June update

Well the first month of summer vacation was good for the kids. Almost drove Chris batty because there were no activities planned and they were home all day but we survived. Three of the four weekends Nate volunteered with his cub scout troop at a food bank helping to carry out food. I don't think he really grasped the significance of him helping out but regardless I am very proud of him volunteering.

July starts up swim lessons. Chris has a doctors appointment Monday so I get to take them to their first class – yay. I almost think Chris planned this. And August will be cub scout popcorn sales (which I got volunteered to run – yay). In case you have not caught on the yays are sarcastic.

We just finished up a trip to my parents. The kids had a great time. Friday we went to a drive through safari. Who would have thought that they had those in East Texas! Mostly it was deer (no surprise) but there were also buffalo, antelope, llamas, elk, camels and emus. There was also an alligator pond but we took a wrong turn and missed that part. The part the kids enjoyed the most was feeding the animals. Each person get a bag of animal feed to throw out to the animals – we were advised to throw not hand out the food because some of the animals liked the hands more than the food . Most of the animals would come up to the van as we threw out the food. The funnest part was when we drove up to a big pond with ducks. The ducks (and turtles!) came out of the water to get the food we threw out. Several large catfish came up close to the shore to try and get some food. I was able to throw some food out far enough to get into the water and the fish went right after it. In that part was some of the biggest squirrels I have ever seen. I swear they were bigger than small dogs.

After that we came home and after a small rest we went out to dinner at Dairy Queen. I took my laptop to take advantage of the free wifi they had there. Mom has dial-up (shudder) so I tried to take the opportunity to convince her that her next computer should be a cheap laptop that she could take to Dairy Queen and McDonalds and do her email and internet surfing there. Overall I think that worked but the (small) flaw in the plan is that if she has to get another computer it would almost have to be a laptop because I don't think they make computers with modems anymore (and mom is not one to spring money for a high speed connection when there is free wifi in a place she goes to several times a week – sigh).

be careful what you ask for

This week Nate and Lexi are in Twilight camp. Its a week long camp from 2:30-8:30 where all the cubscouts are broken up into smaller groups and each group does different activities throughout the day. For Lexi they have a tot lot where they play at the playground for the day.

Well the rule is that for each child you bring from your pack you need to have one person working the camp for one day. So for Nate and Lexi someone from our pack needed to work two days, and since I had plenty of vacation days left I volunteered for Wednesday and Thursday.

Now I made the mistake of putting a blurb in my out of office email message explaining that I was at camp to "say a prayer for me".

Well I have to say the first half of Wednesday was pure heaven. I was chaperone with a fifth grade group with three other adults (two of them police officers so we had the crowd control aspect covered). And all the activities planned for the day were archery and bb guns (so we just stood aside and watched).

But then the storm hit...

The whole day was cloudy and we were keeping track of the weather from one of the chaperone's iPhone when they told us at dinner that we would cut the dinner entertainment to try and get out before the storm hit. Then, when we were heading out for the first activity after dinner, they called us back because they posted a tornado warning. So we gathered up all the kids and called all the parents and as soon as the last child in our group was picked up we left.

Now where Wednesday was heaven (if you can take out the whole bad weather thing) Thursday was hell. Because of the weather the camp was held indoors. So now we had a bunch of kids locked indoors with nothing to do when their activity was done (cat herding must be easier than kid herding). But we survived another day.

Lexi has the flu - misses graduation

Poor Lexi caught the flu that has been going around. We know she has had it bad because she does not even want bread (she is a carb addict).

Because she has been running a fever all week she missed her last week of school and tonight she had to miss her graduation. So I went up to her school after I gave the kids their baths and picked up her papers and graduation cap and shirt.

It seems to be the same flu Nate had. Her fever is already going down and the cough started yesterday. If it gets too bad we may take her to the doctor next week but all they will do is give a stronger cough syrup.

Swine Flu and Mother's day

Well the swine flu came and went. I was real concerned originally with all the deaths in Mexico but in the end the worse case scenarios never occurred. Nate did come down with a virus but when we took him to the doctor it was not the swine flu but a common virus. So Nate missed about five days of school until his temperature finally came down to normal. For once everyone else did not get anything - you cannot imagine how happy we are about that.

Sunday was Mother's day. Chris did not want to deal with the crowds so Saturday I took her to Tandoor for lunch. The food was awesome as always!

A very volunteering week

Last Saturday there was a Texas Trash Off in Euless. Basically volunteers come and pick up the parks and roads in Euless for a couple of hours and for that you get a danish for breakfast before picking up, a t-shirt, and a buffet lunch at Incredible Pizza when you get back. Needless to say there was not a shortage of vonlunteers. Nate's cub scout pack did this as a scout project.

Nate and I went to Bear Creek Park. I was really impressed with Nate - he really did his best to pick up, even going through brier bushes to get trash. We went down to the creek to pick up and man there was ALOT of trash down there. We filled up our first trash bag in about 200 feet. The only thing we left behind was a trash can dumped in the creek (it was smashed almost flat so I was pretty sure it was empty). The people in the park were real grateful too. At least half of the people in the park we passed stopped and thanked us for picking up, it was really gratifying.

After a couple of hours we went to Incredible Pizza for our Pizza lunch. Nate really loved it and has been wanting to go back ever since.

Thursday there was a Senior lunch that a group of us at work volunteered to help out at. There was almost 1500 Senior citizens to about 150 volunteers. After setting up there were platers and servers. Platers put all the food (mashed sweet potatos, puree'd stuffing, green peas, ham and a salad) on a plate and the servers took the food out and served drinks. Then we broke down all the tables and chairs and put them all away while another group swept up.

I could tell the seniors really appreciated it. Most of them dressed up in their Sunday best and they all had a really good time.

Cub scout campout Saturday and Sunday

Saturday was a slower day for several reasons. The planned hike was ONLY 1.1 miles but the catch was it was over 600 feet up a mountain. I made it almost to the top but we got to a last large dip/climb and my knees (still hurting from hopping around on Mount Scott) just hurt too much to keep going. So like Moses on Mount Nebo I sat and watched the rest of the pack make the last climb and took pictures of them at the top.

When we got back down we made a quick stop at a prairie dog town then, while all the other kids went to Mount Scott Nate and I went to Lawton (about 15 minutes away from the park) to the local WalMart. I went for two reasons: First for a knee brace and some deep heating aspercreme (by this time my left knee hurt to bend it and the right was a little better - but not by much. The second reason was that Nate really was not eating. He was eating the oatmeal squares I had brought but the only time he ate what was fixed was Friday they had plain rice as a side (so he had a bowl of rice with his oatmeal square). So as soon as we stopped at WalMart we went into McDonalds and Nate inhaled a 10 piece McNuggets.

Sunday we had a simple breakfast (pop tarts, fruit bars) so there was no dishes to wash. Packed up the tent and supplies and headed home.