Thursday, February 26, 2009

I'm sleeping with my kid's Cubmaster

Remember this?

So yesterday around 5:30, as Thomas and I were about to leave the house so we could run a few errands before den meeting, I got a call from the Cubmaster/Committee Chair asking if he and the Unit Commander (or somesuch official scouty-type-title -- I don't know all the lingo) could come over *that night* to talk about volunteering. Um, sure. Thanks for the advance notice. So, instead of running errands before den meeting, Thomas and I picked up the living room & I loaded the dishwasher.

So he said they'd be over around 8:00. And got there around 8:45. And stayed until 10:00. And he brought his 2 boys with him -- which meant that mine got *all kinds of wound up*. Apparently we don't have company often enough because Thomas gets all kinds of fired up about anyone coming over. The Committee Chair's boys are in the 10-12 year range. One is in Webelos and one is in Boy Scouts. So believe me, they were not nearly as thrilled as the 7 year-old was.

Anyway, Mike is now somewhat-officially the Cubmaster. He needs to have the background check and then it's official. Oh no, I hope they don't find out about the incident! Seriously, anyone who know my husband should be cracking up over that. Mike SO walks the straight and narrow.

So now Mike has to plan his first pack meeting. Did I mention that he's only been to one and it was the banquet? Yeah. So it's not like we really know what typically goes down at a pack meeting. This should be GOOD, people.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

How did I not know this???

My favorite actor from my favorite show has a blog. Dispatches From the Island . Wicked

lazy days

So much of the time it seems our family is dashing from one place to another. Not day-to-day, my-kid's-life-is-overscheduled-school-karate-Monday-scouts-Tuesday-church-Wednesday dashing. We don't do that. Thomas had been activity-less for a long time before we joined Cub Scouts. I'm talking about our constant traveling. We've been staying put since New Year (except for my grandmother's funeral and that was just a few days and just me and I don't think it counts, right?) and I like it. I mentioned this to Mike's mother when they were here Valentine's weekend. Mike gave me a look. So I asked him about the look. It meant he was going stir-crazy and is getting the travel bug. Like a friend said, I think he's part Gypsy.

So we've really just been hanging here at home. So nice. I've been pretty much staying caught up with the laundry and the housework. There are no suitcases in various stages of packing and unpacking littering my bedroom. Things are downright calm. So calm and mundane that I'm not finding much to blog about. Nothing seems really *noteworthy* so the blog had gone without much updating. Sorry folks. I can tell you the mundane things we've been up to. Hold on to your seats, kids . . . ;)

Cub Scouting is going along swimmingly, despite what appeared to be a rather unorganized and haphazard first few den meetings. I think the poor lady running the den is just overwhelmed. I've offered to help, but she's not taking me up on it. Oh well, we'll just truck along and do our thing. Thomas finished his Bobcat stuff and one Wolf requirement after the first week. He finished 2 more Wolf requirements the next week. This week we'll turn in 3 more requirements. Sadly, I think that puts him ahead of a few of the boys in our den.

We went to our first pack meeting last Wednesday (an aside . . . WHY WEDNESDAY?!? Do these people not know LOST is on?? Seriously, it's the only show I really care about on TV.) which happened to be the Blue and Gold Banquet. They asked Mike to be the Cubmaster. Did I mention that it was our FIRST pack meeting?? The guy who is doing it now has been for the past 3 years, I guess and is ready to not be Cubmaster anymore. And they know that Mike is an Eagle Scout. I guess that's all they need to know?? Now, we did mention when we signed Thomas up that we'd be happy to help and asked for adult applications. "Help" and run the whole show seem to be two different things to me, but we'll see.

Speaking of LOST . . . DANG! It is sooooo good this season. I'm geeking out over it every week. Just about every Thursday I'm ending up spending the morning over at The Fuselage reading what the other geeks are thinking and theorizing. Then my pal Toni and I hole up in a corner at park day on Fridays and talk about it. BEST. SHOW. EVER.

