the end is near

I can tell it's getting to be the end of the school year as my social calendar is starting to fill. Yesterday was the Spring Festival at Angel #4's elementary school. The entertainment ran the gamut of the kindergarteners doing the hula to the 5th graders dressing like zombies and dancing to Thriller. Since my Angel was one of the zombies, it dawned on me that it was going to be the last elementary school concert I was ever going to attend for my kids. 5th grade graduation is on the 26th, then, after 13 years, my career as an elementary school mom is over.

Tuesday night was the high school Jazz and Concert band Spring Concert for Angel #2. This is the final concert for the Seniors and the band teacher always has a little ceremony, sharing a memory of each of the outgoing Seniors before presenting them with a candy lei. Next year, my angel will be on the receiving end of the lei. After going to the band concerts for the last couple years, I always wonder how the band is going to recover from the loss of 1/4 of their number every spring, but they always manage to land on their feet. The high school band is relatively small, only about 40 kids, and they're all a pretty close-knit group. The band teacher even had a hard time remembering some of the Senior's names during the ceremony because most of the band kids go by nicknames. Angel #2 has been Cheez for the last 3 years, I'm not sure if he knows what her real name is.

Saturday, our family is doing the United Way Charity Walk to help Special Olympics. The walk starts at 7am, which means we're going to have be to out the door and on our way at around 6am to get there in time for the sign-in. Waking up before six on a Saturday morning just seems so wrong, but it's for a good cause, so I guess I can do it this once. That evening, Rent-a-Grandma is flying in for a 10 day visit. We haven't seen her since our trip to WI last summer and it'll be great to spend some time with her. She's coming down for Angel #1's graduation on the 22nd.

Looks like I've got a busy couple weeks ahead of me.

rain, rain, go away already!

Yesterday, I replanted most of the garden. Between stupid chickens and annoying bugs, I think all the previously planted seeds got eaten. We haven't had diddley squat for sun lately either, which I'm sure doesn't help. I'm getting a little tired of hazy, rainy days.

Some kind of stomach virus made its way through our house this week. Hubby and Angels #1 & 4 all were flat on their backs for over a day. Angel #1 NEVER gets sick, ever, and he even spent the day lying on the couch moaning. Fortunately, the rest of us haven't gotten it yet and I hope we don't, because it really didn't look like the other three were enjoying it all that much.

For his birthday, WE wanted to go see Ironman 2, so yesterday, opening day of the movie, hubby took him and a friend to go see it. Apparently, he enjoyed it, then spent the rest of the day running around the house with a garbage bag tied around his neck like a cape and an empty ice cream bucket on his head as a helmet and shooting, what I guess were laser beams from his hand. He was always flashing a plastic Samurai sword around. Angel #1 took a look at him, then looked at me and said: makes you glad he's on our side, huh?

For some bizarre reason, WE's cat, AK-47 is losing her fur. She doesn't seem sick or hurting or anything and it doesn't seem to bother her, she's just wandering around with naked back legs. She's starting to look like Dr. Evil's cat on Austin Powers, which is rather appropriate since WE is a 14 year old version of that particular villain. Next, he'll be designing laser beams to attach to sharks. Why have trillions, when you can have billions?!?

the drought is definitely over

It just keeps on raining here. After months of dry dust, it certainly is welcome, but a little sunshine would be nice too. We've got solar heated water, and when the sun doesn't shine, the water doesn't get hot. We've got a water heater that we can manually turn on, but really hate to use it unless it's absolutely necessary. On the plus side, all our radishes came up in the garden - minus side, I don't actually like radishes.

Sunday was WE's birthday. My little worm eating monster was 14 years old. He's past the age of eating worms, but he's still the same kind of kid. Today, he came home from school with both hands swelled up. He was playing a game where they slap the back of each other's hands until someone gives in. WE NEVER gives in - he hangs on beyond the point of stupidity, so his hands were all puffed up and beaten, but he didn't give in. I'm so proud *insert eye roll here*

