Wolverine Webelos

C is a cubscout and this year he is a Webelo scout.
(Every time I hear it I think: "Webelos wobble, but they don't fall down.")

For those of you who are nonscouts "Webelos" is a short version of "We'll Be Loyal Scouts". Dumb name I know! But some national scout master (long before they outlawed it) must have been really drunk and said..."I know that we have the Bobcats, Tigers, Bears, and Wolves as stages in cubscouts, but we really need to "update" and modernize the scouts. I think the older cubscouts ought to be called the We-Be-Los instead of the Wapati, Cougars, or some other large interesting animal. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.



Anyway.... At their Pack meeting this week, the Webelos explained their mascot for their den and sang their chant. (Each little group in the pack picked an animal as a symbol of their group that embodies the attributes of scouts and the group of boys.) C came up with a great idea. I think it fits perfectly. I'll add their cheer and you decide....



We are the Wolverines.

Strong!

Wolverines.

Brave!

Wolveines.

Determined!

Wolverines.

Smart!

Wolverines.

(and kinda stinky too)



Isn't that perfect for a bunch of 9 and 10 year old boys?

1 down, 3 to go

I got my flu shot yesterday. The county had their employee health fair and this year Kaiser Permanente offered to give flu shots to employees. I think I timed it really well since we don't have anything going on this weekend (miracle I know) and I can sleep and recoup if need to. Usually, the kids and I get them the day after Halloween (or the wednesday / thursday after) so we have the weekend to recover. But this week the timing hasn't worked out yet - Will have to do it next week when they're not sick.

I'm a big believer in flu shots. We get them every year. The one year we didn't get them, was the year that we got the flu and I can honestly see how people die from it. It was pretty scary actually. So after that experience I make it a priority to get one. (I'm exposed to so much crud where I work. Felons in general - and especially tweakers - don't generally take very good care of themselves and definitely aren't big on personal hygiene.) In the winter, you'd think half the docket were related to typhoid Mary and we always have someone who has an active case of MERSA (drug resistant staph infection). YUCK!!!

It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown

We carved pumpkins Wednesday night and I took pictures for the obligatory lighting. They turned out really cute.

M created and free carved this vignette of a wolf sitting on a rock, howling at the moon with a spooky cloud drifting by. She did a fabulous job - the picture doesn't do it justice.

C's crazy happy pumpkin - which if memory serves me right - is supposed to be a happy vampire bunny (There's a long and detailed story why it now has scars and only one tooth.)

I'll have to take another picture of my pumpkin in the light so that you can see its shape. (It just looks like it got in a fight and got a black eye.)

B carved Frankenstein's pumpkin (aka Pumpkinstein). It's really cool with all it's scars and intimidating features. (another the picture doesn't do justice.)

Monday Monday

I had planned on writing a lot on Sunday but then the girls were sick and we missed church and the following Halloween potluck. I was scurrying around getting stuff done, the I started feeling kinda puny. (There's some yucky stuff going around right now - so many people really sick at work and at school.) I still didn't feel up to par on Monday morning, so I stayed home to get up to full strength. (After this week, I can't get sick - my boss is gone for a week and a half and my co-worker is gone for the nearly week and half before Thanksgiving.) The whole month of November - our office is short handed.

I started feeling much better by the afternoon and was able to get some stuff done around the house - got a bunch of laundry done, bills paid, kitchen swept, frontroom vacuumed, etc. It felt good. Last night when I came home from B's soccer party, I was also able to can 12 qts of apple sauce and 3 batches of jalapeno jelly. (It jelled really hard again even though I religiously followed the Ball Book instructions and was more aggressive - didn't let it simmer and evaporate lots of liquid this time - still it wasn't the consistency I had envisioned. The recipe I followed called for 2 c apple cider vinegar and 6 c sugar and now I wonder if I should have done another recipe I ran across which says to use 1 c cider vinegar and 1 c water plus 6 c sugar. Any one have any suggestions?

Amber & Trooper

Amber just loves to play with Trooper. (M's little chihuahua puppy.)

They are just so funny to watch and play so well together.

They can play tug of war for hours.

That blur of beige is Trooper. His new trick is to get a running start and launch a 'sneak attack'.

When Trooper gets a little too rowdy, Amber just traps him until he calms down. I just get such a kick out of watching them play together. They are really great buddies.

Sleepy Head

So I did something this morning that I haven't had the opportunity / inclination to do for quite a while. I slept in....until the luxurious hour of 9am. I was really tired and the kids and dogs all slept in too. (It was a miracle - quite frankly.)

