Wow! It has been a whirlwind of activity in the Hertel household for the past three weeks. I will try to give you the good stuff. I have started babysitting a 6 month old baby girl named Gabrielle, just a couple hours every day, and so far she is very sweet. All the kids except for Lindy stayed at with their Grandma Heidi and Grandpa Dale over Memorial Day Weekend. It was a nice bonding weekend for Lindy and her momma. The next week my mom came to visit and we worked like dogs to put on a smashing garage sale only to have it rained out half of Friday. The girls put on a refreshment stand and sold hot dogs, pop, chips and cookies on Saturday. Both business ventures were fairly successful, although I plan on opening up the garage again later this week to sell more of our "good junk". It took about 4 days for me to recover from the garage sale. It is so much work. I don't think we went to bed before 1 am any night. We being my mother and myself. Matt made the mistake of making this comment, "You act like all you've been doing is working on this garage sale!?!?! I mean, how much is there to do?" I told him that just showed how little he knew about putting on a successful sale!

We were in Mishawaka last weekend for Ali Cerney's graduation party. It was a great party, really good food, and our children had a wonderful time. Many thanks to Shari Cerney for always making us feel so welcome. I hope that one day I can at least appear as organized as she is! Also, Grandma Heidi worked her butt off that day and she also harbored and fed our whole family for the weekend - many thanks for all you do. We got to see and catch up with so many people. I was particularly excited to pat Rian's pregnant belly - she is so beautiful!

We took all the children to my parents' home Sunday evening and dropped them off. That was truly difficult, and although I made a brave face for the kids, I buried my face in my hands and wept the second we crossed the railroad tracks in Claypool. It's hard to leave every baby. I almost always keep one of the kids with me but, my family is taking care of them this week because I got my top wisdom teeth extracted today and wanted to be able to get appropriate rest.

As I type, I have been out of the dentist office for about an hour, and the tingle of numbness is being replaced by a dull pain. That's my hint to wrap this post up!