5 1/2 hours of Jesus, an odd addiction to admit to and other miscellaneous information that you could care less about.

Folks, this is the first Sunday of the month during Festival Choir season. What does that mean? It means church in the AM from 9 - 11:30 AM. (Pastor was a little long-winded this morning.) Back to church for Festival Choir practice from 4:30 - 6 PM, then on to the monthly Leadership meeting from 6 - 7 PM. (That meeting ran over until 7:20 PM.) Y'all, Jesus is my man but yowza on the hours clocked at church today.

In tidying the counter from whatever it is that decides to eat it on a regular basis, (meaning, the Hubs "trying" to put dishes away, bailing and just leaving them in growing piles for me to handle), I found that in reconfiguring cupboard space, I would move my cookie sprinkles. (In PA, you call them jimmies, I think.) At any rate, I have 18 different containers of sprinkles. Since I buy them at the bulk food store in Amish Country, the little clear plastic containers are only about 60 - 80 cents. I have school buses, butterflies, shamrocks, leaves, fish, dolphins (they are mammals, you remember,) dinosaurs, cows (K- and Hubs picked them the last time,) chicks/tulips/bunnies & flowers, non-pareils in mixed all season and holiday colors, bears, snowflakes, little cinnamon balls, large granule mixed color, purple, pink and red sanding sugars, and one other that frankly, I can't recall. Y'all, I think that I need a support group. My sister says that she suffers the same issue.

I'm bailing on Menu Plan Monday, because last week worked out to be a festival of wastefulness. It is sad. I made a pot of ham and bean soup that grew exponentially. Seriously, the entire neighborhood could have come over, had some and there would have been leftovers. We also had stuffed rigatoni one night that I used some Alfredo sauce on. I still had some Alfredo sauce left on the next evening, so I made some corkscrew pasta to stir it into. A hunk of that went to waste. Another wasteful thing was the sloppy joes that I made. I ate those for 2-3 days in a row. (I can't remember.) I made them open face with the cheese on top, just like we had in grade school. They were good, but K- wasn't interested. (Made me think of Lily, Rachael!) I know that I'll be going to the Russian Festival with friends either Tuesday or Wednesday evening. I'll get my pierogies on then. For Monday's dinner, we'll have leftovers of the baked ravioli that we had this evening. Outside of that, it is all a crapshoot.

Sadly, I received an update on Tiana and Michael's bid to adopt Bahati from Tanzania. The Tanzanian government placed Bahati with a Tanzanian family for adoption. Tiana and Michael were given a continual run-around regarding the adoption. Frankly, it sounded as if the country didn't want to be losing one of its own and I'm not surprised by their decision. Still, this is one more family that I know of that has tried to internationally adopt a specific child that they have chosen, only to have it fall through. My friend, Heather and her husband Ryan, tried to adopt from Haiti 6 years ago. They flew in, picked out a beautiful child named W-. They told her that she would be coming to live with them in the United States. Political unrest prevented them from being able to bring her to the states. The paperwork couldn't even be safely transferred to the capitol, as the director of the orphanage feared for his life. W- still remains at the Haitian orphanage today. So very sad.

Speaking of Heather, she is stressed out at the possibility of her family moving to Ontario, Canada in as soon as the next few months to the spring/early summer. Her husband expressed an interest in taking an 18 month position with his company and being moved around a bit. Problem is that they have 3 boys in tow. Moving around every 18 months isn't as easy as what it sounds. They have an adopted son that has some attachment issues. As soon as he'll get grounded and comfortable, they'll have to move again. E- is in the 1st grade and C- just started preschool. They all love where they are going. They have a great church where they are very active. I'm good friends with Heather and will miss her terribly. Sometimes, we have those mommy AAAAAAAHHHHHH! chats in the AM before I leave for work. She's the one I had to rescue one night over a mouse. We've shared some goofy things over the years. We still will, no matter where they live. We'll just have to get girlfriend using e-mail. No Facebook for me. Ack.

K-'s Farm Field Trip was postponed the other day due to torrential rains. It was rescheduled for Monday. I had to take the day off, as I had already promised to be a driver. I also committed myself to RIF day at school, so I work 1/2 day on Tuesday. I should have a fine, fine paycheck coming up. That's okay. I need to help with the book passing and I would rather be there on the field trip to corral kids and whatnot. We don't have busing to take the kids, so we are going by parental transportation. The neighbors are going with us, but other parents are taking the rest of the kids. They scheduled it for Monday, so as to get the field trip in before the new booster law comes into effect.

