Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Yep, they're nuts, but it's for a good cause

Home track meet tonight.  The kids both did great, Angel #4 PR'd (personal record) in both the shot and the discus and WE PR's in the long jump and took a first in the 400 meter dash.  It was about 45 degrees out, okay for running, but it sucks for spectating.  I volunteered for working concessions, so at least I got to hang out in a building between the kids events, but that wind was the pits.  After freezing at the meet, the kids came home and found a new way to freeze.  The latest thing around here is a fundraising project for a little local boy who's suffering from cancer.  Someone nominates you to jump into a random body of water, when you jump in, you film yourself, post it on facebook along with a link to the fundraiser page, then you nominate someone else to do the same. You've got 24 hours after nomination to jump in.  So, after the track meet, WE, his girlfriend and Angel #4, who'd all just been nomiated recently, went to the lake next door and jumped in.  WE was happy to have a few firsts in their jump, theirs was the first recorded night jump that they've seen and he also jazzed it up by doing a backflip into the water...twice, because he was nominated twice in the same day.  If you feel the desire to donate, here's Eli's link.

Today is the last day of spring break.  We had half a day of school on Thursday, now, tomorrow, we go back.  It's been a nice little break, especially with the beautiful warm day we had yesterday.  We only had a single day of 60 degree + weather, but more is coming...I hope.  I went to our vendor's food show for work today.  How awesome is it just wandering up and down the aisles at the expo place while people keep pushing food at you?  I had prime rib, lobster bisque, steak, ham, juices, veggies and even a delicious lump of deep fried cookie dough, I also brought home a bunch of free samples, so I'm good in the snack department for a couple days, too.  Since it was a show for all our vendors customers, restaurants and cafes and not just schools, there was actually really good tasting food there too, not just Michelle Obama approved tasteless school food.  So even though I got to eat all kinds of good stuff, a lot of it will never make it to our lunch menu, poor kids, it's still chicken nuggets and carrot sticks for them.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Great Weekend

Wow, what a great weekend!  The weather's really been warming up and today it got into the mid-60's.  I found all kinds of things to do outside, just so I could enjoy the weather.  Sadly, though it was warm, it was very overcast, so it wasn't quite as springy feeling as it could have been.  But, I got my raspberry bushes trimmed back, raked some gravel out of the ditch, cleared out the old vegetation in the flower bed along the granary since the irises are starting to poke through and cleared a little bit of the built up mess in the chicken coop and dumped it into the garden-come June, my plants will be loving that.  Another sign of spring is that apparently the weasels are out and about, I found a dead chicken in the coop last night when I went to lock things up, so now I'm down to 15 laying hens.  I'm debating getting a few chicks ordered to get the flock numbers up.  I don't need more than 15 chickens, but I don't want much less than that either, and sometimes it doesn't take much to lose a bunch of chickens to a predator or some kind of chicken disease.

Yesterday we had something special for church all day, then went to Rent-a-Grandmas for supper.  Homemade fish boil, YUM!  That could potentially be one of the last meals our family will be eating at her house.  She's putting the place up for sale and planning on moving to Virginia to be near 2 of her kids and the grandbabies (that's babies she just found out grandbaby #2 is coming in September).  Her daughters were both there and have been helping her get the house ready to put up for sale.  I hadn't seen either one of her girls in a couple years, and it was great to see them and have a gabfest.  We used to spend so much time together when they lived here, her oldest and I were roomies before I got married and she also lived in Hawaii the same time we did, so we would island hop for some time together.  Her youngest daughter loves kids and spend a lot of time babysitting the angels when they were little - as a matter of fact, we were talking about when WE was a baby last night. He was an incredibly crabby baby and Shelley would take him off our hands one night a week so the rest of us could have at least one quiet, non screaming baby meal a week.  WE denied that he ever could have been that bad, but there were too many of us there who remembered those days, so we weren't falling for it.

Grandma also asked the kids if there was something special from her house that they wanted.  I think we were all pleased with their choices, though they did give us some laughs.  Rather than pick something big and valuable, Angel #4's immediate pick was a snow globe/music box that plays Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head.  Whenever she would spend the night at grandma's house, she would wind  up that music box and listen to it as she fell asleep at night.  WE also knew what song it played, so I'm guessing that it was something that all the kids did when they spent the night there.  WE announced that he wanted the sippy cup. It was an old sippy cup she always kept around for when little kids were there. I don't have a clue why that meant so much to the kids, but Angel #4 totally agreed with his choice of keepsake.  They were both disappointed to find out that the cup has sprung a leak and grandma had thrown it away.  His second choice was a couple of plastic cereal bowls that had a straw built in so you could drink the milk from your bowl of cereal right from the straw.  He also asked if he could have one of her picture books that he particularly loved reading, something about a prince writing a letter which tipped off a huge chain of crazy events.  I guess that one was always a favorite of his.  In one of those bizarre flip-flops, I asked if I could have a picture of hers - it was something my mother in law had given me and I gave it to grandma when we moved to Hawaii.  Now that she's moving out of state, I asked if I could have it back.  I don't know where I'm going to go with it, but it's a nice memory I have of my mother in law.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

I forgot to post a prom pic of Angel #4, looking like Mae West in her orange dress.  Along with her boyfriend is also her bestie, Jess, who tends to spend a lot of time in our bathroom with #4 doing whatever teenage girls do in the bathroom for hours on end.  Poor Jess has been going with the same boy for 1 1/2 years now, but since he's a year younger than she is and therefore, still in middle school, he's not allowed to go to the high school dances, so she's been going stag this year.  I'm sure she'll be happy next year when Devin can join in on all the high school stuff.

