New shoes

I love back to school shopping!! I can fulfill my shopping addiction without guilt.

I get to pick out new boxes of crayons and get 5 packs of pencils (that the crazy teacher wants me to sharpen) and then put all of the wonderful supplies in my kids carefully chose backpacks as I prepare myself for that first peaceful and quiet morning.

Maybe that's why I love new shoes. It represents my sanity. The kids are all in school this year and I get 3-1/2 of time for myself.

Hope you all have a great school year!!

Chester Cheetah

In November, our elementary school hosted a food drive for the local food bank. Our school secretary has a son that works for Frito-Lay. They sponsored our food drive and donated snacks, drinks and a visit with Chester the Cheetah for the class that brought in the most donated foods.

I created these cute little turkeys to keep track of the amount of food donated by each class:

Each day I walked around the school with my little two and collected cans and boxes of food.  I have a class list that I keep track how many I count and then I would color in the turkey feathers. The classes loved to come out at last recess and see how full their turkeys were. Here's the problem, the classes responded to the prize of meeting Chester the Cheetah. This is great for the food bank and community, terrible for me. I was out there for an hour, coloring in each feather in the freezing cold! Each feather was equal to 8 cans. After awhile (2 days), I gave up and just posted the totals on a piece of paper across each turkey.


Our school was extremely generous. Our 1/2 day Kindergarten brought in 500 items! Overall, over 3000 items were collected. I was very proud of every student in our school. We collected items for 4 days and the Frito-Lay people came to collect all the items on Monday.


We broke the prizes into 3 grade levels, K-2, 3-4 and 5-6. Grades K-2 and 3-4 won a visit from Chester the Cheetah. 5-6 weren't very interested in spending time with Chester, so I provided the winning class with ice cream sandwiches.


Chester the Cheetah arrived on a Friday and went to our school's gym (less obtrusive for the school). My hope was that he could go to each room and say "Hi", but the costume is hot and the kids were aggressive. The Kindergarten class was great. We had very excited kids (including my little two that I got to bring with) and one little girl who cried because "he isn't real. It's a costume." The third graders (my sons class) were a little more aggressive and were hugging and hitting. We finally had to put food and drinks in their hands so that they would keep their hands to themselves and we were able to get class photos and individual photos for the kids (and our yearbook).


It was a fun afternoon. Here's a photo of Miss R and Mr N with Chester the Cheetah.

PTSA President

Being a stay at home Mom is a hard job. A rewarding and fulfilling job. It my current job and I love it, but I'm ready to go back to work. I'm ready to make some money for our family. I'm ready to add a new level of insanity to my already busy days.

To help me transition back into this life, I've been volunteering at the kids school. I started out on a committee or two. Then I volunteered as our PTSA Secretary for 2 years. Now, I'm busy being the PTSA President. In addition, to being more busy, this job brought me some happiness and got me through the long, cold, dark winter. I was happy being so busy, but having control over how busy I would be. I'm very nervous about going back to work (and very excited).

But back to my busy, as President I oversee (barely) our day to day business. I run our monthly meetings. I'm to go to for any questions and problems. Really, I've found it very easy and happy I have something to add to my resume (rather than a 10 year blank). In addition to being President, I like to be in charge of a committee or two. In November, I coordinated our schools Food Drive (very successful - over 3000 items) and leading into February, I'm coordinating our annual Science Fair.

This extra task required (because I thought it was needed) me to rewrite our science fair packets. To make the packets more in line with state standards and our schools wording from grades K-6. This (president and science fair) required me to be at school for 2 days for several hours making photocopies. 475 copies of 2 page (double sided) newsletter to go home to our parents (I'm very happy that we are leading into a online newsletter, but it's taking awhile for parents to adjust to this idea). Then, I went back to school to make the science fair copies. A full class set from grades 3-6 and a few copies for the younger kids. Now it's time to email and line up all those judges for our kids.

 (I was chained to this machine until 5pm one day - worth every minute)

Busy and exciting. I hope I choose the right roads and enjoy my travels.

So far behind, I must start over

Do you ever get to the point where you have a weeks worth of blogs written (in your head), but you spend so much time reading other blogs, facebook and your current book that you end up not posting anything?

That would be me. I feel like such a loser, but I know I'm doing this for me and it's a happy coincidence that such lovely people want to follow my misadventures. I would love to do a quick recap, but I'm thinking I will do the current thing first and fill in the blanks from my last two hectic weeks.

We went to California to see my Dad get married. Very good!
We returned to Washington to finish out the week of school while being in charge of the schoo food drive. Very rewarding!
We celebrated our 11 year anniversary. Very lovely!
We started Spring Break. Very fun, except for the torrential rain that decided to bestow itself upon us!

I will start with today (I'll try to keep this concise since I know my magazine length reading brain can only process a little at a time).

We finished our canned food drive at school last Friday. Each day I go around to all the classrooms and count all the cans. I then take the cans (or boxes) to the school stage to pack into banana boxes for the food bank. Lastly, I go out into the quad and update our progress charts to keep the kids competing against each other (class vs. class). A little competition for a great cause. It worked because 1 - 4th grade class brought in 276 items and on the last day, a 4/5 combo class started to catch up with 210 items. I frantically picked up all these items on Friday (and dropped off scrambled eggs for the teacher luncheon. Let me say, 36 eggs is not enough eggs for scrambled eggs for our teaching staff of 20).