Thursday night, I stayed up until 1:30am canning...I got 7 quarts of apple butter done and made my first batch of jalapeno jelly. (I actually grew the jalapenos this year. Out of 7 bushes of jalepeno and bannana peppers the darn slugs got 4.) Although not huge, (peppers not slugs) they seemed to turn out alright. I also cut, seeded and pureed enough jalapeno's to make another 3 batches which I hope to do today after B's last rec soccer game ever. (small - yeah!! with lots of expounding on the topic later.)

Friday night was the homecoming football game and I had to work concessions again. I really admire all the work my friend Heather does to get everything organized and prepped. She has a job, three active kids, coaches soccer, is the scout leader for 2 packs of kids, and has a hubby whose work is in the Olympia area. She does a great job and doesn't get a lot of credit for it. Way to go! Anyway this game wasn't too bad - busy but not outrageous like it was against the Kalama game. (Last one was horrible!!! The local sports columnist featured our burgers in his article about the big grudge match. There were tons of people wanting to buy burgers and among other things - the propane valve on the big grill froze over. So very little propane got to the grill and so it took forever to cook the burgers. There were new people assembling the burgers and the whole setup was changed around so it was very disorganized. I've had people tell me that they had to wait up to an hour. So if I knew they had a bad experience last time, I made it up to them.... Like one guy always orders a couple double cheeseburgers, so this time I sold them at the regular cheeseburger price which made him happy (We "lost" $2 or 3 dollars on it, but he buys $25+ in food each game, so it was worth keeping one of the regulars happy.) Homecoming was a big game of course and we were up against the other undefeated team in the league - we killed them 30 something to zip. This means we will have at least one or two more home games due to playoffs. I guess this is good - more money for scout camp. Especially since C will be doing 2 week-long scout camps this summer, and M wants to do the 9 day horse trek in June. (She can do it because they open that one up to nonscouts. After she has that experience, the next year she will be old enough to be a "venture scout". Then she can work as a wrangler at Gilbert Ranch - the cub scout horse camp. Can you think of a better summer job for a 14 year old who LOVES horses - working at a horse camp. At least that's the plan / goal for now.)

Long story short... I was tired and I slept long and hard. Now we'll get to work on on the yard and finish up some more canning - B already is busily peeling and cutting apples as I write, because I promised her that I would make a batch of pale apple sauce.

Autumn Is Here

The leaves are finally starting to really turn and there is a slight chill in the air. The apples are ripe and crunchy. Fall has finally come to the Pacific Northwest. Hurray! I really like this time of year. I love driving down some of the older sections by Lake Sacajewea where there are so many big old trees whose branches extend as a colorful canopy over the streets. It is so pretty with all the different colored leaves.

Election Excitement

One of the most exciting things for me this election is that the amount of interest and level of participation I see from people from all walks of life. This is the first campaign in a very long time that the voters are NOT disenfranchised and jaded by now.

I'm hearing so many conversations by normal ordinary people about the candidates, the issues and this election. Its not just politico's either. I'm hearing waiters, bus drivers, teachers, shopping clerks, bus boys, sesame street mommies, etc. I hope they continue to be interested and get more involved in the process. Our country is in a world of hurt and it's going to take a lot of effort my many many people to get us out of it.

So with that said...
Get registered!
Get educated!
and
Go vote!!!

Do you feel lucky?

On Saturday, a bunch of my friends and I hired a bus to take all of us (nearly 30) to a casino "RedWinds" in Olympia for their "fabulous Saturday Nigth All You Can EAt Seafood Buffet". It was supposed to be a much bigger group, but an entire bus load of firefighters had to cancel on us after they had picked this date - some awards banquet / fundraiser they had to go to. Oh well, we'll see them in the Spring when we go back...so let me know if you're interested in hitting the "Seafood Express".

Speaking of the all you can eat buffet.....Wow! Some of our group can really pack away the king crab legs, lobster, prawns and prime rib!!!! Since I'm very allergic to shrimp I had to be relatively careful. So I had oysters on the half shell - which were not bad; the bacon-wrapped giant scallops - rather fishy but everyone else raved about them - but then again they WERE bacon wrapped scallops; I also had some fabulous lightly sauteed garlic asparagras (I went back for seconds); some good swordfish and a very nice piece of prime rib. The raspberry dark chocolate cake was also very good and the favorite of the group.

