Snippets

I am going out of town for a few days and I just wanted to get all this stuff out of my head so I could "try" and relax and have some fun this weekend. The last thing I need is to be thinking about my "need to post" list this weekend. My good friend and former neighbor from the last place we lived, Fort Lee, is moving to Europe at the end of the month and this is our last chance to go out, see them, and say good-bye.

This is one of those random, what we have been doing all at once kind of things. In no order except how I remember it, here it is.

Last year, DD gave herself bangs and then decided that she didn't like them after all and wanted to grow them out. She has been asking for long Princess hair for a while now but keeps getting in her way by having that habit of cutting her own hair. The last haircut I gave her was finally one where I could shape the bangs a little to the back length and make it look not so much like she had a mullet. Now it has been time for a haircut for a while now. I was going to take her in to a salon for this one just to make sure it gets done right. I can cut hair ok, but I always worry cutting DD's hair. I have been doing the boys for years but if I make a mistakes there, I can just shave it off. I don't have that luxury with DD. Her hair is like wild bushman hair if not taken care of all the time. And she is now to the phase where she wants to do it herself but always have it "flat down" as she calls it. By the time she gets home from school, rat's nest. It has been driving me crazy. So on Monday, I put her in a chair and evened it out. One length all around. It would end up around her shoulders. My favorite length for her, since it is too short to get all crazy and still long enough that I could do two french braids. Or as DD calls the nest in the morning, her hair is still snuggling from the nighttime. One hitch, as there always is, she moved, and I mean moved. It's a little shorter than originally planned.



I still like it and it is very easy to do, definitely a plus.

Two nights ago was Bug's turn for prayer and he prayed to be everyone's friend in the whole world, except the bad guys.

I informed the children that I would be cutting out all sugary cereals for our diet. Say goodbye to the marshmallow cereal, the crunch berries, the coco what-evers. When these are gone I will only be getting cereals with a lot less sugar. I am still buying stuff that has some sweetness, no point in buying something that they are just going to add sugar to. But stuff with fruit or healthy stuff with less sugar. Everything under 10g, no idea behind that, that was just the cut-off. After I told the children, they looked at me, asked a couple questions, I could tell Bug had no idea what I was talking about. But I know the message got through to DD, she started to cry.

It has been really nice here lately and so we have been doing a lot of driving with the windows down. I love the feel of my arm out the window in the wind. The change in the air as I go over a bridge and know that there is water nearby. That feeling when you were little of flying your hand and letting the wind take it up and down. I taught that to the kids recently and they ask to have the windows down all the time. I tried to capture the sweet thing I see in my side mirror every time Bug is trying to do this. He is still in a five-point harness so he doesn't have much wiggle room.



Last night was our den's Raingutter Regatta. If you guys don't know I am the Wolf and Bear leader for our ward's cub scouts. Punx is in Bears now so it is a lot of fun. It was supposed to be outside, but the weather didn't quite cooperate so we had to move it into the gym. It was so much fun. We did the races, let little siblings race, let parents race their kids, and then let the adults race. We only have six boys so we had a lot of time. A few of us adults made our own boats, too. I had a few difficulties with my Rosie at the beginning. I didn't know that you needed to glue the sail to the mast and so at the beginning the glue was still wet and the sail moved around, and I lost all my races. By the end of the night when it was dry, I challenged the cubmaster to a rematch and then won. That's my Rosie, she was there for me when I needed her. the best part of the races was that Punx won. We did the winner of this heat goes against the winner of the next and so on and did some consolation heats and all that. Punx won every one. Except me when Rosie's sail was dry. I was so happy for him. I took a ton of pictures but here are just a few.










All this past month in scouts we have been working on the Physical Fitness belt loop and it is not a simple one to get. One of the requirements is to show improvement in five fitness activities over a months time. When we started I had a couple boys who could not do a single sit-up in the minute time frame. And the end of the month both of the boys had surpassed the high teens in the minute time. One into the twenties. We awarded the belt loop last night to three of the boys, one of them Punx, and there are two more that should finish up next week. This was kind of new for me, but I can't begin to explain how proud of my boys I was when I saw them working so hard and improving like that. Giving the belt loop to one of them last night was the highlight of the night for me.

On Tuesday, at the elementary school was Kindergarten Round-up. All future Kindergartners were invited to see the school, do a couple things, and the parents get some info. Some of the info was shocking to me. In the first two weeks of school Bug will only go twice. They will assign him his two days and on those days it will just be him and four other of his classmates as they do assessments to figure out where they are and where to go from there. So the first day of school is a half-day and then the next two weeks only twice. Man, he is not going to like that. He is dying to go to Punx and DD's school and then when he finally gets there he won't go everyday with them. I know it will go by fast and then he will be over it and forget all about it. However, I am not sure what kind of wrench this throws into my plans for this fall, and that makes me a little nervous. Sorry to be cryptic, news is forthcoming. The other thing he got to do that night was take a little tour of the school bus and take a short ride around the parking lot. He was ear to ear grin the whole time. There is one problem though, he is way too tiny. I am having anxiety about putting my little Bug on that great big school bus.



Alright, that's all I can come up with. My brain, for the moment is empty, not a surprise. I really need to pack for the weekend and clean the house. I hate leaving on a trip with a messy house, one more thing on my mind for when I get home. So far all I have done this morning is blog and read Twilight, I really need to do something. Maybe just a couple more chapters.