Happy Halloween!!

I AM EXHAUSTED!!! I can tell I'm getting old because I just can't play like I used to! :-)

We had a very busy day today. Around 11am Scott and I walked to the school to meet with Gage's class for Gage's Student of the Week week.


Here Scott is telling Gage's class about his job at Ducks Unlimited. The kids were interested and very engaged. There was one boy who had his hand raised nearly the entire time. Gage is in the orange shirt to the left of the other kid in the orange shirt. Today was orange and black day at school.

The kids were listening very well to Scott while he was reading "The Birthday Cake". He's not quite as good as Mrs. Schmidt, in the library, because she has definitely set the standards HIGH!

Gage wanted to point out a few of the details in the illustrations that the others may not have noticed. In case you're wondering, the little microphone Scott is wearing around his ear is for one of the girls who is hearing impaired in Gage's class. Apparently they have this mircophone synced with her hearing aid somehow, and just speaking in a normal voice through this microphone allows her to hear what is going on.

Gage was the mail man at school today. Scott brought a Ducks Unlimited Greenwing magazine "The Puddler" (a magazine publication for kids) for every kid in the class to take home, so Gage put one in each of their mailboxes.

We ate lunch with Gage as well. I hope he doesn't ever ask me to do that again! BOY OH BOY was it LOUD in the lunchroom. I definitely enjoy my quiet, peaceful lunches at home. That also told me that I definitely don't want to start subbing in the lunchroom in addition to the library! I like the library, where everyone is supposed to be QUIET!

At 3:05 Scott and I picked the kids up from school, plus 2 extras, and got them dressed and ready for Trick-or-Treat for Others to Eat for our Cub Scout den and Girl Scout troop. There were only 4 of them all together, but they did an AWESOME job in collecting nonperishable food items for the needy!

Commander Rex (aka Gage), Ahsoka (aka Emma), Dorothy (aka IsaBelle) and Darth Vader (aka T.J.) The boys just wore their neckerchiefs since their uniform shirts wouldn't fit over their costumes. The tunics for the girls worked great to wear over their costumes.

Emma and IsaBelle. What a couple of cuties!

T.J. and Gage the Star Wars/Clone Wars duo!

We took turns ringing the doorbells and it seemed to work out great. We had a few people who didn't understand what we were doing and gave the kids candy, despite being told by Gage that they were trick-or-treating for canned goods for the needy. One lady was very rude and said she doesn't do Halloween because she's handicapped and can't get around, and after I told her we were trick-or-treating for the needy she replied, "Oh, well I can do that!" She went and got a few items and apologized for being so snippy and said we were doing a nice thing.

We went up and down our street and the street next to ours. We were out for a little over an hour. The kids were getting tired and were ready to go home at just the time we were going to start heading that direction anyway.

Everyone is excited about going home. Before we went home, our last stop was at Gage's Cubmaster's house and we hit the motherload there. They gave us a whole sack full of stuff and he gave them each some candy because what we were doing was hard work! It really was hard work!

We'll be donating all of our food items to a local shelter in need. We need to figure out which one is needing it the most and then see if we can get all 4 kids together to deliver the items. I think that will help them to see what a good thing they did this afternoon!

After we ate supper, we headed out for another round of trick-or-treating, only this time for goodies for the kids to eat! :-)

Emma dressed as a Jedi in training, named Ahsoka, from the new Star Wars movie called Clone Wars.

Commander Rex and his blaster with Ahsoka. I think Emma was to have a light saber for her weapon? Both Gage and Emma forgot about that!

If anyone stumbles upon Star Wars scrapbooking supplies, please let me know. I'm in need of some for last Halloween and now this one!

Our first stop, The Hocking residence. Juanita and Kim were waiting for us and the kids were very excited. They are quite spoiled! Not many kids get beanie babies when they go out trick-or-treating! We are very fortunate to have such wonderful friends. Thanks guys! The kids are snuggled up with them as I type!

We stopped at our previous neighbors', Lee and Val's house as well. We had excellent timing because their little granddaughter, Brittin, showed up at the very same time. Emma couldn't wait to get inside to hold her! She was an adorable little lion! We just loved her little piggy tail sticking out the back of her hood.

Emma and our neighbor Dave. The kids really enjoy spending time with Dave and Maggie. Emma especially likes all of the teasing Dave does. She gives it right back to him too!

We decided this year to go down to this house that is always decked out for every holiday. Halloween is the biggest holiday for them. We soon discovered why there weren't many trick-or-treaters out in our area of town, because they were all down at this place! This was our first year to stop here and I'm sure it will be an annual tradition now. There were cars lined up all over the place. Some of our friends from church live near this house and when we stopped at their house they said that we were the 215th trick-or-treaters to stop at their house. They keep a notebook with them on the front step and give a tally mark for each person who stops. In fact, many of the people who live in this area just sit out on their front porch or steps because there are so many people trick-or-treating in the area that there's no use going back inside! This skeleton was one many decorations at the Halloween House. There were many adults dressed up in scary costumes helping out with the traffic and crowd control! I should have stepped back to take a picture of the entire scene! It was amazing!

Emma couldn't wait to get home to check out her loot. I'm sure some of you are laughing at the quantity of treats she has. We have about 6 different houses that we have to drive to all over the north end of town, so we don't actually get to many houses. Then we typically go up and down our street and we didn't hit all of the houses again after our earlier outing. The kids love it and we usually stop to visit at each place for a bit. I actually like that we don't end up with TONS of candy, because guess who would be eating most of it? That's right, ME!

Gage and his loot. He wanted to show me a couple of his favorite things he got. A koala beanie baby from Kim and Juanita and a little can of SpooooooKIWI, a pure cane soda drink that he got from one of our neighbors. These guys are definitely spoiled because they get special treats at several of the houses we visit.

