Better Quiz!

Whoa! I only got 2 out of 8 on the last quiz. Let's try something fun instead. Try this! It's even appropriate for the situation we're in around here!


Thanks Nance for the blogger tutoring! It worked great!

Spanish Quiz

Not much going on around here, but that doesn't mean you can't have fun. Take this quiz and see how you much you can rock out your Espanol.

There's no FUN in fundraising

I'll start this post with a little upbeat story. We trudge off to the yearly Open House a few weeks ago and get shocking news. The Spring fundraiser was so unbelievably successful that, this year, for the first time, there would be no fall fundraiser. The place went wild! (A note on this: The spring fundraiser was overpriced tiny tubs of cookie dough that I refused to participate in. The fall fundraiser is usually Entertainment Books which I love and always buy and use to death. C'est la guerre!)

But this reprieve from order form pushing was short lived. Here it comes, the Girl Scout Nut Sale, the second hardest thing to sell. What's that you say? Girl Scouts sell cookies, don't they? Oh, we sure do! Lots and lots of cookies! But before that comes the Nut Sale, known as the Calendar Sale back when I was a lass. But the calendars didn't make the money, so now it's nuts and other little snacks in pretty packaging. It's supposed to get the troop year going, but it's such a drag... Luckily none of it is terribly expensive, but that's because you only get tiny amounts.

So then what is the #1 hardest thing to sell? Why it's Boy Scout Popcorn! You want to talk overpriced..... fogetaboutit! The cheapest item is $10 and it goes all the way up to $50. IT'S POPCORN! It's a nightmare to push. And I don't really like any kind of popcorn, so I'm a terrible salesperson. It's hard to be persuasive with the "yucky" look on your face!

Alas! These two sales are overlapping - right now. When people see me coming they scamper up trees and throw themselves into mailboxes. I don't blame them. And I know what you're thinking -- The kids are the Scouts, they should do the selling. Yeah, right. If it was up to them, they wouldn't sell one item. But all in all, I'd rather sell this kind of stuff than work a car wash or a spaghetti dinner any day!

New Kitten Pics

It's been awhile since I've given an update on our kitten situation. Saturday they were 4 weeks old. Two more weeks to go before they are ready to find new homes. They are getting to be a lot of fun now. They run, pounce, bite and scratch. And they are always fighting with each other. The little girl is almost litter box trained completely, but the little guy is not very interested. They both have shown some interest in solid cat food, which is good news because Mama Cat is getting pretty tired of them.

Here's the little lady with her mommy. She's not going to be all black like her mom after all, but a very dark grey. She also has the faintest of stripes.

Look at this sweet little face! He is so furry and fat! But he's a bit shy. He's really good at backing up fast under things to get away from you.
They don't hang out in the box as much as they used to. Now you can find them taking a nap anywhere in my room. Last night, they were under my bed. But wherever they are, they are curled up together.
They haven't really started playing with toys yet, but we're always trying. They do love to chew on drinking straws, which saves our fingers.
This weekend was a busy one for us. My Girl Scout troop came and camped out in the backyard Friday night. It was a little cold, but it didn't rain. We all stayed up too late and sang too loud for our neighbors, I'm sure, but we had a great time. This weekend was also the annual Apple Festival which is junk food heaven for me. Last night we had caramel apples and funnel cakes for dinner at the festival. Now if that isn't quality parenting, I don't know what is!

Toothy Problems

Ethan has had two very loose teeth for way too long now. I am a pretty nerves-of-steel chick about most things, but I am a full blown sissy about loose teeth! I can't stand kids messing with their teeth. I hate it when they want to show you some gross trick they can do involving a loose tooth and their tongue. It creeps me out beyond belief! It probably all started when Callie had to have three baby teeth pulled by an oral surgeon when she was 5. (She was growing two rows of shark teeth- yucky!) Watching that, with all the blood and the disturbing length of those pulled teeth really put me on bad ground. Knowing this about myself, I probably have the worst job possible, beside being working in a dentist office. I've got kids constantly showing me their teeth. Everyday and in every grade, there is some gappy faced kid trying to show me something I don't want to see! I know that they're proud and they think it's cool, but I really have a hard time with it.

Anyway, back to the homefront. Callie has lost almost all of her baby teeth. She's been on tooth losing binge lately. She only has four left and two are loose. Boys hold on to their teeth longer than girls, I've recently been told by the dentist. Boys teeth are on a schedule two years behind girls. Isn't that an interesting piece of trivia! So Ethan still has 10 teeth left to lose. Yesterday, if I wrote this blog, I would have wrote that he had 12, but he's had a big time of it. He lost one last night in the middle of the night. It woke him up, so he didn't swallow it. Hurray! And at breakfast while he's telling us the story about the tooth that woke him up, the other loose one fell out. Double Hurray! Two teeth in 6 hours! Hold on to your wings, Tooth Fairy! It's going to be a busy night!