So, back to today. I call the Food Bank at 9:30am to tell them I need to go up to the school to properly pack all the boxes and then they can come pick them up. I'm informed that the truck is on the way and they have been calling the school all morning. I inform her that it is Spring Break and no one is there. We agree to meet at 10am. Have you ever showered and ran out the door with 4 kids in 20 minutes? Ugh! I'm so glad they can all dress themselves and actually listen to me. We made it to school at 9:50am. The Food Bank truck arrived at 9:51am. I ran up on stage and was repacking those boxes as quickly as possible. They need to be 1 layer of cans with the lighter stuff on top. Luckily, they were really nice guys and were willing to help get the boxes ready. Our school custodian came over and helped load everything into the truck. I'm one lucky woman to have such great help.

My big job for the day done, I head home to drop off Miss M and her friend at her house. Then I get a call from two Mom's who need to get into school to prepare everything for our Spring Fundraiser. I head right back up to school and spend the most productive day going through all the Committee notebooks and cleaning up the stage. We even ventured into the overhead room that no one has been in to for 5 years. Turns out it's full of costumes for different school plays. Perfect!

I head out to pick up lunch for all the kids and then go back to make some die-cuts for a large sign Thanking the kids of our school for their generous contributions to the Food Bank. In total, we collected 1507 items. They did great! 

My ending to the day was to come home to two large boxes of NutriSystem food. Marc and I have decided to end our weight gain and make it a weight loss. Time to loss that baby weight and get back to a comfortable place. Let me say, 35 days worth of food (for 2 people) takes up a lot of room in my pantry. We start our first day tomorrow. Marc is having his final splurge of junk (not that he enjoys this junk) of movie popcorn. He volunteered to take the older 2 and a friend to see "How to Train a Dragon" in Imax 3D tonight. They are going to have a great time and I'm having a fun time with the little 2. We did some grocery shopping and are now enjoying watching 1 last episode of "Phineas and Ferb" before we head off to bed.

I feel great getting this down. I really will get those photos up of the wedding. It was the best part of our very fast vacation. (Man I'm long winded).

53/365

 

Tuesday, Feb 23rd: My favorite time of day. While getting the kitchen cleaned up, Mr C sits down to read a bedtime story to Miss R and Mr N. He gets to work on his reading skills and they get an extra bedtime story. The are so sweet and attentive.

We had a great day today. I find that I pace the day since Marc won't be home at the end. It keeps me from going crazy and drinking more than a glass of wine. After Miss R got off to school, Mr N and I braved Costco together and spent way more than I planned, but we are so stocked up again. Part of the spending included a Sonicare. Marc and I have been talking about getting this toothbrush forever!! So, I brushed Miss R's teeth tonight (she is not a fan) and Mr C's teeth (cried about it) and tried it on myself. It will take some getting used to. Mostly it tickles my sensitive mouth (insert dirty joke here).

After Costco, we signed Mr. N up for preschool and stopped at Lowe's for some wallpaper for the bathrooms. Tomorrow I plan on tackling said bathrooms with a fresh coat of paint and some wainscot looking wallpaper. We are hoping to tile the bathrooms this next month (they are tiny, so it should be a 10 2 day job). We are looking at doing small improvements and using more of our time and money for some small local wanderings.

50/365

Friday, Feb 19:

Marc is in Atlanta for work this week. Luckily it's a slow week at home and being a single mom to 4 isn't so bad when you know the Mr. is coming home Friday night. I won't mention that he is leaving again on Monday for another week in Atlanta (yet).

(image credit) 



We had another day of great weather and I spent a lot of the day at my kids school. We held our Jr. PTSA meeting during lunch. We made signs and posters for our walk-a-thon that afternoon. Our school walked for Haiti. I stayed to help mark the tally cards for the 500 kids. It was great to stand out in the sunshine and see the faces of the kids as they crossed the line after every lap. Kids did anywhere from 10-23 laps (about 1/4 mile path). The great thing about volunteering for this is Miss R and Mr N can come with. They walked the path twice with Miss M and Mr C and then they played on the playground.

My overly eventful day ended when I recieved a phone call at 4:30 from the news channel to come interview my about some breaking news. See, I overdrew my bank account (embarrassing) with 3 withdrawals one weekend. My bank decides it's best for the customer to reorder all pending charges from highest to lowest and hit me with 9 overdraft fees! I was so mad. I was expecting to pay for 3, not 9. Anyway, I wrote our local news to ask for some help. A lawsuit was filed Friday about this practice and the news came to talk to me since it had happened to me. It was weird to talk with the camera rolling and to stage out some action shots. Hopefully, some day...I will see some of the overdraft fees reversed. But my 15 minutes of fame (well, 2 minutes) came and went and the world now knows that I am terrible about balancing my checkbook. lol!
http://www.king5.com/news/Key-Bank-sued-over-overdraft-fees-84830292.html

I'm thinking this is less photo of my day and just my day.

14/365

Science fair kickoff was today at the elementary school. We arranged to have "Mad Science" come in and give an hour long assembly to get the kids excited for the upcoming Science Fair. The presenter is very enthusiastic and explains the difference between magic and science. My favorite experiment he does (besides playing with dry ice), is getting a hard boiled egg inside a flask. He heats up the air molecules inside, places the egg on top, the air molecules cool quickly and the warmer air outside pushes the egg inside. It's great!!