Monday, September 29, 2008

Stepping in Honey. . .

Lots has been going on since the last time I posted. First of all, the girls got baptized:
MaggieGracie

Next, the girls school had their second annual Sock Hop this past Friday, which was a lot of fun. The PTO at the girls school goes all out for this fun family time. This year they had an old-timey car in front to take your pictures with.

Also this year one of the Dad's got coerced into being Elvis instead of hiring a professional impersonator. He was really good though, and was much more into posing with the kids and talking with them that the professional was last year. Gracie in particular was extremely infatuated with him, and ran up and hugged him every time she saw him.

The girls had a great time dancing with their friends and their Daddy. Maggie in particular was anxious to get back to dancing with her friends after she finished her dinner, and was particularly disappointed when we told her she had to wait for her family. She's already ready to ditch us for her friends. Somehow, I wasn't expecting this development for a few more years.

After the sock hop Jerry and I stayed up until almost two in the morning putting the finishing touches on all the preparations for our Garage Sale the next morning. We did pretty well, and the garage is now looking pretty barren, or it will as soon as I get the boxes of garage sale leftovers up to the thrift store. The girls were persuaded to put some of their lesser-played with toys in to the garage sale by promising them that if someone bought them, they would receive the proceeds. They surprised me by putting in some things I thought they wouldn't want to part with, but I restrained myself from saying, "Are you sure?" Once the girls had sold a few items and had the cold, hard cash in hand we asked if there was anything else they wanted to put in the sale, but they said no. Maggie however, picked up a pencil and paper and began to draw a picture. When she was done and had gone back in the house, Jerry picked up the paper and we looked at it and cracked up. It was one of her pictures of a princess, but at the bottom she had written, "$1.00 Color it at home!" She's our little entrepreneur.

Each girl made about $35 dollars. As usual, Maggie is wanting to know when the next trip to Wal-Mart is so she can spend her money. Gracie, however, has been saving up for a long time for a doll stroller from American Girl, and when we counted her money before the garage sale, had just reached her goal of getting it. I was ready to order it for her, when she decided to change her mind and set a new goal of the American Girl baby bed - a $75 item. That's a lot for a little girl! Well, now it looks like she'll be able to get that with just a few more weeks of chores. She's definitely our saver.

After the garage sale was complete and we had boxed up the remaining items I declared that we should spend some of our hard-earned garage sale wealth on dinner out, as I certainly was not cooking anything for dinner, so we went to the Outback Steakhouse for dinner. We had a delicious meal, and while we were waiting for the check we were playing some of the games in the kids menu. They had a type of Mad-Libs activity, so I asked for the words, and Jerry, Maggie and Gracie (mostly Jerry) provided them. When I started to read the completed story, I got a very, very bad case of the giggles - By the time I was halfway through it, I was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down my face, and I was in serious danger of wetting myself. Of course, this made Jerry laugh too, and the girls got caught up in the laughfest. We turned quite a few heads there at the Outback. The story was about Scrumper, the Outback's Kangaroo Mascot, and one of his adventures. Khul is his lion friend. Here's our story:
Scrumper's Tall Tales

It was a stormy day when Scrumper decided to look for chicken lips in the Outback. She slept over to her friend's house and on the way stepped in honey, which made her smell like poo. Scrumper got to Khul's house and when the door opened her friend yelled, GOLLY GEE! "Let's go to the Great Barrier Reef," said Scrumper, "so I can wash off my finger." When they arrived at the Great Barrier Reef, they found two flowers that had washed up on the shore. This find looked to be 157,269 years old! After looking at it further, they came to realize that what they found was in fact fishes left over from someone farting!
I'm sure that you can guess which of our purple words were provided by the sole male in our family! Anyway, Jerry dared me to blog about this whole experience. Apparently, he doesn't realize that I'll blog about almost anything! Now our family saying of, "It's better than a rusty nail in your foot" has been replaced at our house by, "It's better than stepping in honey and smelling like poo!" What a riot!

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

A Holey Smile

Gracie has officially passed Maggie on the number of teeth lost. We're thinking she might be eating oatmeal until a few more teeth come in. Hopefully we don't lose any more until a few grow in! In a momentous occasion, Mommy actually pulled the upper one this morning, and then this evening, her nerve failed, and Daddy had to take over the pulling of the lower one.


Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Behind The Times. . .

Well, as I mentioned in my last post, I'm going to be scrapbooking this weekend, so in my flurry to get things ready for my fun time, I was going to print out some photos when I discovered that

  1. I hadn't uploaded any photos since May AND. . .

  2. I haven't updated the photo website since our trip to Disneyworld, which was last November!

Now, I realize that you guys have seen the absolute best photos, since those are what I put on this blog, BUT, if you have known me for any length of time at all, you realize that there are at least 20 photos for every one I put on this blog.

SO. . .

I added the photo site link to the other favorites list on the right side of the screen, OR, you can just click here. It is password protected, and no, I'm not going to make it public, so don't ask. The password has not changed, but if you can't remember it, just e-mail me, and if you are a known person, I'll gladly give it to you!

Toodles!

Monday, September 8, 2008

One thing at a time!

Goodness, somehow the last few weeks have gotten away from me. I keep intending to update my blog - and I've know the title of this post for quite some time, because it is my current mantra.

When I look at my to do list and feel overwhelmed, I think - one thing at a time.

When I look at the crap all over the counters and any other horizontal surface and think of what to pick up first - Just Pick SOMETHING!!! ANYTHING!!! One thing WILL make a difference - maybe not MUCH of one, but it will be SOMEthing. Just do one thing at a time.

Anyway, slowly, things are getting done. The big question is, can I get them done faster than the rest of the family can get them back un-done?

Well, as we start our third full week of school (I can hardly believe how fast it's zipping by!) things are beginning to settle into a routine. This week starts BSF, and next week starts scouts, so after that we should settle into our school rhythm nicely.

Let's see - since our last post we've been having lots of fun. Our Sunday School department had an ice-cream cookoff, and as a testament that miracles do still happen, I won the grand prize for my vanilla ice cream, despite running out of vanilla, rennet and ice, and also grabbing the low-fat milk instead of the whole milk that I had bought especially to make this ice cream. Just think of how great it would have been if I actually had done it correctly!!!!

Labor Day weekend we headed down to Weatherford / Granbury for a birthday reception honoring my grandmother, Amy Sr., who turned ninety on Labor Day. Here she is with her brother, my Great Uncle Bub. . .
And admiring her newest great-grandchild, Carissa: We had the opportunity to see lots of family members, and stayed with Dad and Terri along with Amy, Brad, Will and Carissa. The girls had a lot more fun playing with Will when they had a lot of room to run, and Will had so much fun that when it was time for us to go, he said, "No go. You got to stay here!" Here's him and Gracie having fun in the bath. I think Amy may have a future as a bubble-hair-do beautician!


Here's some fun family pics: These photos are of my cousins Randy and Chris. The first one was taken 7/4/1987, the second one 8/31/2008.



The next two photos are of the group of cousins that we spent a week with every summer and winter during "Cousins Week" hosted by my Aunt Jane. You can try to match them up if you like. There's an extra girl in the older photo - if anyone knows who she is, let me know (with the long hair, in between Collin and Carrie.) It was odd to see all of our kids running around with each other at the reception. Is anyone brave enough to hold a new generation of Cousin's weekend? It's a much broader spectrum of ages than when we were little, so I'm sure it would be a unique challenge.





Before we left the Metroplex for Oklahoma (later than I wanted thanks to a detour Gracie made through the edge of the stock pond, necessitating a wait on a load of laundry!) we visited a furniture store and decided on some furniture for Gracie. I had set a goal to have our house completely put together by the end of September, but that may be too optimistic, as the first day they could deliver the furniture is November 22nd. Oh well! I'm going to try to do my part by the end of September!

This week has been relatively uneventful. We did have a minor fiasco when some construction workers cut an electric line near us, resulting in a 3-hour power outage on the evening that we were supposed have a dinner guest. Chili's, here we come! Then we had a cool front thanks to hurricane Gustav - the high on September 4 was only 68 degrees. Much cooler than we are used to for the end of summer!

I guess that's about it for now. Next weekend will be my mommy time at the scrapbook convention, and Jerry will have the girls for the whole weekend. I can hardly wait to hear all about it!