I was totally going to skip out on blogging tonight because I couldn't even keep my eyes open to watch the news; however, I always feel guilty if I don't blog because I know my Mom and Dad each read my blog as part of their daily routines. Thanks for keeping me accountable guys! I love you!

Fingerprinted

Today I was fingerprinted. No, I have not been convicted of any felonies!! :-) This morning when I went into the library to do some volunteer reshelving of books, the librarian asked me if I would be interested in being a subtitute library aide. Like, do what I'm doing and get paid for it! Well, it would actually be more than just reshelving books. I would get to check books out, check them in, etc. I got a little bit of computer training when I was in this morning and then after I left, I went to the Public School Administration office to get an application to fill out. I then had to go down to the police station and get fingerprinted. Let me tell you, that guy there was a whack job! I think he needs to get out of his office a little more often! Anyway, they will be doing a criminal background check on me and once they figure out I'm clean, I should get to start working when they need me to. If I can, I may get to start by working a couple of days next week! When the kids started school in August, I was seriously thinking I needed to get a job at the school somehow. It will be great to just fill in when they need me and I won't ever have to worry about what to do with the kids, because when they are off, I will be too. Maybe I can work my way up to the school nurse position? It always helps to get your foot in the door. I am pretty excited and can't wait to get on the payroll!

The weather has been beautiful the past few days and it is supposed to be nice again tomorrow. I'm glad about that since we'll be out in it trick-or-treating. We have one Girl Scout and one Cub Scout coming home from school with us tomorrow to go out and collect non-perishable items for the food pantry with Gage, Emma, Scott and me. I hope we're successful. I'll be sure to get a lot of pictures.

Scott has been busy touring donors around and being a hunting guide for them the past few days. I love the fall season, but I hate that the hunting season causes me to be a single parent so often. I suppose when the kids are old enough to go with him more often, maybe I'll enjoy it more? However, they certainly won't be able to go as much as he does. School will put a damper on that.

Not too much else happened today. We did take a few apples down to The Banquet today. The Banquet is a place where the needy people of Bismarck/Mandan can go to have a nice, warm, free, sit-down meal every Thursday. This Thursday our church was hosting it. Unfortunately because Scott was gone, I wasn't able to volunteer to help out. In the church bulletin they were asking for apples to be donated if anyone had apple trees. We don't have a tree, but we had quite a few left from my Mom and Dad's tree. They were starting to soften up a bit, (we like our apples crispy) so instead of letting them go to waste, we donated them to The Banquet. When I took the sack of them in, the guys sitting around the table that were taking a break from cooking the meal noticed those red apples in my bag and wanted to see them. There were tons of apples donated, but none were like these that look like what you get from the grocery store. One of the guys said, "I've got to try one of those", and took one to eat. Another lady did as well. They are in love with your apples Mom and Dad! We ate so many of them, but couldn't get them all eaten before they started to soften up a bit. I can't wait for more next year!!! Emma saved the seeds out of her apple and she is determined to grow one just like yours! We're going to see if we can get them to sprout. She's already trying to decide where we are going to plant it. When I told her Tuttle would be a good place, she quickly shot that idea down. She wants them where she can get her hands on them!!

Gage is so excited about school tomorrow he said he was having troubles going to sleep. He gets to do show-and-tell AND have Scott and me come in to eat lunch with him after Scott tells about his job and reads one of their favorite books. On top of that, he gets to have a Harvest Party. He'll be jumping out of bed without much trouble in the morning! I'll probably have over a hundred photos to post tomorrow night!

Nothing

Today I did just what I said I was going to do................NOTHING! It was awesome! I only left the house to take the kids to school and to pick them up from school. I also left tonight to go play volleyball, but since that's fun, it doesn't count.

Emma had a pajama party at school today to learn the letter P. She was very excited about wearing her p.j.'s to school! She takes after me in that she could wear her p.j.'s all day every day if she could! She wore her red fuzzy slippers that Grandma Pipi made and I guess the teachers LOVED them! Emma said her music teacher asked if she could touch them. LOL! When I picked Emma up her teacher said she had the cutest p.j.'s ever and the best slippers. She was shocked when I told her my Mom made them. Get the knitting needles out Grandma because I think I'm going to have to order slippers for teacher gifts this year! :-)

Emma in her Christmas p.j.'s. I found these fleece bottoms last year on clearance at Old Navy for $2. I wish I had a pair. They have Christmas sayings all over them and they match a p.j. top that she already had. She couldn't wait to get to school in her p.j.'s and she must have worn her slippers all day at school.

I called the popcorn orders in to the Fargo office this morning so I thought I had all of that out of my hair. It just popped into my head late this afternoon that I forgot to order the patches on the prize sheet that everyone gets for participating! UGH! I'm going to have to call them tomorrow to make sure they get those added to the order form.

Sometimes sitting around doing nothing is a bad thing for me. It gives me time to think, and often times thinking causes me more work. I decided to try and get our Girl Scout troop and our Cub Scout den together after school on Friday to "Trick-or-Treat-for-Others-to-Eat". So far there are 4 of our Scouts (including my 2) that are planning to go out trick-or-treating for non-perishable food items that we will then donate to the Emergency Food Pantry or Ruth Meier's Hospitality House. I haven't heard from 3 yet, so we may end up with a few more. I want my kids to learn to have a giving heart. I don't know what Mom and Dad did special with me, to make me a "giver", but I hope I can do the same for my kids. I'm going to have them wear their costumes and then put their Scout uniforms over the top so we can be easily identified as a Scout group.

Tonight before I came down to blog, I fed Sid a couple of crickets. I had the camera nearby so I thought I would get a few pictures of him. They turned out pretty good so I wanted to post them for you all to see. I think we're feeding him too much because he seems to be getting fatter.

