ABC Song Gets 10 Toes Up!

Grace wanted to show off her new official preschool skills the other night and regaled us with the ABC Song AND her new nursery rhymes she just learned.



We went to her first ever parent teacher night last week too and of course we were told she was wonderful :) As if it could be any other way! She got "G's" for Good on everything except for two for which she got "W's" for Working On. Well her W's were for a forward somersault and tying her shoes which of course she can TOTALLY do! Hello, two years of gymnastics already AND video proof of shoe tying!

We just let it slide...it is only preschool right!

53 Books!

I just counted the books I've read this year so far (you can see them all on my Shelfari book shelf on the right side of the page if you want. You'll have to flip through and keep hitting "next" to see them all)and I'm currently on book number

53!

Let me tell you, it was the two series of vampire books (Sookie Stackhouse and Anita Blake) that put me over the top! What can I say, I like books with bite I guess :)

I only have three more books in the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series and I'm through until Laurell K. Hamilton publishes a new one! I gotta say I'm ready to read something else even though I've loved them.

Woo hoo!

Scooby Dooby Doo

The birthday party was a big hit Saturday. I worked on the cake for 4 1/2 hours on Friday and it turned out pretty good. I did have a few problems... mainly that you should definitely put ALL three ingredients into the cake. If you leave one out (namely oil) it will STILL be a cake but it will NOT be the same. Good thing I had THREE cake mixes on hand. The second time around turned out much better and I used the last mix to make cupcakes.

The other thing I learned is you should mix up twice as much icing in every color as you think you MIGHT need because you CAN NOT match BROWN again. I had enough of the first batch of brown to do the entire top of the cake but had to mix more for the sides and it was just not right.

This cake seemed much more difficult than the school bus or the cow cake. I'm hoping next year's theme is just chocolate sheet cake :)

I'll probably have euphoric recall by then though :)

We ended up with 17 kids plus one parent for each child and the grand parents. It was a gang of folks. We had a whole Scooby Doo mystery planned with clues and everything. The gist was that a sneak thief (Bryon in disguise) had stolen the presents



and the kids had to look for clues, play games and solve the mystery. We had six clues and 5 games which included pin the tail on the Scooby...





A Mummy Wrap...



Musical Chairs...



A Ghost Stomp...



And a pinata break...



The last clue led them into the cabin to catch the thief and find the presents!



When he let them pull off his disguise, he said, "And I would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for you meddling kids!"



At one point, Bryon was sneaking through the woods so the kids could catch glimpses of him and about half of them took off chasing him! He had to turn it on to outrun them! They loved it.



After the bulk of the kids had left, the rest of us had chili cheese dogs for supper and we were all in bed by 9 pm. We lucked out with absolutely PERFECT weather. I don't know HOW we could have done it all inside...

Life is good.

Cleaning up is hard work!

First Flowers

Friday was Grace's FIFTH Birthday and they were out of school for teacher work day. So Bryon had flowers delivered to her on Thursday before she left for the day. He sent her 5 yellow carnations with pink tinges. They were really pretty and she really liked them. She was a little confused though because one of her classmates mother's brought them over from the office so she thought they were from her.

Her teacher read the card to her that said Love Dad but she still had some confusion. She told Bryon that Kyla's Mom got them for her and Bryon was the person who paid for them.

Ouch!

Somethings are just hard to explain to a five year old.

She did like them though :)

She told her teacher her Mama hadn't gotten her ANYTHING yet.

Geeez!

Drama Queen

Grace is the Queen of Drama and Hypochondria at our house lately. It's hard to know when she's really sick or hurt because EVERY LITTLE THING requires a band aid or medicine of some sort. I've tried to use some placebos when I can and honey instead of cough syrup but most of the time she's too clever to let that slide.

She's pretty sure if it doesn't come out of a bottle it's NOT medicine. Every day she comes home with one or more band aids from school. I've already bought two boxes and sent them to her class the first month because I knew where we were headed.

I told her she was going to have to be a doctor when she grows up so she can tend to all her ailments. Seriously, I don't know where she gets this from. WE are not that way. At least I don't think we are. Are we?

She's defiantly got her own little mind.

