Getting ready to be busy

Yes, I am getting ready.   Ready for company, ready for Thanksgiving, shopping for Christmas. I'll talk more about that in a minute.

I am happy to say that the flowers are doing great.  But we - meaning Dad and a friend - took down the two sweet gum trees in the front yard.   The had these round bulbs with very sharp needles throughout the trees.   Step on one of those and ouch!  Also, slowly Dad and I are removing these iron stains that get on the house from watering the grass.  (Look above.)  They are especially difficult to remove when on the brick.   Our pump for our watering system runs through a vein of iron and therefore we have stains if the water hits the house or cars every day.   Very annoying but it is what it is.   We have an iron cleaner that we get from Lowes that works great.  Spray it on - wait - and rinse.  It just takes awhile.

The weather has been in the mid 70's to upper 80's.   I even went in the pool a few days ago. It was 74 degrees but immediately I began my exercises and warmed up.  I hate that the water is too cool most days right now and for the next 3 months it will be colder.  But when the warmer weather hits - I am ready! 
But the grass is not really growing very much right now.  I do love wearing shorts and T-shirts in November.  Oh, we found a great new restaurant in Pensacola.  It is called Cheddars. The food was great,they give you a lot of food, and the prices were wonderful.  I suggest anybody going think about getting the spareribs.
Notice the pool picture and that the landscaping needs to be finished.   Our neighbor across the street has a garden/lawn business and bought way too much sod to finish off his landscaping.  We bought the rest from him and a great price and finished off out landscaping with the sod.  It looks so much better.   So this picture is the before picture and in a day or two I will put up the after picture.

I mentioned up above that I have been getting ready. That means getting schedules and house finalized for company and starting my Christmas shopping. No, I am not some kind of nut. After all, it sure looks like Christmas in the stores.  But because of being on a budget, it is much easier for me to buy some gifts now so that I don't run out of money in December. It's just the smart way for me to do my Christmas shopping.    Every gift I have purchased so far has been on sale and at a great price.  Mom and I are even watching the sales in the paper for items in the grocery store that will go on sale for Thanksgiving day dinner. We will have a lot of people here and so we are watching the money.  So my early Christmas shopping and Thanksgiving shopping is to save money and yet have wonderful gifts for family and friends.   I actually enjoy trying to save money with coupons and deals since I have the time to do so now.   Today I went to Family Dollar and saved $8.00 on a purchase of 12 items.   A blog that I read is how one family saves their money for their yearly Disney trip.  When they use coupons, for example, they take the money saved and add it into their Disney trip account and that works for them.

Something else to look forward to is Mom and Dad's 60th anniversary.   Here is a picture of them at Strongbows in Valparaiso, In. (I heard it closed a few months ago.   So sad.)  We had a wonderful family dinner in celebration of their 50 years and now we are just short of 60.  Crazy - where does time go!?  Married on Christmas Eve, Dave and Ron will be here for the anniversary.   Sorry, today I have been rambling on and on........I certainly have not organized my thoughts on today's blog.  I can hear Dad trying to wake up Kacey to take her outside for her last nightly potty trip.   She is half asleep and has been known to fall into the pool so he watches where she is headed.   A wet dog before bedtime is not good, no it is not!   Trust me, I know!