He spent most of today sitting in his water dish. He likes to do that. We had to get a new water dish because the other one, which was stone, kept leaking water. We returned it and got the same thing and it leaked too. The wood chips would be totally saturated on the backside of the aquarium, so this time Scott brought home a plastic one. I didn't know if it would be too small or too deep for him, but it seems to fit him perfectly. I kept wondering why his water dish would get so dirty so quickly because I hadn't seen him in the dish until just the other night, then he spent nearly all day in it today.

Isn't he cute? LOL! He seems to be doing very well since we put him in this habitat. He burrows down into the wood chips and sometimes it's quite hard to find him!

After I put the crickets in tonight I quickly put the setting on video to see if I could get him eating a cricket. Although it's not really clear, you can definitely see him catch and eat the cricket! It was a big one too!

This week Gage has been the "Star of the Week" at school. During their week of stardom, they are allowed to bring a show and tell item (I'm glad I just thought of that because Gage hasn't done that yet!) and then they can invite their parent(s) in to read a story or talk about their work. Gage said he wanted to have Scott come in and talk about ducks. (I didn't feel too bad, because I doubt anyone would have been too interested in hearing about my stay-at-home-Mom job.) Scott also said he wanted to read a story, The Birthday Cake, by Sven Nordquist. Then we will get to stay and eat lunch with him at school. Gage is so excited about Friday he can hardly stand it. Every day on our walk to school this week he has asked, "What day is it today?" And when I tell him he replies, "Aaahhh, I want it to be Friday!" It will be fun to watch the kids react to Scott reading this book. I will take pictures and try to take video of him reading as well. They are also having a Harvest Party on Friday so it will be a fun-filled day at school. They aren't allowed to wear their costumes to school, but they have a Spooghetti Supper on Saturday evening where all the kids can wear their costumes. It's usually a fun time. Last year The Jennings gang went with us and we had fun. Wish you were here guys, to go with us again! I was going to invite Kara and the gang but they are going to be gone over the weekend. The kids will have a good time anyway, so that's what matters.

If it's not one thing, it's another.

My Grandma Larsen always said, "If it's not one thing, it's another!" Boy was she ever right! I tell you what, if anything can happen, it's going to happen to me!

The other night when I was going through the popcorn order forms and getting totals, I had several with discrepancies. One of those discrepancies was because a lady had written a check for $25 instead of $8. In the memo area of her check it said, "pizza and popcorn". Apparently this Mom had a couple different fundraisers going on and this particular lady had written one check for both things, and she made it out to the lady selling, rather than Pack 125. Anyway, I had Scott call her and tell her of the mistake and she said she would bring a new check by and pick that one up the next day. She never did bring the check by. Since this order has to be called in and faxed tomorrow, I told Scott to call her again because she didn't bring the check by like she said she would. He called her and she said she dropped the check off yesterday. I told Scott while he was still on the phone with her that no one was here yesterday to drop off a check. Then she said that when she stopped she had given it to a lady with a baby and that she seemed kind of confused. I thought, "CRAP! She gave the check to the Mom that was here with her kids at our Girl Scout meeting yesterday." I figured that she must have had her hands full with all 4 of her kids and forgot to give me the check. I called her up and asked her if anyone had stopped and had handed her a check. She didn't know what I was talking about. I called Kara and also Holly, another Mom that was here at the end of the meeting. No one saw a strange lady here. Now what? Well, I decided before I called anyone else that was here for the Girl Scout meeting yesterday, I would call this lady back and talk to her myself. Scott had to leave to go eat supper with some people in town, so he wasn't here anyway. I called this lady back and I asked her if she could describe the person she gave the check to. She told me that she couldn't really remember, but she had dark hair and she had a baby. I told her I called the Mom that was here who had a baby and she didn't know what I was talking about. She didn't have dark hair either, so I knew it wasn't her. She told me that she knew she had the right house because she said it was the same place that they dropped off the order form the other day. I told her that that really didn't matter in my case, and told her my story about me dropping off that printout to the Girl Scout lady and had the neighbors house next door! So, it WAS possible that she stopped at a neighbors house; however, none of my neighbors have a baby. I kept hinting at the fact that she had to have dropped it off at the wrong house, and she wasn't buying that. Then she said, "It was right after school at 3:10 or so." I told her that it couldn't have been here then, because we wouldn't have been home from school yet. She says, "Well, I know the house because my daycare lady lived there before you." I told her that couldn't be right, because the lady that lived here before us was older and I told her the name and she said that wasn't the right name. Then I told her our address and she said that she dropped it off at an Interstate Avenue address. UGH! I knew she hadn't dropped it off here! Then I figured it out because I looked at our Scout roster and their den leader lives on Interstate Avenue. Okay, now that's pretty bad that she doesn't even know who her den leader is, and didn't realize that Scott wasn't her den leader when he called about the check in the first place! And that she handed a check to someone she didn't even know!! UGH! I then called her den leader's house and yes, the check was dropped off there and that lady was confused about it, but because it was the popcorn stuff, she assumed her husband knew what it was about. I can't wait to get rid of this crap tomorrow!!! UGH! I keep thinking I must be going crazy, but it wasn't me this time! Thank goodness!

Emma started her new session of gymnastics this evening. She seems to really be enjoying gymnastics. I wish we could actually see what they are doing when we're there. Unfortunately they are directly underneath the balcony we are sitting in and we can't really watch them without hanging over the railing.

I had an orthodontist appointment today to make sure things were still on schedule to get my braces off next month. It's a good thing I had that appointment today because one of the brackets came off of my top right lateral tooth! I didn't even realize it was off! I thought something felt different, but I didn't know what it was. I haven't had many brackets come off, so I just didn't realize it. My tooth had shifted some, so it was a good thing I had the appt so they could get it reattached and straighten it back out before Nov 19. I can't wait to get these darned things off!!!

