A bit of this and a bit of that.

It's that time of year!  PTA responsibilities are in full swing.  Allow me to share the things I've involved myself in:
1.  Membership Chair-  It was a surprise that I was the chair, since I only volunteered to help input names into the computer.  However, this is a position that needed filled since we will be losing our person next year.  Best to have a year of grooming.
2.  100 Book Challenge Board Updates-  I did this last year.  I started in early February when our person who normally covered this was extremely pregnant and the principal was afraid that she'd fall off the stool while posting names.  I spent 2 1/2 hours setting the board for the year.  I stapled 520 names to the board and they were kind enough to have everything in rainbow order, class and grade order.  Lovely!  Last year, the children's names were stapled to the board as they reached their 100 line goal.  It was very difficult to find the matching names when an update needed to be made.
3.  RIF-  Though funding has been cut from the government on this one, we still have some remaining funds as a carry over from last year.  I helped with RIF last year and believe that it is very important that a child be able to take a book home of their very own.  It was a wonderful thing to be able to give books away.  We were able to do it three times last year.  This time we will only be able to do it once.  Still, I love it.  It's a one day gig, so it isn't bad.
4.  Post Office Cookies-  Our local post office has a Thanksgiving dinner for all people in the area that don't have a place to go on Thanksgiving.  Our elementary is responsible for donating the cookies and pastry for the event.  All I do is bake a bit and drop it by.  No big thing.  Oh, and it is a one time thing.
5.  Santa Shop/Winter Wonderland-  We have a day long festival for the entire school and families to come and celebrate the holiday season.  The kids can go to the Santa Shop and purchase gifts of a reasonable cost ($1.00-3.00), the gifts get wrapped and they are handled.  They have crafts, photos with Santa, games and it is very little money involved.  For this, I will be going on Friday to haul the merchandise to the school and help to set up.  I will be attending this event.  I will not be working it.  I work holiday retail.  I don't need another day of it.  A one day thing.
6.  Field Day-  End of the year day of games for the kids.  It's a day long thing, but a one day thing.
7.  Community Building Committee-  Working on our new school building design with the school board, staff of the elementary, architects and fellow parents.  I love that I have a voice that can be heard and will affect something that will be used for our children and for many years to come.
8.  Garden Fair Chair-  The chair will be moving on and this position was available.  She was sweating who would take it over and it is only a 2 time thing.  I told her that I would be happy to do it.  I spent 10 years in 4-H.  It takes me back to my county fair roots.  Shall I have a garden fair king and queen?  (Kidding.  Only kidding!)

In other news, I made a rockin' pot of chili earlier on in the week and made a crock pot of chicken-veggie-barley soup today.  It is nice to have a meal that will feed us for a few days.  Leftovers in the freezer are also a grand thing!

K- used her voice today to discuss a situation with a friend and it is all resolved.  It's hard for her to stand on her own two feet.  She's always afraid of losing friends, but in the end, it all worked out fine.

I'm going to be brave enough to take K- to the Take Care Clinic at Walgreen's for a flu shot tomorrow.  Our pediatrician won't have them in until probably early November.  Knowing that the swine flu hit us hard in about mid October last year, I'd rather just take her to the clinic tomorrow.  The good thing?  They take our insurance!  The bad thing?  K- has a phobia towards shots.  I know that technically she could probably have Flu Mist, but I will not do it.  She's had a compromised immune system and for us, it is just not worth it.

Despite the rain, I still got three miles of walking in today.  I would have had four, but a friend drove me home from the school after the great bulletin board bit. 

We had a lovely play date after school.

All of K-'s papers that came home today were perfect.  One was a math test that she scored 100% on.  :)

Smiles in my day:
-  Above!  :)

Have a great weekend!

Some fashion and social observations of the last few days.

1.  When you come into a store to ask for an application, you may not want to be ston*ed or smell like you tried to cover up that smell by rolling in an old, wet pile of used cigarette butts.  It's particularly charming when you return the next day to give friends a tour.
2.  Remember that cr*ack kills.  For the love of Pete and Pete's brother Pete, please make sure that I'm not capable of seeing your posterior divide when you walk past.  Just FYI, I'm not looking for it, but if it glares you can't help but to see it.
3.  If you choose to wear an micro mini mini mini skirt, you may want to consider exactly how far it goes up vs. the panty hose you are wearing underneath.  When an entire gallery staff talks about you and the hosiery lines of the upper part of your hose when you leave, you may want to check your entire back view out in a mirror before you leave the house.
4.  The Kate Gosselin haircut of old with the new spin of brown back and blonde front?  No, it isn't working for you regardless of how much you think it is.
5.  It is possible to muffin top not only from the front, but also from the back.  Muffin topping all the way around, wearing a belt and having the posterior divide hanging out? Priceless.
6.  I understand that it was someone walking down the sidewalk, but it isn't acceptable to wear denim overalls without a shirt.  It just isn't.  I only saw men do that on TV and I thought that was a Hollywood giggle kind of thing.  I didn't know that people actually did it. 