After we stuffed our faces to our heart's content and tummy's near discontent, we decided to walk around and see the sights. We meandered around for quite a while and watched other members of our group and cheered them on. I'm not much of a gambler. I work too hard for my money to just throw it away. (In fact, I haven't been in a casino in probably 15 years.) So I brought up about $30 to spend / lose. I was very happy to see that they had penny, nickel, quarter slots in addition to the dollar slots and the other traditional games of chance. I tried my hand at the nickel slots, but didn't know what I was doing (too conservative) and quickly lost $2 of my initial $3. Then I bought a $20 card and played around on the penny slots waiting until the bus was supposed to come at 10pm. I was doing pretty well, until someone convinced me to try one of their "favorite" penny machine that they had just won $90 and $80 on - different machines same game.... Within 20 minutes I lost $6 and told them I was done there.

So I went back to the game/ machine I had been playing. The lady to the left of me, won $606 dollars which was pretty exciting. The lady to the right of me won $40, so when she left I moved over to her game to kill the hour of so until the bus came at 10pm. What I like about it was that it took a lot longer for the winnings to show up (each little penny had to plunk into place) - thus prolonging my losing until the bus showed. (While playing this, I found out that the bus now was leaving at 11pm. I had a headache and wasn't too happy. All I could think was that while I'm in here -and the casino's jamming devices are not letting my cell phone work, something bad was going to happen to my kids and the headlines would read - "Children barely escape burning house while Mom gambles at casino".) Yes, I'm a little gun shy from C's carving knife as a can opener escapade the last time I went out for the evening.

Well, to make a long boring gambling story short and interesting.... I wasn't betting very much - remember I'm pretty conservative when it comes to this kind of stuff. However, I discovered that the best rate of return was to do 20 cent bets. But the gambling gods were not smiling on me.... I lost most of my money (only had 13cents)
until my luck turned. The clock hit the "magic hour" and the gods smiled upon me.

Yes, after 10pm I won $127.37 on this same little patriotic penny machine. Hurray!!!!
Now I'm glad we waited. I know that it's a total fluke and won't happen again, but it was a nice ending to story and I was glad, since it paid for my bus ticket, dinner and tips. And... I had money to buy pizza for the end of the season football party for C.

Broadway Hits

We went to a fabulous show last night and if you ever get the chance...It is well worth it. Make the effort and go see it!!!! The kids loved it. After the 2 1/2 hour show, C turns to me - give me a HUGE hug and says "Thanks Mom! That was awesome!!" M who loves Broadway show tunes also agreed. B who is my accomplished singer loved how amazingly the singers could project and other technical aspects. What show would inspire such excitement?....

We went to Neil Berg's 101 years of Broadway Hits. (He started it last year to celebrate Broadway's centennial, but it's so popular he came back.) Neil Berg is a Broadway producer and composer. (He did Prince & the Pauper, The Man who Would be King among others and is composing for the new show Grumpy Old Men which should come out next year.) I liked the fact that he introduced each song (there were over 40) and then gave a background about why this song, show, or composing team were so important.

He brought 5 real Broadway stars who have starred in at least 2 hits shows. (We had the female lead from Chicago and Grizabella in Cats who was nominated for a Tony for her work in It Ain't Nothing' But The Blues (Carter Conway). Rita Harvey was Christine in the Phantom for 5 years and is currently Hodel in the revival of Fiddler on the Roof. Danny Zolli (best known for his monumental number of performances as Jesus, Juda and Annas in more than 18 productions of Jesus Christ Superstar and has sung with The Three Tenors. Words fail to describe how amazing his performance of Jesus in the Garden of Gesthemene was. Wow! is all I can say!!! The two othe men were also incredible and not just because they were in my favorite musical of all time!! I in fact heard them both when they toured and performed Le Misrables. Charles Bergell (amazing baritone) performed Jean Valjean both on Broadway and during the National Tours. He was also Andre for the one of the national tours of Phantom of the Opera. The final singer was Erick Buckley who was the first person in the world to perform both roles of Marius and Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. He was Piangi in Phantom, Dave in the Full Monty and Roger in Grease! As you can tell this was an amazing cast of performers.

The show started out with Big Spender, and was followed by Send in the Clowns, He Had it Coming (one of C's faves), Nothing but a Dame, Tonight from Westside Story, This Nearly was Mine from South Pacific, Camelot's If Ever I Would Leave You, Over the Rainbow, a Judy Garland medley, If I Were a Rich Man and Far From the Home I Love from Fiddler on the Roof , Suddenly Seymour form Little Shop of Horrors, and many, many more. It was awesome! I loved the surprise ending!!!!! What an awesome idea!!! Go see it!!

stitches out

C got his stitches out on Monday night. It's pretty ugly. Sunday he popped more stitches, but there was no way in H E (double toothpicks) I was going to spend ANOTHER Sunday afternoon in the emergency room. I've had my life time's fill of bugs. Thank you very much.
Most of the stitches were pulling/ ripping or had popped. (It's just in such a horrendous spot. Just normal movement of his thumb puts so much pressure and tension that the skin had not grown together. It was pulling apart as soon as the stitches were removed. The poor excuse for tape the pediatrician gave us is so pathetic it doesn't stay stuck for even 2 minutes. I know it's in a bad spot - hence the nonhealing and soon to be huge kelloid scar, but even lame generic bandaids work better than that.