We've been making it to the library regularly again. Regularly enough that we're not paying fines every time we check things out now. I've been having time to read again. So nice. Mike's sister, her husband and I are doing an A-Z challenge over on Goodreads . We're supposed to read books from authors with names beginning with every letter of the alphabet. The group is open to anyone, so if you're a reader and want to participate, you can find me on Goodreads and join in. Right now I'm reading A Prayer for Owen Meany. That would be my 'I' selection. So far, so good. Except that it was seeming really, really familiar to me, yet I knew I hadn't read it. Wikipedia to the rescue. Turns out the movie Simon Burch was loosely based on the first part of the novel. Weird. Why only the first part?

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Brown Day

We love our UPS drivers!

Yesterday we got most of our Amazon order and our Rainbow Resource order. New stuff for school! Yippee!

What we have here:

more logic books - Thomas LOVES these and was really irritated when he finished the last book of them.

the teacher's manual for Thomas's new science - still waiting for the student books to come, but at least I can start picking up the supplies now

window chalk markers - I'll let Thomas practice his spelling words on the patio door

new mazes & dot-to-dots - I call these his brain warm-ups. Really I have him to them for fine motor practice, but he doesn't need to know.

knights stained glass coloring book - another sneaky fine motor activity

Case Closed - a little book of mini-mysteries to solve using clues in the story and illustration

In other news, Thomas is still very enthusiastic about Cub Scouts. Today we will be working on a banner to display his collection of National Park Junior Ranger badges. This will complete another requirement on the Wolf trail. You know I'll post it, right?

25 Random Things

This has been going around Facebook. And since I'm in a blogging slump, I thought I'd post it here, too. If you read this and you have a blog, consider yourself tagged.

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you.

1. I felt compelled, nay, duty-bound to correct the open parenthesis in the instructions of this thing.

2. I have a brown streak in my right eye. Mike calls it the sh!t streak.

3. Speaking of sh!t, I used to curse. A lot. It sometimes still trips me up. It's a terrible habit and I hate it about myself.

4. In 4th grade I lost a tooth in music class and got in trouble. I was chewing a Starburst candy when I wasn't supposed to be, which took out my loose tooth.

5. In 4th grade I cried in class one day. I can't remember why. Probably because of the teacher. I hated my teacher that year. What I do remember is the girl sitting behind me making fun of me and calling me a crybaby. I got up, slapped her across the face and said "Who's crying now?" 4th grade was a really bad year for me.

6. I went to Purdue just because Mike was there. I never admitted that to my parents and fed them a bunch of baloney about it being a great school for my chosen major, etc. But really, I was following a boy. Good thing that worked out.

7. I changed my major half-way through college. I decided I did not want to go to graduate school, so why major in psychology? I chose my new major based solely upon what I could still finish 'on time'. Why? Because I knew I wanted to marry Mike and didn't want to wait for that or be separated for school. Kids, I love my husband and my life, but don't do this. I now have a degree in social studies education that I pray I will never have to use.

8. In order to finish 'on time' I had to do some crazy stuff. I took all summer school available and took 21 credit hours + worked the semester before I student taught. Consequently Mike and I got married on a 3-day weekend I had from 'Maymester.'

9. Even though I don't want to do it, I have great respect for good public school teachers. One changed my life and I hope everyone had someone like Mrs. Wade. She saw potential and challenged me to do better than I had been doing in school.

10. The semester I took 21 hours, one of my classes was History of WWII. I think I might have failed it. The first day of class the professor made some sexist remarks. I showed him (ha!) by never returning to lecture and rarely cracking the book. The class had only 2 grades: the mid-term and the final. I got a D on the mid-term. When I checked my grade on the professor's door at the end of the term, he had me down for a B. It was barely mathematically possible, and not highly probable that I had aced the final. Still, I never said anything because I needed the class to graduate. I still feel guilty whenever I think of it.

11. My parakeet and my sister's hamsters all died one Christmas day. My family was heating with a wood-burning stove that winter because we were BROKE. My dad stoked the fire up really high so it would still be warm when we got home from visiting grandparents. It got too hot in the living room and the animals literally roasted.