Smiles in my day:
-  Leftover chili for lunch and dinner, though my stomach is burning a bit despite a double dose of Zantac.  I think I might freeze the rest!

Have a great day!

Prayers, praises and pots of chili.

Prayers:

-  Marcy, the granddaughter of my gallery director, found out on Monday that she has a "hot spot" somewhere in the region of her collarbone.  She is going for a biopsy on Thursday to have the doctors formulate a treatment plan.  One plan would be a bone transplant.  Another plan would be treatment at a facility that would require travel.  Marcy was diagnosed with lymphoma and went through a bone marrow transplant this past spring.  (If memory serves on the time.)  Marcy is young.  She is in her 20's.  The treatment for the lymphoma in her lungs has thrown her into early menopause.  Her hair fell out.  The treatments made her incredibly ill.  This setback is very devastating for Marcy, Maggie and her whole family, I'm sure. 

-  Karen, our church secretary, has been suffering from some breathing issues.  They cannot figure out what is wrong with her.  A bone marrow biopsy (I suppose it was something like that) ruled out cancer.  PRAISE!!!  Still, she is basically like a case for Dr. House, as they cannot figure out why she is in the condition she is in.  She has been in the hospital for a week and a half. 

-  Josh, a friend's son, fell off of his bike on Monday.  He crashed kind of hard and there were witnesses that saw it.  He was crying, but can be a bit dramatic anyhow, so they watched him.  After a few hours, the crying persisted and dinner went untouched.  A trip to the ER confirmed that his leg is broken in 5 different places.  (Small fractures.)  He kind of twisted his leg as he went down since he was trying to brace himself.  He is in a cast above his knee and is not to place any weight on his leg at all.  He has three siblings ranging from 6 weeks to 3 1/2 years.  Josh's 6th birthday was Tuesday.  :(

Praise:
-  Karen's NO CANCER ruling.  Oh, how that e-mail brought instant tears to my eyes.  I know that I inhaled a deep, cleansing breath. 
-  Mom is healing nicely.
-  A friend's husband got spectacular news regarding a health issue he had been suffering.  He has been cleared and the weight of that health problem was able to leave him. 
-  K-'s penmanship was so wonderful on her spelling test tonight, that I gave her a Japanese eraser as a reward and incentive to keep up the good work.  Her penmanship (she's 6 remember) can be a little dreadful, so I was glad to see her working so hard to improve it.  Whatever her teacher is doing with them in class is working wonders.  

Our first fall leaf of the season!



Pots of chili:



Since mom is still on the mend, my sister and I are still trying to flip my parents a few meals each week.  If she catches a double meal night and I catch one, it gives them a few to fend for themselves.  I called my mom, told her that the chill in the air had inspired me and that I was going to make chili.  I offered my parents a pot.  (Dad loves my chili.)  As K- read to me last night, I cooked and chopped.  After I got her to bed, I finished the prep and delivered a pot for my dad to plug in on his way out the door to work. 

Mom called and said that my dad had come home for lunch and ate two bowls of chili for lunch. 



He ate another bowl for dinner.

He still has half the pot left.

My message on their answering machine?  "I cannot be held liable for any middle of the night attacks of heartburn or any backlash that may be experienced tomorrow."

I made a batch big enough to split, so K- and I had a crock pot full awaiting us when we got home.  It was so funny to hear her talk about the chili to Hubs as they were walking in the door.  Made my heart happy that she was that excited for chili!



Smiles in my day:

-  Included above.



Tales from the Trenches: And she walks with me and she talks with me . . .

(Quick, name that hymn that is running through my mind!)

K- and I are blessed to be just a hair under a mile away from school.  Last year our walk was more like a nag and sometimes a drag, but this year, the walk is just known to be what happens.

On the first day of just us girls walking K- said, "You know mom, I really missed our walks."

What do we do on our walks?  We work on math facts, we dodge orange barrels just like the cars do, we watch as we walk through the now 2 "dog poop alley" areas, we talk about the kids, things that happened in the day, things that are upsetting -- in other words, life.

The other day, I had to laugh.  K- has had this nasty little girl making yucked out comments to her and even to me.  The little girl noticed that K- had her "stick unicorn" with her and made it very clear to us that "toys aren't allowed in school," why did we have it and exactly what was going to happen to it since it was not to enter the school.  I told her that we walk about a mile to school and K- likes to ride her unicorn, Sparkle. 