Here's more information than you want to know. Remember how I'm kind of Edward Scissorhands with the nail clippers? Well, I got a little over-zealous with the toenail trimming and left myself close to bleeding. Yikes. Didn't mean to do that. So, I have sore toes! Now I know how K- feels.

Oh, here's something else! Has anyone else noticed the prices at Sam's Club going up each and everytime you enter the store? I had a whole list of items to purchase today. We only purchased about 1/4 of what we put on the list. Laundry soap has gone up a couple of bucks/box. Purell has gone up at least a dollar. Zantac went up a few dollars. A case of chicken broth went up to the point that as long as I watch for it to go on sale at the store, I can get it much, much cheaper. Their whole chickens were 85 cents a pound, which is a great price, but there was only one package left and I was afraid that it was a walk around and dump, so I didn't take it. Microwave popcorn went up 3.00 from the last time I bought it. Goldfish crackers went up several dollars, too. The same with dish soap. I'm better off watching for it to go on sale. The good news? Boca Burgers went down to $8.15/box of 16. That is a great deal.

More miscellaneous drivel. My mother-in-law picked up a few cute outfits for K- at Walmart. I was surprised to see the tag that said "95 % organic cotton." Hooray! I went to put one of the outfits on her this AM and found a size discrepancy. It was a two piece set with a 6 as a shirt and a 7 for pants. K- is a perfect 7 and the 6 wasn't going to cut it. I was glad that MIL passed the receipt on so that we could exchange it. I did find the same outfit (different color), so we were able to switch without a problem. The lady at the service counter was surprised by the sizing, though. I couldn't have been the first person to ever have a sizing issue.

I hit the motherload at Target in their dollar aisles for treatie doodles for Miss K-'s 6th birthday Star Wars celebration. Completely by accident, but totally thrilled about it. I was able to get push up crayons, magnets, stickers, a dry erase board for K- (she loves them) and a flicky front journal for her to write in. (Have I mentioned that she is walking around drawing and writing all. the. time?) Also, I was able to find plates and napkins! Those are kind of hard to come by, so I was thrilled. I stock piled some 4th o' July sale paper products that I found, so the blue will go nicely with the branded Star Wars stuff. Hubs found Star Wars water bottles for all of the kids at a local discount store (for 49 cents each), so I do believe that the party needs are basically done. I found some Star Wars scrapbook paper at a local craft store, so all I need to do is to download a Star Wars font (I found a few!) and get working on the invite. (Her birthday isn't until December 20, but we are tacky and send the invite in with the Christmas card that goes out the day after Thanksgiving. Saves on postage. Besides, I work holiday retail and have no want to re-enter that world when I get off work. I'd rather be at home baking cookies. So, all party prep is handled and done by the end of October. It is a crazy Virgo thing, but it works for me.)

I'm all over the place tonight. Can you tell I had an Excedrin Migraine earlier? I had a hazy front headache and I had 3 hours of church this evening. I had to do something to keep up!

Smiles in my day:
- K- reading a book with me tonight. It was filled with sight words, so I decided to give a stab at seeing how many she knew. She surprised me!
- K- picking up after herself and putting things away in the right creature home. Goodness sakes alive. She finally got sick of losing the things that she didn't tidy. Oh, and we got sick of confiscating the items and keeping them in our bedroom. The fix that came to me last night? I put everything away where it belonged and labeled the items with a post-it that said, NO. She knows the word NO and I told her that if it said NO, she needed to earn that back. I told Hubs that her having to look at what she lost will help to encourage her to pick up after herself, and will remind her that mommy and daddy aren't joking when they take the stuff away.
- K- was angelic this evening when I was at church. Hubs worked out and K- was on the next concrete pad over playing with Play Doh, drawing, writing in her journal, playing with dress up, Little People (still!), Hot Wheels, Barbies and babies. He said that she was good at picking everything up without being asked.
- The laundry basket is empty. Everything is laundered and hanging to dry. I have a basket of our clothes (Hubs and me) that needs to be put away, but K-'s clothes and the towels are put away. I'll deal with our clothes tomorrow after the field trip.
- Hubs cleaned out the refrigerator, did all the dishes AND! put them away! :)!!!
- Getting back to Festival Choir practice. I missed two weeks in a row (I normally don't miss at all, since I sing by listening and not so much by reading music.) Several people asked where I was and a few of them said about how I was very missed. It is good to be missed! I didn't think people cared so much! We're singing "Forever Gloria!" It's a nice change. Dale always does a great job. He asked us how the seconds (soprano) were coming along. I told him that we were limping along nicely. He said that you are never supposed to tell the choir director that you are limping. I told him that I was in church and I couldn't lie! :)

I think that I've exposed all of you to enough babbling for this evening. Have a wonderful start to your week!