Thanksgiving Crafts

The Friday before Thanksgiving break was chaotic.  I had volunteered to help with Joey's class party, and Shelby ended up being "Top Banana" (star student) that week, which meant I also had to go to her school to help with a craft and then eat lunch with Shelby.

On top of that, it was an insanely busy day with work.  So I woke up super early and worked for a bit, then headed over to Joey's school.  I love the way her teacher does their parties.  She sets up tons of different stations, each with a different craft or activity, and we can just go through as we please and spend as much or as little time at each station as we want.  They made turkey headbands, Indian vests, made and ate turkey cookies, had a treasure hunt, did some turkey bowling, made playdoh Mayflowers, and made butter.  It is fun to see Joey with all her friends.

Then it was back home to work for an hour, and then back over to Shelby's school.  I had been torn over what craft to do for her class, since by this point they had already made a ton of turkeys.  Thursday night I finally decided that they would make butter just like Joey's class was doing.  So we prepped all the baby food jars and I brought everything to her class.  I started by reading them a story, which they really got into.  Then we each got a jar, filled them halfway with heavy cream, and got to shaking...and shaking...and shaking.  The kids' arms were getting tired, but it was great because at each stage I would stop them and show them how if we stopped after the first little while and added sugar and vanilla, we'd have whipped cream.  But if you keep going it gets thicker and thicker and turns into butter.  It was also great since they have been talking about liquids and solids in science.  I also talked about how the pilgrims and Indians had to make all of their own food- they couldn't just run to Walmart and pick up a tub of butter.  Anyway, they all really loved it, and it was fun to see Shelby with her friends as well.  If only I had pictures from her class!

Scary

We had a scary Saturday.  It started off with me being scary and yelling and threatening kids if chores didn't get done.  I am not a happy camper when the house is a mess.  I need order.  Thankfully everyone eventually cooperated and we were even able to unpack the last 2 boxes from the move that have been sitting in our room.  Hooray!


Then, later as we were leaving the house, we had just gotten to the end of the alley and were about to pull onto the street and Jeremy jokingly asked, "Uhhh, is that guy dead?".  I looked up and saw a man lying on the sidewalk across the street.  At first we kind of chuckled, not knowing what to think.  But then I told Jeremy he should hop out and just ask if he was ok.  As soon as Jeremy got close and saw the man, I could tell something was really wrong.  I hopped out too, and ran over to the man.  He was very confused, bleeding, and shaking.  He couldn't tell us his name or address.  Jeremy called 911 and we tried to just calm the man and reassure him that everything was going to be ok.  Jeremy thankfully had the good sense to look at the dog's ID tags which listed the man's address. I hopped in the car and quickly drove over and got his wife.  Apparently he is diabetic and began having seizures when he was walking.  As we waited for the ambulance, he started seizing even worse.  Another woman stopped and had just been to the grocery store and bought some juice.  She grabbed the bottle and we tried to give him some, but he couldn't swallow.  He got really bad and it was pretty scary.  I ran back to the house to grab some towels for the bleeding and when I got back two policemen had shown up and started helping.  A few minutes later the ambulance came.  They ended up taking him to the hospital.  We offered to drive the wife (didn't want her to drive when she was stressed and worried) but she said she was ok.  The whole thing was scary, but we were so thankful he was in the spot he was in- right in front of where we pull out of the alley- and that he got help in time. 

Halloweenies

We couldn't let Halloween pass without carving our pumpkins, so Thursday night while Jeremy was gone, the girls and I got to work.  They loved reaching in to pull out the slimy guts.  I loved letting them do it and not getting my hands gross and sticky...until I had to scrub pumpkin guts off the walls. Haha!  This year I let Shelby do a lot of the work on her pumpkin.  She stenciled the whole thing, then carved most of the design, but saved the tricky part for me so that it didn't get messed up.  It was hard for me to not do the whole thing, but I realized I have to let her do big kid things at some point!

Her crazy hair is fitting.  She is a wild one these days.

Joey had been looking forward to Halloween for along time.  Not just for the trick-or-treating, but because I was able to help with her class party.  She had so much fun going from station to station.  They had a photo booth, painted paper plate pumpkins, ate spider donuts, played with pumpkin pie play-doh, had a spooky treasure hunt, did a cute Halloween experiment, played candy corn bingo, and played ring toss.  It was very cute to see Joey with her classmates.

That afternoon we headed out to the HOA party at the park.  The girls had fun playing and looking at all of the costumes.  Then it was back to the house for pizza and trick or treating.  Lucy LOVED trick or treating,  She wasn't so great at saying "Trick or Treat", but she always said "thank you" as soon as she was handed a piece of candy.  Trick or treating in our new neighborhood is so much nicer than our old neighborhood.  Everyone was out, either walking or driving around on their golf carts, and everyone was so friendly, just enjoying each other.  After we went down our street (and I got stung by a wasp), I brought Lucy home to help me hand out candy.  She might have loved that part even more.  She would race to the door and tell the kids "hi," then scream "BYE!!" when they left.  There was a minor incident when Lucy stood up on a chair to reach some candy and slipped and fell, hitting her mouth on the table on the way down.  There was lots of blood and tears, and now she looks like Bubba from Forest Gump, but it hasn't slowed her down any.