"You walk?  Well, don't you have a car?!" 

"Well, yes.  It is good exercise.  It's a good day."

"It is NOT a good day!" 

K- looked at her like she was nuts and said, "No, it's a great day!"

A fellow walking mom chimed in with, "In fact, it is a beautiful day!"

I told M- that we walk in the rain, sleet, snow and heat and as long as the snow isn't up to my hips and it isn't lightning, we walk.  She was amazed. 

I love that we have our walks.  I love that it means just as much to K- as it does to me. 

Smiles in my day:
-  Hubs caught a fish today just as big as his lure.  He actually suggested that I put it on my blog with the title of, "My eyes are bigger than my stomach."  I laughed that he suggested that I blog about it!  :)
-  We decided to register our property as a monarch waystation and will be doing monarch tagging here at our house.  While we have a small city lot, we do meet the 135 sq ft requirement.  We have the plants that draw the monarchs and we do have host plants.  (Milkweed.)  We participated in monarch tagging this weekend and had a lot of fun!
-  K- called me at work to report that she hadn't been good at the doctor's office while there with her dad while he got a few shots.  We had a discussion about her behavior, what she thought went wrong and when she asked if she could watch TV even though she had already lost it, I said, "What do you think?"  "Um, no, but that's okay mom, I can just play in my bedroom."  No battle because of no.  No pester hester.  It was delightful. 
-  Bath tub flash cards with K-.  As she gets her bath, I review math facts and her word box vocabulary.  I even have her spell her spelling words out loud.  Hey, I'm all for multi-tasking. 

Have a great day!

Sporty things

We've come to the determination that K-'s breaking away from the gene pool was not such a bad thing for her in regards to her athletic ability.

Girlfriend throws herself into any sport that she tries. 

We put her into gymnastics at the Little Gym from the ages of 2 - 5.  She rolled, tumbled, flipped and balanced.  In the end, she qualified for their special "invitation only" gymnastics class.  We didn't do it, because it was only available one day a week-- Wednesdays at 2 PM.  Still, it was a nice feather for her athletic cap.  I kept the invitation so that she knows how well she did.

She has been in swimming from the ages of 4 - 6.  She paddles, floats, strokes and does everything asked of her.  Truly, the child has more of a swimmer or soccer player build.  We bank on either one for her.

And yes.  There is soccer.  Grant you, the child has had no formal training.  Believe me when we saw her on the field for the first time, you could tell.  She ran the wrong way, had trouble dribbling the ball, didn't realize that you could actually be out-of-bounds.  Today, her second day of soccer, she showed great improvement.  I mean, the child isn't going to go out there and be accepted on the Olympic team right now, but she's got some mad skills. 

Hubs did some sports while growing up.  He lovingly refers to himself as the "third string water boy."  He did football, but warmed the bench.  I believe that there was some Little League, too.  As he didn't excel at sports at a younger age, he enjoys lifting weights and running.  He does very well.  In fact, a couple of weeks ago people kept poking him and hugging him.  I told him that they wanted to see if his muscles really are real. 

Then there is me.  I have not a lick of athletic ability whatsoever.  The running thing?  Yup.  I don't do that unless I'm on fire and even then, I hear you aren't supposed to.  Okay, I should retract the not whatsoever part.  The only sport that I was actually any good at was volleyball.  That was the only sport that when teams were chosen in school, people actually picked me before the very last one.  (Being the very last one, often the team would fight because they were stuck with me.) 

Athletic stuff?  It didn't come from us. 

Smiles in my week off:
-  A gorgeous kitchen floor.
-  Appliances plugged back in.
-  Hubs survived the falafel fall out and has decided that as far as dietary experiments go with his digestiveness, he will not repeat that again.  Never mind that I told him that I thought it was a bad idea to begin with.  I admire the attempt, though.
-  The monarch program that we attended on Saturday.  More on that later.
-  The weather was nice enough to walk all week last week.  The temp went from 94 on Tuesday to 70 on Friday.  Talk about a bit of a shift, but I'm happy to hear the songs of the night critters again. 
-  Though the pictures are in my phone, K- won first place with her little plate of cherry tomatoes at her school's Garden Fair.  She grew the plant from seed herself from one of the Lowe's Build and Grow clinics back in May.  When we went to the building clinic this weekend, we told Mr. Mike and he was thrilled.  Miss Patti was the one to oversee the project and he said that he'd pass the good word on. 
-  A fantastic Chinese restaurant up the street that was our source for dinner for a few nights while the kitchen was out of order.
-  The big water main break in town is not on our line, so we're good.  Not that I'm happy that a main broke, but I'm happy that I still have water!

Have a great day!