So I took matters into my own hands. I used my own butterfly bandages and a really good cloth backed bandaid. Then over the top of that I wrapped his hand a couple times using the pretape stuff the trainers used prior to wrapping ankles. It has held remarkably well. Even through football practice.

C came to me tonight. Took off the bandages and said "Look Mom! The edges are sticking together. Isn't that cool?" I replied, "Yes it is! Don't move a muscle til I get this retaped." So keep your fingers crossed that this little fix of mine holds and the scarring is kept to a minimum.

Things I HATE!!!

Some of things I hate!
--------------------------------------------

Walking into a wet spot in the bathroom floor because someone didn't wipe up after a shower.

Mean people.

Gangsta Rap videos.

Rude people.

Walking into a wet spot while wearing socks!!!

Taking a dish out of the dishwasher to find that it's STILL dirty.

Incompetent people.

Finding a large pile of clean laundry on the floor next to the laundry basket.

Bird poop on windows.

Runs in brand new hose right before a big event.

People who badly micromanage

Oyster Stew

Gerbil

Growing up, one of my sisters had a gerbil (until a very unfortunate event when my parents were gone and it escaped. And to set the record straight it WAS NOT really my fault he got squished that way but I have felt badly about it ever since.... Sorry Jumping Jellybean!!) I used to really enjoy sitting for hours watching the little gerbil explore its little habitrail and run endlessly on its little wheel. Lately, it feels like I'm in my own little habitrail and wheel. I run and run but don't seem to get anywhere, though I'm always exhausted at the end of the day.

I know I just need to basically get through the next week or so and then life will really calm down. M's last soccer game is this Wednesday. C only has 1 or 2 games left in their bid for an undefeated season. (This week is in Toutle. Call me for times if you're interested in watching.) B only has 2 more weeks and then she's done. M decided she doesn't want to go out for basketball. I'm not complaining that means she'll be home to help get things done and we can actually eat dinner as a family before 8pm. Even though it was gorgeous this weekend, I've become greedy. I'm hoping for a couple more nice days of weather. There is so much around the house and yard I want / need to do. I need to pick the rest of the stuff from my garden and bring it in. (Not sure where I'm going to put it. . . Although I do have more room now that I got rid of 5 or 6 dozen eggs this morning. I insisted my sister Aon take some home with her and I sold 3 dozen at work.) Now I just need to find homes for the 8+ dozen I have left.

Bugs Bugs Bugs

At the prompting of a friend, I will relate half our conversation. (I'll leave the really yucky part for another time....)
;-)

During the 3+ hours I sat in the waiting room of the emergency department waiting room on Sunday afternoon I realized how very different some families are from my own. I've come to the realization that I might be a snob. I was horrified by the lack of minimum standards of hygiene and public behavior some families exhibited. Seriously! I just couldn't believe them!!

I sat and watched a mother systematically pick the head lice and nits out of her daughter's hair and then raise her arm out straight and drop them on to the floor. Oooooooh GROSS!!!!!!! She looked like a giant blonde macqaue monkey in grooming session except she didn't eat them. After she finished one daughter, she started on the next kid. No one was around her, so when they went into the back, I told the nurses to disinfect that area with Bug Be Gone. It's just so gross! It gives me the willies and my head itch just thinking about it. ICK!!!!!

At Least He's Cute!!!

So I know everyone is very anxious to find out how the auction turned out. (I wish I could tell you because I don't know myself.) I went and ate dinner. Our table was 2nd in the dessert dash so we got the dessert we wanted - chocolate peanut butter pie from Judy Restuarant - yum!!. I bid and got a killer deal on 10 yards of bark chips (dump truck load) and was eagerly awaiting another prize package - Great Wolf Lodge family suite, 4 family swim nights, $100 gas card, zoo tix, plus gift cards to 4-5 restaurants and a bunch of other cool stuff. But I didn't get the chance. (sigh....) About 8:40 I got an emergency call in the restuarant from my kids. Chris cut himself because he couldn't find the can opener.




A picture's worth a thousand words....so let's see what kind of story these two tell about what happened to Chris tonight.