Two Anna's and an Elsa

All in all it was another great Halloween!

Patchy

I love the Fall and all the activities that come with it.  I usually try to cram in so many activities that by Halloween day we are all sick of costumes and candy.  This year, however, I feel like we are just busier than ever.  This morning I realized today was literally our last day to be able to even go to a pumpkin patch (since Jeremy will be out of town again tomorrow), so as soon as we were done with work we packed the girls in the car and got to the pumpkin patch an hour before they closed.  It wasn't a huge place (actually, it was the same place Joey went on her field trip), but it was perfect for Lucy to run around hugging the pumpkins and chasing the girls through the hay maze.  We bought one large pumpkin for $10, because I felt we should pay something for letting us hang out at their patch, and then headed to Aldi where we bought 6 more pumpkins of the same size for $9.  Haha!

Field Trip

Today was Joey's first ever field trip.  She got to go to the pumpkin patch and couldn't have been more excited about it!  Jeremy was able to go along as a chaperone and take pictures.

The first update I got was at about 9:15 when Jeremy texted me this picture.  We have never heard Joey talking about this boy before, but apparently she and Jensen are friends.  Jeremy was not happy.

He finally told them to just play and not hold hands.  I can't blame the kid though.  Joey is cute, super funny, and she likes princesses as much as she likes superheroes and digging in the dirt for bugs.  What's not to like?!

The whole trip was exciting for her- getting to take the school bus, playing with friends all day, getting a pumpkin, and getting to have a picnic at the park!  Plus, her school day was 2 hours longer than normal, so she thought was extra great, since she's always ticked with us when we come pick her up from school as she says she hasn't been there long enough.

Being Prepared

The past couple of weeks I have felt myself getting more and more anxious.  It is a combination of things- I am on the cusp of the busiest time of year at work, the girls are getting busier and busier with school, we've been working on lots of house projects, etc.  But mostly I think it has to do with Ebola, or rather being unprepared.  We are being inundated by the news right now with stories about Ebola and every little detail of what is going on with the cases of Ebola here in the US.  And now I am adding one more story to that. 

I understand that the chances of contracting this virus are slim, however I am tired of people telling others to stop worrying about it and blaming the media for causing fear and panic.  It is very easy for people in other states to sit back and say people are freaking out over nothing.  That would be true if the CDC and other health officials had been able to keep Ebola out of the US, or at the very least contain it to patient zero.  However, when there are now 2 nurses who have contracted the virus, and 70+ other health care workers, and hundreds of others who were exposed because one of the nurses flew on an airplane, I think there is some justification in the upset over this.  These people live and work close to where I live.  They potentially could have children that go to school with my kids, shop at the same grocery store I do, etc.  People have every right to be concerned about being exposed to this.  I am not in agreement that people should freak out to the extent that they are boarding up their houses, but they do have a right to be concerned, especially with the way this was handled.

Time and again in history we have seen disasters that have proved we are not ready for them.  9/11, Katrina, Ebola.  (Obviously those are just a few I am naming because those are ones that have had a direct impact on me.)  We have a personal responsibility to be prepared for disasters, but our government agencies have a responsibility as well.  I think we have failed on every level with this and I for one am thankful for the public outcry and the media covering this as it forced everyone to stop and realize that things need to change.  We can contain this, but everyone needs to come together and get a better plan in place, and I think that is happening now. 

This has also forced us to look at ourselves and evaluate how prepared we are as a family.  We fell very short of where we needed to be.  So I got over my fears of canning and forced myself to learn.  Why was I so scared?  It is so easy!  I even canned chicken!  Our food storage is still not quite where it needs to be, but it's better than it was.  And we are now working on getting water storage and first aid.  This is all stuff we should have already been working on, but at least we are now getting our act together and will be prepared for whatever may come in the future.

It is true that "If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear", and I think that all of this has helped us- the government, state and local health departments, and us individually and as families- realize we need to be better prepared.

(Check out the link below.  Comforting, huh?)

http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=9432bfb2c8acd4a5f9e05590b&id=0e7a5b121a&e=415d7c100a

Great Weekend

We had such a great weekend.  Nothing adventurous or anything, but definitely exciting.  We were able to watch conference, Ole Miss beat Alabama and State beat Texas A&M!  What a great day for football in Mississippi!  I made homemade wings, and canned homemade salsa and strawberry jam, and the girls played outside in the awesome weather for about 4 hours straight.  Today we watched more conference, made homemade cinnamon rolls and potato soup, the Saints won, and Jeremy is very close to being finished with the built-ins in the "conservatory"- yep that's what we're calling it.  We're fancy.  Anyway, what a great weekend !

Love the Conference Center Board I made.