I'm hoping for a really boring day tomorrow. One that absolutely nothing happens. :-)

27 down, 4 to go

I am officially on the countdown for the month of October to be over! I'm praying things slow down a bit since all of the fundraisers will be done and we have the first couple of Daisy Scout meetings under our belt. We have now had our parent meeting and this afternoon/evening we had our first actual "Daisy Scout meeting". If you want to know how it went, let me just tell you I had to have a malted beverage after everyone was gone and the house was quiet. Actually, it wasn't THAT bad, but the beverage did help calm my nerves a bit! I hope being a Girl Scout leader doesn't cause me to become a drunk! LOL!

This morning after I dropped the kids off at school I stopped by the office at Gage's school to make sure we could have the cafeteria for our meeting at 4pm. The secretary to the secretary told me that there wasn't anything scheduled, so she wrote me down. I had sent out an email on Friday telling everyone that the meeting was going to be there, so I was quite thankful that it was actually free! After I had been home about an hour, I received a call from the school. At first I thought, "Oh crap! Emma is sick!" However, it wasn't that at all. The lady from the school office told me that they don't let the Scouts use the school for meetings prior to 6pm because of the BLAST program that is going on. UGH! After talking with Kara, we decided it would be easiest to have it here at our house, and then we had to call the parents to let them know of the location change. Nothing works better to get me fired up about picking up and cleaning than knowing I am going to have a house full of people! Scott cleaned the bathrooms for me when he was home for lunch and I spent the rest of the afternoon getting things picked up and organized. I was pretty proud of it by the time I left to pick the kids up from school. (However, please don't ask me about the guest room! LOL!) I told the kids on our walk home from school that we didn't have time to mess around, that they needed to get their rooms picked up before anyone arrived. They did a pretty good job as well. The house was at least presentable.

We had 6 girls here at the meeting. One was unable to attend because she didn't get my email on Friday and they had made other plans. The girls weren't actually bad at all. The biggest thing that had me stressed out was that one of the mothers decided to stay. Not that mothers aren't welcome, but when they have 3 other kids besides the one attending the meeting, it makes for cramped quarters! Our house just isn't big enough for the 14 people we had in the kitchen/dining area! See why I needed alcohol to calm my nerves? When the Mom said she wasn't sure if she needed to stay or not, I told her that it wasn't necessary and that if she needed to run some errands, to feel free and do that. She apparently didn't get the hint. As I said, it's not that I didn't want her there, it was more because there just wasn't room! She ended up sitting on the steps that go upstairs with her baby and younger daughter. The older daughter was helping her sister, one of our Girl Scouts, on her project and I think she was also hanging out with Gage. Emma was a bit too comfortable since it was at our house, so she kept running to her room and getting different things and she was having a hard time focusing on what we were supposed to be doing. One of the girls in our group is the daughter of our school principal, and thankfully her Mom pulled a few strings and we should be able to meet in the library (I'm sure this is news to you Juanita!) in the future. I hope that turns out to be okay with my friends in the library! :-) I don't think I will stay sane much longer if we continue to hold the meetings at our house.


Here is a picture of Emma, Jadyn, Paige, Mackenzie and IsaBelle working on their project. This was taken before Emily and her family arrived.

Hmmm.............when you look at this picture it doesn't necessarily scream CHAOS! You can't see the 100 other people behind me! :-)

Jadyn and Paige working hard on their Daisy birthday hats.

Emma and IsaBelle working on another coloring project together.

Here are all the girls in their Daisy hats. They turned out cute.

We had everyone here for an hour, and we seemed to keep things moving along. I know I had Kara nervous at one point because I was waiting to see if the mom and extra kids were going to leave before I got started into our meeting. After I could see that wasn't happening, I went ahead anyway. I'm not sure how many girls actually listened to my little story about the woman who founded Girl Scouts, but it was a neat little story.

We played a few games of "eye tag". That seemed to be a big hit, and it was an even bigger hit later at suppertime. Gage and Emma were really having fun with it and we played it over and over. Everyone sits in a circle and puts their heads down. At the same time, everyone raises their heads and looks at someone. Anyone who makes eye contact with anyone else is out and the game continues until there is a winner. It is a fun and fairly quiet game.

I had supper going in the crockpot which was very well planned. It certainly helped us to get supper overwith before too late. The kids also wanted to carve their pumpkins tonight and I said they could only if it was agreed that I didn't have to help or clean up! I just wanted to be the photographer. Everyone agreed, so pumpkin carving went on after supper.

Gage and Emma digging the guts out of the pumpkin.

Scott is the master pumpkin carver at our house. He really is pretty darned good at it, if I do say so myself! Last year the kids drew pictures of what they wanted their pumpkins to look like and he pretty much had the pumpkins looking identical to their pictures. They wanted to do the same thing this year.

Gage wanted his pumpkin to be a Clone Trooper! Big surprise there!

Emma drew out a simple pumpkin face. She wanted the mouth to be a circle so it could be "puking it's guts out".

Emma's pumpkin is nice, eh? I wouldn't be surprised if it causes anyone coming to our door to toss their cookies. LOL! Gage's Clone Trooper turned out pretty good, although this picture doesn't prove that.

Here you can enjoy the master pumpkin carver at work!

Once again, I am glad today is over and am ready for a new one to start tomorrow!!! I'm going to have to stop wishing these days away! November will be better...................it has to be. I've been pulling gray hairs out left and right, so the stress has to lessen or I'm going to be bald soon!

The weekend is finally over!

Whew, am I glad this weekend is finally over. It has been a long one indeed!

Scott made it home at a fairly decent time today, which I was quite shocked about. I think it was around 12:30 or 1pm. He also shaved when he got home, so I was glad about that!! I'm not a fan of facial hair, as you all know!