The Reality of my TV

Here's the thing: We don't watch a lot of television. We just don't. This makes us slight social outcasts. When you're in a group of people, they tend to talk about the shows that everyone is watching. We just sit there looking dumb, I guess. It's really bad when I go to get my hair color done. The girls who do hair only know how to make TV chit chat and if you don't watch, you've got nothing to talk about with them. It ends up being a long couple of hours.

But it's not like we don't watch any TV. We've got shows we like. We watch most all of the series on HBO, Deadwood being our all-time favorite. Right now The Wire is on, which E likes but I can take or leave. They killed off my favorite character in last year's season finale, so I'm not feeling attached right now. E is watching the World Series of Poker right now. The kids watch the same stupid shows on Nick over and over again. That annoys the hell out of me. Not the shows themselves, but the fact that I known they've seen them all hundreds of times. How can they stand that? To counter balance it, we've also got the kids hooked on Star Trek Next Generation. No one is cooler than Jean Luc Picard! And did any one else watch Who Wants to be a Superhero? on the SciFi Channel? That was a fun show! And I guess I should mention that I am hooked on Project Runway this year. This the first year I've watched it and I came in about a month ago with the show where they were remaking the style of an icon. I don't even know how it happened. Why was the channel on Bravo anyway? It's a mystery, but I'm in deep. I've been able to catch up on the episodes I've missed for the most part and I'm on pins and needles waiting for this week's show.

But my whole reason for this blog was because I'm seriously considering watching the new Survivor that's starting this week. I have never watched the show, but this new premise has really got my interest. Dividing teams by race? You have got to be kidding me! It's got bad idea written all over it. Society as a whole could be damaged! I'm not the kind to slow down to rubberneck an accident and I can't stand daytime talkshows, so why do I want to watch this? Maybe there's subliminal messages in the ads....

Catcher in the Rye

I'm moving right along with my Young Adult reading list and so far, it's been pretty enjoyable. Some have been re-reads like "Fahrenheit 451", which is still a good book, but that ending has some problems! I've read some Avi, who I suspect is not one man, but a team of people writing under one name a la V.C. Andrews and Shakespeare. "The Chocolate War" was a good re-read. Lois Duncan's "I Know What You Did Last Summer" was a really good book and a lot better than that crappy movie they made from it! And I really liked "The Outsiders". I can't believe I've never read it before.

The book I just finished was "Catcher in the Rye" and I came to it with an open mind, because even though I couldn't remember one thing that happened in the book, I did recall that I didn't like it. But that was a long time ago and I was a different person. Let's see what maturity and an education will bring to it, I said to myself. But I'm sorry, I still can't stand it. It is probably the most annoying book I've read in a very long time. Now my man here is defending it to the hilt and I see all his points and I appreciate it. Yes, it's a device, there's a pattern, there's a rhythm... I get it. And yes, Holden is only 16, so his thoughts would be jumbled and repetitive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Holden is mentally ill, getting worse each day. Okay, fine. And look at the year it was written, 1945, what a break through piece of literature, nothing had been written like it before! Blah, blah, blah! It's no good! I do appreciate all that, I really do. But it's still a complete drag to read. I literally trudged through it, like a soldier through mud. E kept saying, just stop, you don't have to finish it, but once I start a book, I've got to see it through, to see if it redeems itself. And near the end came the only part that made me smile: When Holden was talking about what would end up written on his tombstone. That killed me, it really did. But that's the problem. Everyone telling you something is so great. I hate it when someone calls something a classic. Anyone who calls that book a classic is a phony. It depresses the hell out of me.

More of the Pool!

Blogger freaked out on us there, so we had to cut it short. Here's more shots of our lastest creation.

Here's a good idea of what fun you can have in the pool. We have plenty of floating and diving toys available for your use.

Enter our pool through our grand entrance way!
Enjoy snacks and beverages in our cafe or just relax in one of our many lounge chairs.
Our pool toy rental shop is always stocked with fun stuff for you.

See our new pool!

This is our new pool. It has all the features that a pool should! Our main pool is surrounded by two decks full of fun!

Our water slide is a blast of fun. Here our guest waiting for their turn under the eye of one of our trained and caring staff.
Relax in our hot tub!
We have two diving boards carefully watched by our lifeguard. You can see the waterslide in the back.
In our main pool there is lots to do!