Thursday night she said her back itched and I looked and didn't see anything. I tried to just put lotion on it and make her think that would solve the problem. She wouldn't let me and it didn't so I finally had to put a little bit of Cortaid on it. Honestly, I didn't see ANYTHING! Not even a red spot.

Another day last week she came home and said she had a fever and that she was sick. Well, Bryon had sent her to school in a sweater (mercifully he dresses her every morning for me so at least THAT drama is reduced). It had turned out to be a warm day. I was warm too. I took her temperature twice and told her she did NOT have a fever. She still said she was sick. So I told her at 5 pm that if she was so sick she should go put her jammies on and lay down. She did and laid down on out bed and watch Scooby Doo. Then later, after she harassed me until I took her temperature again, she was digging around the candy dish for candy corns. I told her if she was sick she couldn't eat candy.

Curiously, she suddenly became well enough to eat some candy.

When Daddy got home she played up her sad little condition to him and he basically told her the same things. A little later she wanted to wrestle with him and he told her if she was sick they couldn't wrestle. Well let's just say she had a miraculous recovery and wasn't "sick" any more. I think she's down at Nurse Cheryl's office several times a week for various ailments.

She did develop a cough last week and we finally broke down and gave her some cough drops and cough syrup. Then yesterday when Mom picked her up from school to stay with her for the weekend, she had some red bumps on her belly and back.

Chicken pox? Allergy? Who knows. Mom asked her if they itched and of course then they did. You have to be VERY careful not to ask leading questions because she knows what the answers SHOULD be if she's sick.

Mom didn't know if she had a fever or not but she felt warm and of course became more pathetic with the more sympathy she received. Mom gave her some Tylenol just in case before bed and she slept the entire night with no coughs or problems. Mom said she had about 17 little red "spots" on her but wasn't trying to itch them so I don't know what's going on.

Red spots are hard to fake though.

Her 5th birthday party is next Saturday, so hopefully all will be well by then either way.

It's hard to believe the sky is falling when it falls so frequently.

Pumkins!

Not much going on around here lately. Just the regular, work, school, home, work, school, home, work, school, home.

You get the idea. Bryon did get most of the garden cleaned out. Gary got the lawn mowed (maybe for the last time of the season) and yesterday we got more than FIVE inches of rain. Crazy. I can't help but wonder what would have happened if it had been cold enough for SNOW or ICE. Ugggg!

We sold our pellet stove and are on the lookout now for a larger one. I'm thinking we'd better hurry it up!

I bought three pumpkins at the Evil Empire (Wal-Mart) and we carved them up Monday night. I did the cat, Bryon and Grace did the ghost and Bryon did the bat. I thought they turned out GREAT!

I had to work late Tuesday night and when I got home they were all three out on the front porch glowing like crazy for me to see. It was cool :)

We've all been playing hide the orange rubber spider. So far I've found it in the zuchinni muffin container, on top of my soap in the shower and inside a pumpkin. Grace can barely contain herself and keep from telling us where it's lying in wait. I hid it on her toothpaste in her bathroom and she hid it in Daddy's underwear drawer.

As soon as Bryon get's home he usually goes and changes out of his scrubs, so the other night, immediately after he walked in the door Grace asked him if he was going to go change his panties. Bryon said boys don't WEAR panties, they wear undies. She wasn't detered and suggested AGAIN that he should change his panties. He did. He found the yellow spider and the whole hide and seek started over again.

It's been pretty fun. You never know where it might turn up next!

If You Give A Mom a Muffin

If you give a Mom a muffin,
She's going to need a cup of coffee to go with it.
As soon as she sits down to enjoy the snack,
her dryer buzzer is going to go off.
While she's taking clothes out of the dryer,
she's going to notice the cat box is getting sort of ripe.
When she cleans out the cat box,
She's going to remember she forgot to get the mail today.
As she's walking back from the mailbox, she'll remember
the chickens need to be fed and watered.
On the way back into the house after she feeds the chickens,
she'll observe the floors could really use a good vaccuum.
After she's done vaccuuming,
she'll put wet clothes back into the dryer.
While the clothes are drying,
She'll notice her coffee sitting by the couch getting cold.
She'll ask you to bring her more HOT coffee.
And if you bring her more hot coffee...
Chances are, she's going to want a muffin to go with it.