I don't know how I get myself into all of the predicaments that I get myself into, but today I was totally stressed about a calligraphy project. A lady at church asked me if I knew how to do calligraphy. I told her it depends on why she wanted to know! I should have stuck with that attitude! She had a frame with a mat that she wanted to have Pirates of Penzance 2008 written on in calligraphy. I have taken a calligraphy class, but that has been about 7-8 years ago. Writing calligraphy takes a lot of practice and needless to say, I have not been practicing the past 7-8 years. I was practicing on paper for quite awhile this afternoon. I looked online for different alphabets and couldn't find any that were free. We ended up going to the Public Library so I could check out a calligraphy book. I finally had it down and was so stinking nervous to actually write it on the mat! My hand was shaking so bad it wasn't even funny. I finally bit the bullet and started writing. It didn't look 100%, but it wasn't completely ruined. I started out spacing my letters a bit too far apart and then had to squeeze them a little closer at the end to keep it centered under the cut out in the mat. My hands were shaky for awhile after that because I was so nervous. The gal came over to get it and she was thrilled with it (or so she said) and gave me a $5 gift card to Starbucks for doing it for her. That was nice of her, but I won't ever do that again! I was too stressed out!!! If I had had a couple practice mats to work on, it could have turned out better, but I had only one shot to get it right.

When we were leaving the library after getting the calligraphy book a gust of wind came up and I am not kidding you, it was pushing me around! Then, it ripped my glasses right off of my face! No kidding! I felt them go, then I saw them fly across the parking lot quite a ways and I thought they were gone. I hollered at Scott to help me find them. I couldn't see that well myself so I was having a hard time. After about 3 minutes or so (that doesn't seem like long, but it sure felt like forever!) Gage spotted them. I was surprised there weren't more scratches on them than there were. Secretly, I was kind of hoping they would be lost because I would like to get a different pair; however, I wasn't really wanting to spend the next week without them while I was waiting for a new pair! That is some wind to rip the glasses right off of my face!!!

I have been working on the popcorn stuff most of the afternoon. I did take a couple hour break to go to a Girl Scout service meeting that I certainly wouldn't have missed if I hadn't gone. I have been counting and recounting money. It's amazing to me at how many people have made mistakes on their order forms. Some are short money, some are long money. Half the people didn't collect all of their money and I have no idea what the protocol is. I will be sending out many emails tomorrow asking tons of questions. It looks as if we have sold approximately $11,500 worth of popcorn! There are still a few scouts we need to find out if they sold any or not, so it could even be more. Last year the total sales were around $7300 so we have definitely done better this year. I'll be anxious to get this stuff out of my hair! I think we have to have everything completed and sent in by the 29th.

I am just praying no one else asks me to do anything for at least a couple of weeks! I'm worn out and in need of a break (more like a vacation!)...................my trip to Medora certainly didn't count since it turned out to be a disaster.

Emma has been losing her voice for the past couple of days. She hasn't been feeling bad until this evening. When I got home from the meeting she looked pitiful. Her poor eyes were droopy and watery. I checked her forehead with my lips and she felt a little warm, but not too bad. We gave her some Motrin before bed, so hopefully she'll be feeling better tomorrow! She can't be sick because we have our first Daisy Scout meeting tomorrow after school at 4pm. I will have to go even if she is sick since I am one of the co-leaders! I suppose if she's too sick to go to school in the morning then Scott will have to come home early from work to stay with her and Gage while I'm at the Daisy meeting. I'm just praying it won't even be an issue and she'll be feeling great in the morning. Keep your fingers crossed!

Long weekend

Once again, today was a fairly quiet day. This has been a long weekend already. Today Gage, Emma and I went out to finish up our popcorn sales. Gage filled up his order form, which was the "realistic" goal we set. There was no way we would be able to sell $2300 worth of popcorn for the top prize of a Nintendo DS, so I was thankful Gage was happy with just trying to fill up his order form to earn a special patch. He also earned a Lego set for his prize. Great, more Legos! Scott and I are the popcorn chairpeople so all of the orders will be coming in to us and we will be filling out all of the paperwork to finalize the fundraiser on the 29th. I am looking forward to all of the fundraising to be overwith, that's for sure. Thanks to all of you for supporting Gage and Emma in their fall fundraisers. This will allow them the opportunity to attend Scouting events and camps throughout the year.

Scott has been out scouting/hunting since Thursday and should be home later tomorrow. Hopefully he'll be back in time for me to attend the Girl Scout Service Unit meeting tomorrow evening. That's what the plan was, but that doesn't always mean anything. His cell phone bit the dust on Thursday, so we haven't heard a thing from him. I'm sure he's been bothered more by not having it than we have been.

I'm sorry for such a boring post, but we have had a pretty boring day. Our biggest adventure of the day was going to PetSmart to buy crickets for Sid. We did get a pretty good deal on a Cricket Keeper when we were there. When I was looking at them I noticed there was a sign posted beneath them stating that they were on sale for 7.99. I thought that was a pretty good deal, so I took it to the checkout with the crickets. When she rung it up it said it was $15.99. I told her that I thought it was on sale and she said that $15.99 was the sale price. I told her the sign said it was $7.99 so she went to look and then discovered that someone had put the large Cricket Keepers over the small one's sale tag. There were no small ones left, so I told her I didn't want it. She called the manager over to tell her about it and they sold it to me for the cheaper price. I know at some stores they will give you the cheaper price if they have something mislabeled, but I didn't know PetSmart was one of them! That was our excitement for the day. Pretty pathetic, I know.

