometimes we ebb and flow with it, buy now it’s becoming a matter of conserving money with the decrease in Brad’s raises and the higher cost of living.

Anyway, after I picked Clare up from school we came home to spruce up a bit, and then after Brad came home we headed to Graydon’s Crossing Derby Station.  Brad wants to write up a proper review, so I will leave that to him.  I’ll talk about all the fun stuff though!  It’s in East Grand Rapids, wich is right up the street from us, and if we were rambunctious and not having martini’s we could have rode our bikes there.  They have a great patio section for warmer weather, and inside is set up in an English pub style with hints of Indian infulences.  The bar is well stocked, as it comes with a binder full of alcoholic goodies ranging from wine to beer to top shelf liquors.  Their menu is divine, and it was hard to choose just 1 thing to eat!  There are even games sitting on the book shelf in the middle of the dining room, so if you plan on hanging out for a bit head over and pick up a deck of Uno cards, or the Cribbage game. 

The children’s menu is great, and the kids have about 10 items to choose from ranging in items like the usual Mac & Cheese fare to Grilled Steak.  They also get to choose their own side along with their meal, ranging in the healthy fruit cup to onion rings.  The only thing missing was chocolate milk, but lemonade was a nice substitute.  The Cosmopolitan’s are wonderful, and poured in the correct and tasty way.  Brad had the beer, he’ll have to tell you about that.  We started off with an appetizer off of their seasonal menu called Hairy Eyeball Cheese Dip.  The dip was wonderful, and I wish they had added some baby carrots to the plate that had deep fried green beans and 2 different style chips to dip in it.  Clare even liked it!  For dinner Clare had the grilled cheese & fruit cup; it wasn’t anything too spectacular other than the bread was not soggy white bread like you get a some places.  I had their Harvest Risotto, and it was absolutely wonderful.  Brad had the South Indian Shrimp Taco’s, and from the bite I had it was yummy!  The food is a cross between English pub food and Indian-style food.  Dessert was not in the cards for Brad & I, but because Clare had finished all her meal and had been extremely good we let her have a dish of vanilla ice cream. 

Afterwards we came home, shipped Clare off to bed, and had a nice, quiet, adult evening with martini’s and a movie.  Saturday was a different story though, we awoke to a pretty good start to the day.  We all got dressed, and went to Panera for some breakfast sandwiches and then did some errand running.  While driving around we noticed a small car show in front of Toys R Us on 28th street, so we stopped and looked around.  Clare enjoyed it, and then it was downhill from there - whis is the terribly wrong part.  We had asked Clare to be quiet in the car because Brad & I were talking and she needed to wait her turn.  She couldn’t seem to hold it in as she got louder and louder, next step was to have her sent to her room when we got home and not to come out until told.  Melt down continues deeper and deeper into her little 6 year old spiral, until I tell her if she comes out of her room she can’t attend a friend’s birthday party that was to happen later that afternoon.  We come home, she goes to her room, I work on things and am about to head up to talk to her when suddenly she appears on the steps.  “What are you doing I ask?”, “Coming to talk to dad.”  Nobody had called her, so I had to follow through on the sucky punishment I had put forth already.  She was distraught and beside herself, causing a bigger meltdown.  I offer her lunch thinking she might be hungry, so I made her mac & cheese telling her that if she finished her lunch she could have an apple…but the m & c had to be all gone.  I head upstairs for 2.5 seconds to grab something and she’s now asking Brad for the apple, he asks if her mac & cheese is gone, she says yes and proceeds back to the kitchen to empty her bowl to show dad an empty bowl.  Now we have to have a lieing discussion!  So, Saturday sucked, and we ended up punishing ourselves in the end by not attending Eastown’s yearly Street Festival because Clare was not behaving well.

Sunday was slightly better, and because Clare had good behavior all day we ended our weekend with a trip to the bowling alley.  Despite my argument with the a$$ hat that told me I was a coupon abuser at the alley, we had a good time and it was a good way to end our weekend.

Current Mood: Happy

I honestly have no clue where the month of August went, well maybe I do.  Our weekends were booked pretty much back in May or something silly like that.  I think we were home for 1 weekend last month, and were busy filling up the end of summer the rest.  We started out the month with my parents big bash.  I wrote about that here, and you can see from the pic on the left that we shot off some cool fireworks.  Nothing like big fireworks to celebrate! 