12. Mike and I had the first fight of our marriage over a pot roast. I bought a roast that I had planned to get 3 meals out of. I didn't know it, but Mike didn't really like roast much. So he ate the *whole thing*. Makes sense, right? He did it so that he wouldn't have to eat it day after day. Mike didn't have a job yet post-college and I was still in school and working part time. We were broke and there was no more grocery money until my next payday.

13. We play card/board games as a family nearly every day. Our favorites are Blokus, Stratego and Apples to Apples Junior.

14. Despite going to nearly every GHS football game in high school, I never understood how the game worked . . . until Mike begged me to play Strat-o-Matic Football with him.

15. Not only was I a nerd in high school, I was a State Champion Nerd (English Academic Bowl senior year). Just because I used the past tense there does not mean I am no longer a nerd.

16. Thomas was born at 27 weeks gestation because I had pre-eclampsia. He weighed 1 lb. 14 oz. and was in the hospital for 2.5 months.

17. I totally believe that happened so that God would be glorified in his life. See John 9:1-3.

18. http://www.biblegateway.com/ and http://www.apologeticsindex.com/ are 2 of my favorite websites. And, um, FB if that's not painfully obvious by now.

19. I should be ordering homeschool curriculum *right now*. I promised Thomas we would do chemistry after we finished his astronomy text. There are only a few lessons left of that.

20. I didn't want to homeschool Thomas when we first started. I thought it was the best among some not-great options we had at the time. I love it now and cannot imagine doing anything else!

21. Sometimes I laugh so hard that I get tunnel vision and feel like I might pass out. This is usually Carrie's doing.

22. People who have known me awhile don't believe that I am an introvert. Really. Myers-Briggs even says so - INFJ for those who know the lingo. I am terrible at small talk and get incredibly nervous being around new people. I rarely make the first move in a new friendship. I often come across as self-centered because I am too nervous to ask people questions about themselves. I'm working on it, though.

23. I speak fluent Sarcese.

24. I went to 10 National Parks in 2008.

25. Mike and I were the Phi Kappa Theta Disco Dance Champions of 1990. Seriously.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

super slacker


I am such a slacker. Between my addiction to facebook and having computer problems, I haven't blogged since December. SLACK-ER! Mike changed out the motherboard in this machine, though, and so far so good. *crosses fingers*

We've been good, though. Mike's parents came here for a Christmas visit. (I think that's the last I posted.) We went to Indiana for a Christmas visit. I went to this guy's New Year's Eve party in Greenwood. Had a good time with friends from high school and *bonus* saw Subway Jared there, too! There are photos & I was going to share one. Not on the hard drive, though and I can't locate the CD right now. Hmmmmm.

My grandmother passed away in January and I went home for the funeral. It wasn't unexpected and she was in a lot of pain at the end, so it was really a relief. I wasn't sure, because of the timing (a few weeks after our Christmas trip and only 1 week before a scope trip) if I'd get to make it. Things worked out with airfare, Mike being able to take care of Thomas and work from home one day. And I'm glad they did. Closure and all that, you know.

Thomas was supposed to be scoped in January. But while I was gone for my grandmother's funeral, he ended up with croup and a trip to the emergency room. We did manage to avoid steroids at that time, but because of his history with post-op complications and a narrow airway, it was decided it was best to postpone. So now we're playing the rescheduling game with Cincinnati again. So much fun.

Japanese culture day put on by my friend at A Spot to Reminisce and Discourse


Thomas and his friend Optimus Prime doing Japan-related crafts


Schoolwise things are going well. We're back in the groove and cruising along. Thomas is about to finish up his astronomy text, so we're moving on to chemistry soon. Placed the order yesterday and am hoping it will arrive pretty quickly.

We've been spending time getting to know Mike's boss's family lately. They're a really great family who moved here from Spartanburg. Went to their house for the superbowl. They were all dressed in Steeler's gear, including the dog, lol! Too cute!




We've finally gotten Thomas started in Cub Scouts. We didn't want to join a pack run by one of the wards here and had trouble getting the info from the community pack. Finally ran into the right person, at our church, no less! Thomas is pretty into it and spends a lot of time with his wolf handbook thinking about all the cool stuff he's going to get to do.