Prizes

Last night when I was finished posting on my blog, for whatever reason, I went onto the QSP website, which is where I can view the magazine purchases made under Emma's name for the Girl Scout fundraiser. Emma sold 4 magazines which put her at the first prize level. If you sold 6, you would get to the next level and so on. When I was finishing up Emma's fundraiser stuff, I wanted for her to get to the second level because she really liked that prize. I decided that I was NOT going to order 2 more magazines in order for her to win a $3 prize! When I checked the site last night, and seriously I have no idea why I decided to check it because I had already turned all of the stuff in, I noticed that a friend of ours had ordered 2 magazines, which put Emma up into the next prize level for selling 6 magazines. I was then all worried about whether or not it would be too late to get the information to the lady in charge of the fundraiser. When I looked at the printout I had made from our fundraiser, I also discovered that these 2 magazines also put her into the first level of prizes for selling over $250. This was another prize Emma was entitled to, but I didn't know if it was too late. Needless to say, I laid awake a few hours last night worrying about it, wondering if it would be too late. I felt kind of bad, because this friend was ordering the magazines to help Emma out, and I wanted for them to do just that. Plus, these 2 extra prizes are the ones that Emma really wanted in the first place. I decided to set my alarm so I would be sure to get up early so I could call the lady and ask her if it would be too late or not to add these magazines to Emma's order. I was up before 8, but I didn't want to call TOO early! I waited until just after 8, which I thought was still a little too early, but decided to do it anyway. I could tell she was awake, so I felt much better about calling her. I told her the situation and she said I would need to bring her the printout because she would be taking all of the stuff into the G.S. office before noon today. I told her I had some errands to run (I don't typically run errands this early in the morning, but I did have a couple of packages I needed to mail, so figured I could do that as well) and I would be over soon, if that wasn't a problem. Emma was already up and about, so we got ready and got in the car to drive over to this lady's house. I had already been to her house to drop the stuff off, so I knew where it was, but I couldn't remember exactly what house number it was (her address was on the information I had already turned in). I knew exactly where I was going, so I wasn't worried about not having the number of her house because I figured I would remember it when I saw it. When we got to the house, I had Emma stay in the car while I just ran the paper to the lady. I rang the doorbell and it took a little bit for her to answer the door, which I thought was a little bit strange. Then a little old man in his flannel housecoat answered the door. I said, "Oh! (I was a little surprised about this because the lady was definitely not as old as this man was, but I thought maybe it was her father or something?) I was just stopping by to drop this paper off to Carrie", as I tried handing it to him through the door that he had opened just a crack. The man looks at me funny and says, "Carrie lives in the next house." CRAP! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Boy did I feel STUPID! I was so embarrassed and I apologized to him and left. I drove next door. The dumb houses almost look identical! I figured Carrie would have noticed that I was at the neighbors house, but she didn't say anything, so neither did I. She took the papers and said she would take them to the Girl Scout office with all of the other stuff and see what she could do. Let me tell you, after that stupid move, if Emma doesn't get those prizes I'm going to be ticked!!! LOL! I told myself I wasn't going to tell anyone about this stupid mistake I made, but I didn't have anything else to blog about, so figured I would share it with all of you. I'm sure it made your day!

No school today

The kids and I had a pretty good day today. They let me sleep in while they watched The Spiderwick Chronicles for the second time. We watched it again together this afternoon. I was surprised that they weren't scared when they were watching it! I asked Gage if it scared him the first time and he said he would have had bad nightmares if it weren't for his dream police. The dream police is a line of stuffed animals on the edge of his bed and they fight off bad dreams before they can get to Gage. Whatever works! :-) I'm sure they are on duty tonight as well.

Gage checked out the first book in The Spiderwick Chronicles series at the school library on Tuesday and he finished reading it last night! He wanted to go to Barnes and Noble today to get the next books in the series. He was able to buy all 5 books in the series with all of his gift cards that he got for his birthday! He was pretty excited about that. Emma had a gift card that she spent as well. It's definitely cheaper to send them to school! We have quite a bit of reading material to last us a few days anyway. Gage read the entire 2nd book today. I couldn't believe he could read the entire chapter book in one day! He's definitely getting some reading time logged in on his sheet for school this week!

We spent some time cleaning up the basement today as well. It looked like a tornado had gone through. I'm sure it won't stay picked up for long!

Scott was out "working" in the field today scouting for ducks. He just happened to find a few pheasants to shoot as well. I'm sure that was over his "lunch hour". There are some big donors here for the weekend and Scott is their hunting guide. Tough job he has, huh? Tomorrow morning he is going to go swan hunting and Gage decided he wanted to do that too so he will be getting up with Scott and Brie in the morning to go shoot a swan. A friend of Scott's and his daughter will be going as well, so they will probably end up bringing Gage back home and Scott will stay wherever it is he's at and then hunt with the donors. I think they will be staying in Tuttle, but I'm not positive about that. Maybe they'll make a big donation to the Tuttle fund?

It's just me and the kids this weekend. There's not a whole lot going on other than church on Sunday. It will be a nice break from the running around I've been doing for the past couple of weeks. I'm not sure what Emma and I will do tomorrow, but I'm sure she'll want to go do something to make up for not getting to go hunting with Scott and Gage. I'm betting she'll pick ice cream at DQ!

Fun day at school

Both Gage and Emma had fun days at school today. I've had notes all over the table for the past few days so I would be sure and not forget anything!

Emma's class is working on the letter "S" so they had planned a Silly Sock Day today. They were to all wear silly socks and then they were going to have a silly sock parade!

Emma and her silly socks!

