Days with the Dorans

After a week of band camp, it was time to see the show. The band basically had two weeks to put it together. I taped it but added many of the pictures that were taken as well. You can see that HERE . It was cool because Joe's friends who had graduated came back to watch. This is his major friend group so it's a bit strange that they aren't going to be together this year. Here are some pictures I took after the show. After the show they went out and got ice cream! I'm a bit sad that this is it for Joey and that most of his friends will be at college. Thankfully his best friends are at MSU that isn't THAT far away...

I always hated the color of our laundry room (but it's our laundry room) and I HATED the floor which was gross (but it's our laundry room). When our dryer finally broke (for a second time after we tried to fix it), it was time to finally change that laundry room. I found a stacked washer/ dryer on sale at Costco that was cute and had great reviews.Turned out it was also on sale at Lowe's (who had better reviews for delivery and installation). So we pulled the trigger. This meant removing top cabinets. Oh my goodness, did all that removal of things (old tub, machines, cabinets) and uncovered a world of gross! I'm tough though and so got to work. I painted the room a light gray and found a flooring (still a laminate but a nicer one) that matched. At first we thought we had to pull up the old laminate but thankfully Shannon's boyfriend came over to see it and said we could just go right over the old floor. That was a blessing because it was WORK! Jeff went on a disc go...

So the shirts were done and the boys were off for Band Camp. I didn't help pack AT ALL (that's what Joe was in charge of when I was ironing shirts) and I slept in so Jeff dropped off the boys before disc golfing. Of course I asked him to snap some pics (that box contains all those shirts). And it seemed they were all checked in and ready to go so Jeff left, and I got a phone call. Joey forgot something. Are we surprised? Need we go back to when he was a sophomore and forgot just about EVERYTHING? Well, mom got out of bed and drove over to the school before they all left and saved the day (again)!! This will not happen when he's in college. They were on their own after that (except we got to spy a bit...). Ali, Shannon and I volunteered and had SUCH fun! Shannon made THIS hilarious video about our time! And of course there were photographers (including Nana!!!) who took pictures! Here are some of my favorites! Section Leaders: Devin, Joe, and Victor Where's Walddo? Or J...

  Last week he called me when I was on the boat with a friend asking me if I knew of any T-shirt companies because HE had to do all the shirts for the trumpets. Since I know our PTA prez, I texted her and got a name. Joey put in an order for his shirts but since he was SO late (Um... the 3 section leader boys knew about this I think before now), the lady was not able to put all the names on the back of the shirts which is a tradition. And so, angry mom came to the rescue! I had to buy transfer paper and pray that this would work. I bought a yellow test shirt too because I couldn't mess up the kids' shirts (well... Joey's I could grrr...). And he collected money from the kids but that did NOT cover the cost of the transfer paper. And... he got the shirts SUNDAY so Sunday night I was doing this. I had to get creative too because my Mac didn't want to reverse the kids' names- I could do it with images but not text so I had to get creative and make the text an image so ...

So we practice tornado safety of course at school and we know to go to the basement but it's something else when you hear the sirens and your phones go nuts telling you to take shelter! Jeff was on the other side of the state for his disc golf trip but we took shelter in the basement. We grabbed the dogs and Z grabbed Morty but I left Norbert and the birds (I just moved them from windows as best I could). Fender is not really afraid of rain or storms or fireworks (oddly) but he was NOT digging being in the basement and the storm. I took a video on my phone to show Jeff when I went up to move the birds from the window. I couldn't believe that an actual tornado hit us (and not far from our house- thankfully we were OK). My folks (and many others) lost power but we were good. Here are some pics of some of the damage! Jodie and I always run and our path was a mess and some areas we had to crawl under trees! I'm just so thankful everyone was OK. I think Sean is permanently afrai...