Then I went off to Chicago for a bachelorette party the 3rd weekend, and it was probably the best bachelorette party I’ve been to - no offense to the other parties I’ve been to, but we had way too much fun.  It was the Geek Girl’s weekend of mischiefness , well some of them don’t like to be called Geek girls - but we all met thorugh the Geek Guys, and most of us gals are with one of the guys in some fashion or another so it’s how I separate that group of friends from others.  Deal with it girls!  We had our lovely driver Amy pick up all of us local folks in her styling mini-van, and we hit the road to the Chicago burbs were our gracious host and friend Katie lives with her hubby.  The ride was full of laughter, and jokes, as well as catching up since we don’t see each other that often these days.  We arrived to some late night pizza for dinner accompanied by drinks and silly games.  On Saturday we did some shopping, and then got dressed for our big night on the town.  We took the train into downtown Chicago, all dolled up in our pink & black boa’s.  Everywhere we went it looked like we massacred a pink chicken!  I sincerly appoligize to anyone we left in our path of feathers, it was our way of finding our way home if necessary.  We dined out at Carnival, and the music on the page, is exactly how it is in the restaurant!  The food was delish, and the atmosphere was awesome.  Our waiter was absolutely awesome fantastic wonderful, and did a great job in dealing with a table of 8 giggly women. 

From there we took a train to a tattoo parlor.  That’s right readers….Char is now tattooed!  Originally we were all going to get the same style of heart just in different colors, but when we got to the tattoo shop some changed their minds and we ended up getting our own designs.  All but 1 of us were tattooed that night, no she didn’t chicken out…she has a medical issue, and wanted to check with her doctor before doing something so brasin as getting it done on a whim like the rest of us.  If I had a picture of my tattoo I’d post it, but alas I can’t take a picture of my back all by myself, so you’ll have to settle for a description.  On my left back shoulder I now have a cute little pink heart with 2 eighth notes in it (music notes for those that are non-musicians).  No, I did not cry - although 2 people did, and we still love them because they joined in the fun reguardless of their fears.  I did have a sensation of almost passing out, but Sara our resident nurse in the group kept talking to me and kept me breathing.  I’ve been wanting to get a tattoo for about 3 years or so now, so it’s not like it’s anything I didn’t want to do.  Even though I love my little heart, it will not be the only one I get in my life time, as I have one planned for another time…when I loose all the weight I want to I’ll get it done.  After our tattoo fun we got on another train and headed to Mother’s to shake our booties all night long.  It was tons of fun, and we met some rather interesting people while dancing and handing out bead necklaces.  Our trek home wouldn’t be complete without riding back to our hostesses in style in a limo. 

The weekend after that we celebrated Clare’s 6th birthday in Hannah Montana style.  Well, as stylish as our small budget could handle.  We had both her grandparents, Brad’s brother, wife, and their soon to be 1 yr old, and 5 of Clare’s gal pals over.  It was way more girliness than I had bargained for.  All they cared about was opening presents and eating cake, and I had a different adgenda!  I’ve never seen presents opened with such furry as they all “helped” Clare see what was in the packages.  I wanted to know who it was from, and what it was so I could get the appropriate thank you’s to the right person, but apparently that didn’t matter to a bunch of screaming 5 and 6 year olds.  Thankfully 2 of the girls went home, and the other 3 spent the night.  First of all we had to clean-up the upstairs…I had no idea we had so many toys up there!  Then the girls settled in for a movie & popcorn in our bedroom upstairs so I could sit in peace and have adult conversation with Brad and my dear friend Holly that helped me keep my sanity that night.  Afterwards we played some Wii, and then it was time to get ready for bed…..finally!  They all brushed their teeth around the sink spitting all at once on the count of 3, and they of course had to have a pillow fight before settling down to bed.  We told some not so scary stories, and then a princess story to get them to sleep.  I think I only had to go back in the bedroom 5 times to get them settled down to fall asleep, oh…and I definitely crashed way before they did!  The next morning they were all up at 7 am and ready to start the day, so Brad and I set to work making waffles and readying them for their day.  After breakfast highlights (as well as the previous night’s highlights) included lots of girly screaming, more girly screaming, and my favorite quote “Naked Party” from when I sent them upstairs to get dressed on Sunday.  I now know why my dad used to come booming into my room as a child telling all of us girls to go to sleep during sleepovers…completly.

To end our summer of fun during Labor Day weekend we went down to Elkhart, IN to celebrate Danielle’s first birthday (Brad’s brother & wife’s daughter).  She was oh so cute on her big day, and did okay with her cute little individual cake (she mainly wanted to play patty cake with it)…although I think we made her cry a couple of times because there were a lot of people there.  It was a nice afternoon, and we enjoyed the last bits of summer sun hanging out with family as Clare played in the sand box with some kids.  We came home to finish up our lazy summer fun with some activities around town on Sunday & Monday.  Nothing too big, but it was just what Clare wanted - some Wii time with her Lego Indiana Jones game.  August has come and gone, and it’s hard to believe we are almost half way through September!