Today was Gage's big day at Apple Valley School. For the past few weeks they have been studying a unit about Pioneers. They have had many things going on at school to prepare for the big day today. The entire 2nd grade class graduated from Apple Valley School today! They have had several projects that they have been doing, and one of them was to interview someone from the "olden days". Gage decided he wanted to call Grandpa Alan to do his interview. Grandpa isn't that old, but we have no living great grandpas or grandmas to interview. He asked Grandpa a bunch of questions and then got to ask one of his own questions. He wanted to know if they had a paddle. Grandpa said they had a switch and then Gage wanted to know if he had ever been beaten with it. Grandpa assured him that he hadn't been hit with the switch, but he had been bonked over the head with a clipboard!! :-) That must be where the bump (it's actually a mole) on the top of his head came from?

Another project that Gage was supposed to do was to make a veggie person to enter into the County Fair. Gage made his veggie dude pretty much all on his own, except for supergluing the almonds on the potato head for hair. We could have had a huge mess if we had turned Gage loose with super glue!

Here's Gage and his veggie dude, Anakin Skywalker. Hmmm, I don't think Star Wars was in the pioneer era? It certainly looks Star Warsish doesn't it? He even has a green light sabre in his hand! Gage's veggie man has an Idaho potato body, a red potato head with celery for his arms, legs and light sabre. His hair is made out of almonds and his eyes are dried fruit with a piece of dried pineapple for his nose. He did a pretty good job.

Once we got veggie man to school, we were to put him up on the coat rack, above Gage's hook. We had him standing up at one point, but his limp celery legs gave out and he fell into the splits! Gage wasn't wanting him to be doing the splits, so we had to rearrange his legs just a little. There were some elaborate veggie people on display and there were some that it was quite obvious that the parents did most of the work.

Gage (or I should say John..................John Allen was his Pioneer name) won a blue ribbon at the County Fair for his vegetable person.

A great big thank you goes out to Mrs. Schmidt. It's kind of nice having friends in high places! I had asked Gage's teacher if I should come back to watch his graduation and she told me that there wasn't going to be much of anything for the parents to see. In other words, stay home! I then asked her if I could leave her my camera to take a few pictures for me. She then told me that they were going to be taking photos of the kids and have them printed and sent home today. I obviously wasn't getting anywhere! My friends in the library took care of me! Mrs. Schmidt went up to Gage's room and got a bunch of great pictures for me! I told her, from one scrapper to another, I didn't want just 1 picture for his scrapbook because I wanted to do a whole page! She made that her mission at the end of the day, to get some pictures for me and she did a great job! Thanks Mrs. Schmidt! I have enough pictures to make several pages now!

John Allen receiving his diploma from Apple Valley School. All of the kids were supposed to wear Pioneer clothes today and bring a sack lunch of food that they would have had in the "olden days". Gage took a ham sandwich with homemade bread (from the store of course) and apple from Grandma Pipi's tree and some baby carrots, all wrapped up in a bandana. I told him to buy a carton of milk from the lunch room on his account so I wouldn't have to worry about how to keep his milk cold. Mrs. Smith did put his lunch in the refrigerator with hers because I was worried about the ham. Gage said it was delicious and he wanted to have some more of that ham tomorrow for a snack! :-)

The kids also got to go down to the library and play some games like Cat's Cradle!

They also played some jacks. Gage and another classmate are playing jacks with Gage's teacher, Miss Owens (a.k.a. Mrs. Smith). It was kind of funny several weeks ago when Mrs. Smith sent home the first letters about Pioneer days, she had signed the letter "Mrs. Smith (soon to be Miss Owens)" When I saw that I wondered what that was all about. I thought maybe she was divorced and taking back her maiden name or something? Apparently I wasn't the only person who thought that, because later she sent home another letter saying she was happily married and that she was taking her maiden name for the Pioneer days because she would have been in her teen years as a teacher back then, so she would have been Miss Owens. LOL! That's how rumors get started!

Gage and a classmate playing jacks. We had to borrow the shirt, suspenders and boots from our neighbors. We didn't have anything that resembled clothing of the pioneer days. I was going to go to a thrift store to look for some, but time got away from me and I didn't make it there. I thought he looked pretty darned cute dressed like he was.

That was a fun way to end the school week for Gage. There is no school tomorrow or Friday for Teacher's Convention. I'm actually kind of looking forward to being lazy tomorrow! I haven't had a quiet day for awhile and am certainly ready for one!

Today I was super busy running errands and getting fundraisers wrapped up. I had to run down to the Girl Scout office to get checks endorsed to deposit into the bank and I also stopped at Barnes and Noble this morning so I could replace the lost library book. Mrs. Schmidt and Mrs. Hocking kept telling me to stop worrying about it, but that was just a waste of breath. I couldn't stop worrying and thinking about it so I just wanted to buy the new book and be done with it! I also picked up a book my Mom has been wanting and also few for Gage with his gift cards he got for his birthday. I made 2 trips to the church trying to get the CROP Walk stuff completed and out of my sight, then made 2 trips to the bank trying to get rid of it. I had to make another trip to a different bank to deposit Girl Scout money and Kara stopped by to get one of the deposits for another bank (thanks Kara!), and then I ran the Girl Scout stuff to the lady in charge of the fundraiser. I was bound and determined to get rid of that stuff and I did!!! WOO HOO! Now I just have the Cub Scout popcorn yet to deal with. The popcorn sales end on Oct. 27, so I have a few days yet before I can get rid of that. However, just getting those other 2 things out of my hair has made me feel TONS better! So if anyone wants to buy some popcorn, you best be doing it because it will soon be over. :-) Just click on the link on the right side of my blog to order online if you're interested!

As I mentioned before, we are going to have a lazy day tomorrow. I hope it's cold, rainy and dreary out so I can feel good about staying inside all day! We have The Spiderwick Chronicles to watch from Netflix, so that should be something fun to do. I hope we can sleep in too!

Oh, and by the way, I know a lot of you have seen Scott's video from yesterday's post by looking through my Feedjit live traffic feed, but I have only had one comment so far. Kara agrees that Scott should shave the beard! I need some more support here people!