I had a great day at work today.  After talking to rent-a-grandma about what they're serving for lunch at the school where she volunteers at, I thought we'd give fresh cucumbers a try at our school.  I made happy little signs to put up along the lunch line announcing the addition of fresh cukes to the salad bar.  While I was putting up the sign, a first grader asked me what it said and I read it to the kids in line.  She said she didn't like cucumbers and told her she should give them another try because they were like deliciousness exploding in your mouth.  One little boy asked Really?  and I said YES!  And a whole bunch of kids started cheering.  I made first grade cheer for cucumbers, people.  My job as a lunch lady is complete.  Later on, I saw a boy who'd already gone through the line come back to the sign dragging another boy along with him.  Boy #1 pointed to the sign and said, "See, I told you they were there, but I got the last ones, HAH!"  Who would have thought cucumbers would create such a stir.

Another of my jobs when I'm punching kids (that's what I call it when I punch their lunch numbers into the computer) is that I keep a running list of kids who run out of money in their account and hand it over to the secretary so she can call parents and shake them down for some lunch money.  Usually I just write down the kids name then put a dollar sign behind it.  But today, the very first kid in line was in the hole for lunch money and he knew it before I even put in his number - he'd forgot to tell his mom to send money.  So, on my list instead of the usual, I wrote down "Josh Everts is evil", then I tacked "and he also needs lunch money" onto the end.  He saw what I wrote and showed his friends my list.  Next thing I knew, all the kids in line wanted me to write on my list that they were evil, too.  Some days I really don't understand 4th graders.

Monday, April 14, 2014

April showers?

Wow Tanya, that is such a cool story.  Sounds like you raised that kid right!  I hope she has a great time at prom.  I gave Angel #4 a $50 limit on her prom dress, she ended up finding a sale & a coupon and got a $100 dress for $50.38...I told her I'd take the additional 38 cents out of her college fund.  :p  My kids both had a great time and the after prom party here was relatively quiet.  At least, I assume it was, I fell right to sleep.  My friend Connie wasn't quite so fortunate.  She had a senior after prom party at her house which apparently included a kid playing the piano and having a sing-along as well as another kid playing the guitar and improvising a song including all the goofy stories and embarrassing things that happened to this years senior class.  WE said it was the most fun he'd ever had at an after dance party.  Connie on the other hand, was a bit cranky on Sunday due to lack of sleep.

Friday was the 2nd comedy/dinner show hubs organized.  It went over great. The first half featured 3 stand-up comedians and the 2nd half was improv.  What a hoot.  The meal was great and my darling husband got a room of 40 strangers to sing happy birthday to me.  My birthday was Saturday instead of  Friday, but I guess that was close enough to totally embarrass your wife.

Today was another of those parental milestones.  I took Angel #4 to the DMV and she's now got her temps.  When she begged to go out driving afterwards, I convinced her to ask her dad to take her out.  I'll go shopping, buy clothes, run errands, but when it comes to teaching kids to drive, that's firmly on hubs list of things to do.  I tend to dig my fingernails into the dash and scream a lot, he keeps his cool pretty good.  He said #4 did a great job.  They went cruising around the neighborhood checking out all the flooding.  We had a LOT of rain this weekend and boy, do we have the standing water.  The street that connects the 2 schools in town is completely under water in some spots, the water jumped the curb on both sides and was just about going over the sidewalk.  Tomorrows track meet is cancelled, apparently there isn't enough money in the school budget to provide the whole track team with scuba gear. Oh, and it also snowed, so in addition to most places being flooded, all the dry land is covered in snow.  Summer can't come to soon.  I even ordered seeds today.  I'm hoping that if I do spring like things, eventually spring will happen.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Prom Night

We're getting ready for prom here today.  By getting ready for prom, I mean we went to the grocery store and stocked up on junk food, because guess who's got the after prom party at her house?  I'm not sure how many kids are going to be here, but I'll certainly be able to feed them.  Angel #4 and her friend came along to the grocery store and picked up a few additional "necessities", like old maid cards, balloons and glow in the dark silly putty.  I'm not sure what the old maid cards or balloons are for, but they're planning on sticking the silly putty on their teeth so their mouths glow in the dark when they smile at the dance.  Oh, the glamour of prom!!  I bought a few "necessities" of my own, like a bottle of wine.  If I'm going to have a bunch of freshman girls giggling and glowing in the dark in my living room all night, I'm going to need something to get me through it.

I'm just glad we're all healthy.  Both WE and Angel #4 stayed home from school 2 days this week with a really nasty stomach bug, then WE's girlfriend got it Thursday. We were at a Marine family function and the poor girl spent the whole time throwing up in the bathroom at the Reserves building.  Not fun.  I'm just afraid that I'm going to get it.

Last night was the first fish boil of spring.  I met my friend Sarah at the boil at 5:30 and we got to talking.  I ended up getting home at 9, we hadn't moved from our chairs that entire time and I came home with a sore throat from talking so much.  Good times and great food.