The good news is that it was the fastest visit to the Emergency Room we've ever had. We were in and out in less than 1 hour and 15 minutes. (It was amazing!!!)
So ... so .... many things are going through my head about this and most of the time I'm shaking my head. Thank God he's cute and very very lucky!!!!

blogs abound

I added some of my favorite blogs. (some are family & friends - some are just random ones I've stumbled across that struck a chord in me.) I need to try and find a few of my "old favorites" that I had marked - before my computer crashed last January and I lost almost everything. (My friend who is a computer whiz was able to restore some of my pix but I lost literally thousands of pictures. Sad part was I was just getting ready to back up on to disks when my virus protection program failed. grrrr!)
I'm always on the look out for interesting blogs.... so feel free to give me any of your favorites.

I digress....

Half way through the madness of my week. I can't wait for Sunday afternoon!!! I keep promising myself something wonderful like curling up with one of the books I've started or watching a movie. Only 3 more days!!

It has been just as crazy as I thought. It seems like every day I have had been going from one meeting until the next meeting from 7am til 9 or 10pm nearly every night. (At work when I'm not in a meeting - usually about the budget -I'm crunching numbers for the budget.)
I start out the day with Parent Teacher Conferences at 7:15 - the kids are motivated to leave the house early because I promise them "The World's Best Doughnut" at the Castle Rock Bakery. Their maple bars are AMAZING!!!! (I don't like maple bars actually - but I LOVE their's. (something about their frosting - not a glaze). oh yum!!!!! Anyway, I digress.

So far I've done 2 conferences. The big news was M and B passed the WASL's - M got very high 3's and B had 4's.) WASL - Washington Academic Standards of Learning. It's our standardized test. It's kinda controversial, because they wanted every child to pass this "minimum" standard of knowledge so it was linked to graduation. (You must pass the 10th grade standard by graduation to get some little sticker on your diploma.) I thought it was a great program until President Bush had the horrible idea of "No Child Left Behind". WASL was hard but realistic. The have to show their work and get marked off if they don't. They have to write essays. The concept I have with NCLB is that there is no national standardized test. Texas has one of the EASIEST tests in the country so sure they're schools score well. But Washington had this comprehensive phased in concept about math, reading, writing, science, social studies, art, music, citizenship. It was very interesting and impressive to see teh goals and standards they wanted our kids to learn. (Olympic Elementary had giant posters laminated and hung in the hall.) But with the backlash of not meeting arbitrary federal standards on their timeline, you can have the feds come in, fire all the staff at a school and "recreate" the school. So now, teachers worry too much about teaching to the WASL, but luckily it's set up that even then the kids have to know how to do the 3 r's. I digress again

The budget is going slowly but surely. It's due tomorrow and most of our data and justifications are entered / written. We discovered that it was way harder than it should be due to not having several critical pieces of information - like 2009 salaries/benefit amounts, the number of computers & other technology we're being charged for, etc. And only part of the 2008 budget was amended (after the handouts were printed for each dept to work from) and we didn't have anything written on what had changed with the new grant that had been transferred from Juvie. It was pretty funny actually. It was supposed to be the easy (and everyone told us that it was supposed to be and wanted to know why it was so complicated) but it hasn't been. Partially because of Debbie's son but mainly because we're both budget virgins- but I digress. (I'll have to post more on that later to do it justice.)

My AOC interpreter audit went great!! (The state auditors came in to see how we were doing in regards with our Language Assistance Plan and keeping current with all the requirements.) I'll have to write more about it - cuz they were so impressed they wanted to hire me. But I digress..

The North County Auction is next week.
NO!!!! Wait!!!!
It's not!!!
It's in TWO (2) days!!!!.
I gotta quit doing that! Soon I hope to have the calendar in my head synched with the wall calendar.
The organizing committee has met a couple more nights to finalize everything and drink bloody mary's. The auction has a lot of really cool stuff. It's going to be a blast!! Oh a word to the wise - don't go to the Rose Tree on a Tuesday unless you're very brave, drunk or partially deaf. (It's karaoke night in the lounge. - classic bad karaoke.) But I digress....
Hope I do OK. (the lady who has been sick, just had surgery after nearly 2 weeks in ICU at OHSU (Oregon Health Sciences Hospital - the big dog). I guess she had a really bad infection in her gut and they had to remove a lot - colon, hysterectomy, and other such parts. I also found out that she doesn't have health insurance. She is such a great person and does so much for our community. (there isn't an event that she or her hubby isn't there planning and/or working.) Keep them in your prayers.

Well, I had planned on doing just a quick little entry but I got a lot to say and not a lot of time to say it. soon I'll get some time off - Sunday maybe, but then there's all the household chores that have been sliding this week to do.... but I digress.