Fundraisers

I will be soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo glad when all of these fundraisers are completely overwith! I should be rid of all of the envelopes and money soon! I'll be getting rid of the Daisy Scout stuff tomorrow if all goes well, the popcorn sales end Saturday and I need to get the CROP Walk stuff turned in very soon as well. I am not going to participate in anymore fundraisers until the Girl Scout cookies and Cub Scout candy bars come out in the spring................so if you were planning to ask me to head up a fundraiser, you can forget it! :-) I spent most of today figuring out the Girl Scout stuff, so I don't have anything too exciting to talk about!

Today was Emma's last day of gymnastics for this session. She is very happy that she is signed up for the next session which starts next week. Both Gage and Emma passed in swimming lessons!!! They begged me to sign them up for the next session, so I did that as well. Gage is now a Fish and those lessons are an hour long. Emma is a Starfish and hers are 30 minutes, so she'll have to sit and watch 1/2 hour of Gage's lessons before hers starts.

Not that this is anything exciting but Scott has decided, for whatever reason, to grow a beard. I think it has more to do with laziness than anything else. However, he did have a couple of people at church tell him they thought it looked good, so I suppose that's why he hasn't shaved it off yet. I'm not a fan of facial hair. Why anyone would want to grow coarse, wiry, pubic-like hair on their face is beyond me! You can click on Scott's name above and watch a news story that was on t.v. yesterday if you want to see it. When you click on the link, you will then have to click on the video link at the top, in blue.

Please leave a comment telling me what your opinion is. Shave it or Leave it. I'll be interested to see if anyone thinks he looks as dorky as I think he does.

The Weekend

I intended to post on my blog earlier today while the kids were at school so I would have time to get pictures added, but I ran out of time. I don't know where today went as it flew by so quickly. Monday is my laundry day and I didn't even get that done!!

I wanted to tell about the busy weekend we all had and get some pictures posted for you all to enjoy.

I left Bismarck around 9am on Friday to go to Medora for a weekend scrapbooking retreat. It wasn't a great trip. There were a couple of ladies who wore t-shirts that said, "What happens in Medora, stays in Medora." I think I am going to use that as my motto for this trip. This probably isn't the place to unload about how my weekend turned out, so let me just say this.......I probably won't be going back. Enough said.

On Saturday Emma went to a Girl Scout event called "Oh, E Oh! A Pirate's life for Me!" Emma rode with Kara and Jadyn and I had asked Kara if she had a chance, to please take a few pictures for me because I figured Scott would forget. He ended up not going so did not get pictures. Kara got some great ones and I stole a few from her blog. To see all of the pictures she took (all of them were great) you can check out Kara's Blog.

Jadyn the Pirate Princess and Emma the Pirate. It looks to me like they are having a friendly log rolling competition here! :-)

The event took place at Camp Neche. I have yet to see this place, but I've heard it's nice. Jadyn and Emma, in what looks like the friendship circle?

What cuties!

Here is a picture of the patch that each of the girls earned for going on a treasure hunt at the event. (Thanks for making sure Emma got one too Kara!)

Yesterday I mentioned we went to the Minnesota Timberwolves game at the Civic Center and I wanted to post a few pictures from that as well.

Gage enjoying a soft drink as we wait for the game to start.

Cheeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssseeeeeee!

Here is Emma in the "Pregame Tunnel". I think I mentioned last night that the Timberwolves actually came out the opposite side to enter the gym so the girls got to slap hands with the Denver Nuggets instead.

At one point during the game Kara got up to take Jadyn and Kya to the bathroom and ended up with all of the girls! While they were on their way to the bathroom they ran into the Dakota Wizard Mascot. Emma was thrilled to death. What a great picture Kara got, which I stole from her blog! :-) Thanks Kara! The little girl in the cheerleader outfit is McKenna, Jadyn's friend.

Emma giving the Wizard a high 5! (another picture I stole from Kara) If you want to check out more pictures Kara took, check out her blog.

Near the end of the game, during a time-out, Crunch, the Timberwolf took on the Dakota Wizard in a slam dunk competition. Here is a picture I caught of Crunch in mid-air! I was amazed at how high and far they jumped!

Here is Emma's patch she earned for this event.

Tonight we had Gage's Pack meeting for the month in the cafeteria at his school. This picture is of Gage being awarded his astronomy belt loop and pin. He was very proud of them and had a big smile on his face when I helped him put them on his belt and patch vest.

Tonight at the Pack meeting they had Minnow Races. The boys (and a couple of sisters, one being Emma) raced their minnows to the end of a rain gutter to see which one was the fastest.

Here is Gage dumping his minnow into the gutter. The boys were to hold their hand over the gutter while walking along the gutter to create a shadow. The minnows want to stay in the shadow so they swim forward (or they are supposed to) while the boys walk down the gutter to the end/finish line. The first minnow to the end of the gutter wins. Gage won his first round.

Here is Emma putting her minnow into the gutter. She had a speedy minnow that was way ahead of the shadow Emma was creating with her hand. Needless to say, Emma won her race. I should have taken video but it was so quick I didn't have time to change the camera over to the video setting!


Here are Gage's Astronomy belt loop and pin that he was awarded tonight.

Tonight it must have finally caught on to the other troops that the boys in our den have been earning some awards that theirs weren't. It's not because they aren't doing the activities, but because they didn't know these awards even existed. One of the other den leaders' wife asked us tonight what Gage had to do to earn the belt loops he's gotten the past 2 pack meetings. So, now my secret is out. I told her I would email her my pdf files of the requirement sheets that I have scanned and saved on my computer. The other boys should start earning some awards now too.

The kids got to bed later than usual tonight, so I can already tell you they are going to be grumpy tomorrow. At least I have something to look forward to, eh?