Last but not least, this is a bit late, but happy Star Wars Day. May the 4th be with you! :)

got wet again, but can't blame the dunk tank this time

It was a yucky rainy day today for Cop on Top, which is unusual since it very seldom rains where the event takes place. But at least it wasn't horribly hot like it was last year. Made the dunk tank not quite as attractive though. Both the girl angels spent time in the tank today and got dunked a few times. I dropped them off at around 10 am on my way to work. Angel #2 left around 2, but #4 was having so much fun that it's almost 7:30 pm and she's STILL down there. We had lots of victims for the tank today - our biggest money draw was when one of the cops who'd just gotten off-duty sat in the tank in full uniform, minus shoes and weapons. Because he was in complete uniform we charged $20 for 3 throws instead of the usual $5. He managed to stay dry for quite a while, which was to our benefit because it just made people more determined to dunk him. He made over $100 for us in less than half an hour. Tonight, editors and reporters from the local paper took turns in the tank as well. The dunk tank is turning into a major money maker as well as being a lot of fun. Let's hope for some sun for tomorrow - a person can only take so many cloudy days. Here's the article the paper had about us in today's paper: http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/articles/2010/04/30/local/local01.txt

tired, but in a fun way

I spent the afternoon at Safeway doing Cop on Top. It was a great time, people are so giving and it's always fun spending time with the athletes. A new addition to CoT this year is the dunk tank. Dave, our area director owns one, how can you not absolutely love a man who owns his own dunk tank? For $5, you got three chances to dunk whoever was in the tank, usually it was a cop who would come down from the scaffold and sit in the tank. But, due to a little taunting, harassment and someone offering $10, I ended up in the tank. Yep, IN the tank. That darn Chris got a lucky shot, blast him. But he redeemed himself afterwards by telling me that I won the wet tee-shirt contest. har-dee-har-har I had to call hubby to bring me down some dry clothes, but before I got a chance to change, Angel #4 said she wanted a chance to dunk me. Well, she failed, but Damion, one of the athletes, managed to sink me. I guess he's one of the reasons our softball team took 1st place at area games last month. I told him I was taking him down...so, is it right to seek revenge on a mentally handicapped kid? :p He was so proud of his throwing skills - he even managed to dunk a cop a little later on.

I don't remember them doing it last year, but this year, the cops are doing CoT in shifts and we've had between 2-4 cops on the scaffold throughout the day. Denny's restaurant is so cool, they've donated all the meals for the cops for the entire event. How cool is that? It's especially nice since Denny's is right across the parking lot from Safeway, so we just have a short little jog to pick the food up. I'm going back tomorrow afternoon - I'm bringing extra clothes with me this time. The girl Angels and their friends are going to go too. Hopefully we'll have another successful day and raise enough money to keep Special Olympics going for another year.

back to writing

I finally got back to writing a little bit today. I've really been slacking in that department lately, among others. I'm still struggling with the plot a bit, but figure everything will pull together eventually, it always does.

Saw a sad post on an online forum I visit. One of the Romance Divas said she looked at her calendar and saw that she had noted that she was going to be going to the RT Convention, a get together for romance writers and readers. Instead of going to the convention though, she's going to be at the hospital receiving her first round of chemo from her newly discovered cancer instead. Cancer sucks

all kinds of stuff going on

We had a potluck here at our house yesterday as a goodbye to our wonderful friends Denis and DeAnne. They've been our best friends since moving down here and we're going to miss them so much. DeAnne is a traveling nurse and she may be heading up to the wilds of Alaska next, what a huge difference from Hawaii, eh? Anyway, we had about 25 total people here, our friends from the island as well as a couple from Illinois who are here vacationing and were at church with us. It was a very nice time with the perfect amount of food, which is always a relief. Whenever we have something like that at our house, I always feel responsible for making sure there are enough deserts, main dishes etc and I usually make one of each. Angel #2 made peanut butter bars (my potluck standby, easy and delicious) and I threw a batch of Shoyu chicken in the slow cooker. Shoyu chicken is a Hawaiian favorite and one I've learned to love since moving down here.

I've been busy getting volunteers together for Cop on Top, a special Olympics fundraiser. I'm the area volunteer coordinator and this is my first year doing it, so I feel especially responsible for getting enough volunteers lined up to collect donations. Cop on Top is a fun event. Three area police officers live up on a scaffolding set up in front of the Safeway grocery store from Thursday morning until Saturday afternoon. The rest of us stay down below and collect donations. There'll be a live radio feed there, as well as a dunk tank (with a cop or two manning the dunk platform) and a bunch of other stuff. I'm looking forward to doing it and also looking forward to it being over so I'll have one less thing to worry about. There's one more fundraiser in the middle of May, then the fundraising part is over for a while and it'll be back to what Special Olympics is really about, the athletes. Problem is, you can't have the events without the money and you need the fundraisers to get the money. It's a vicious circle. I think Safeway will be sponsoring Cop on Top nationwide this weekend, so if you're grocery shopping and see some cops up on a scaffold, give those volunteers a little cha-ching and make some very special people very happy.