Valentine's Day

It has been a busy week.  Scott got home, we had the Blue and Gold Dinner (a big day in the Cub Scout leader year) and Anna's preschool Valentine's party all within a few days of each other.  I am not the normal room mom for Anna's class but I (stupidly?) volunteered to do the Christmas party when the regular room mom wasn't able to.  That party went fine, although I was very nervous about it.  Then a week or so before Valentine's Day, Anna's teacher asked me if I could do the Valentine's party too since the room mom wasn't able to again.  Wait, maybe I am the regular room mom and I just don't know it yet.  Anyway, I decided I would do the party and the second time around, I wasn't nearly as nervous about it.  Scott was able to come to the party too since he got home a few days before and Grant was also very excited to attend.

Here are some of the kids decorating mailboxes at the party.  It didn't take long to do but the kids liked it.

 Decorating

 

Then we did a heart relay race.  The relay race concept was a little complicated for our pre-k crew, but they had fun.  Each kid would run down, grab a heart and then act like the animal (or robot) on their heart on the way back.  Here one girl was being a penguin and one an elephant.

 This boy was wiggling like a worm

Lots of fun

After we decorated some heart shaped Jello jigglers with whipped cream, sprinkles and fruit.  We did cookies for Christmas otherwise I would have done that.

 Mmmm, Jello

 Grant even got to participate

 And that went right into snacks

We also did a stacking conversation hearts game while we were snacking.  Some kids just wanted to eat their hearts instead.  The party went well I thought.  I'm glad its over.  I also have Matthew's birthday party at the end of this week.  So three parties in one week?  I must be nuts.

We also had some VDay fun at home.  The kids got little goodie bags from Mom and Dad...with these whistling lips inside.  So fun!

And Scott made me these strawberries - all different kinds of toppings.  So sweet...so delicious.  He also made us all homemade egg McMuffins for breakfast which the kids LOVED!  And he took me out for lunch before the pre-k party.  And we even had a nice dinner of takeout from a sushi place nearby.  It was a very lovely day...wasn't sure Scott would be home by the 14th this year, but so nice that he was.  Happy Valentine's Day!!

Hairdo

Miss Truvy, I swear to you that my personal tragedy will not interfere with my ability to do good hair.
-Annelle,  Steel Magnolias (possibly the best "girl movie" of all time)

Anna doesn't like me to do her hair very much, so when she does let me it's a special treat

I even let her do my hair sometimes to encourage her.  Her she is giving me a hairdo

 

Lots of clips

Recently she let me braid and pony tail her hair a few times

It's a rarity

She doesn't have a lot of hair either.  It doesn't stay in a pony tail very well

But so cute!

I'm hoping she lets me do her hair more often

Grant on the other hand, needed little encouragement

He wanted me to do his hair when he saw me playing with Anna's

Well, he liked it for a little while.

The Cub Scout Circus

Sometimes working in Cub Scouts is a circus

Tonight was our Cub Scout pack Blue and Gold dinner.  The planning of this event has seemed unduly stressful to me.  It was more the managing of the personalities of the committee than anything, but somehow we made it happen and it turned out pretty good. 

I'm the pack committee chair for our pack, going on two years now and this job has definitely had some frustrating moments for me, as I guess all church callings do.  The lessons I've learned from doing this job in general could fill another blog post, but let me sum it up with this one lesson:  

You can't please everyone, so don't try.

The theme we chose this year was the circus.  Here are some of the decorations as we set up.  Looking back I think there are some easy ways we could have made it look a lot more circus like.  More lessons learned for me

 Some of the set up and several of my kids running around

 The dinner line in full swing

As a committee we decided to serve corndogs as our main dish. A few of us, including me, thought it wasn't the greatest main dish idea, but everyone seemed to really like them at the dinner.  We cooked over 100 corndogs (actually Scott cooked them...thank you Scott!) and nearly all of them got eaten.

 Eating

This is our new Cub Master.  He is very earnest and has many questions for me.  I've been doing this long enough now that I know the answers.  Amazing.  This is only his 2nd pack meeting ever and everything went well.  Phew!   We hadn't had a Cub Master for 10 months before we got him, and I ran most of the pack meetings during that time...and several before that since our old Cub Master had to travel a lot.   

Another lesson I've learned doing this job: job continuity is important.  A lot of the Cub Master knowledge we had has been lost because there was a 10 month gap in which our old Cub Master moved away.  Something to think about.

 One of the boys earned his Bobcat badge!

 The Webelos doing a skit.  Their skit involved toy guns...they were in heaven!!

And the scout leaders being recognized by the stake.  I was called up to be "recognized" shortly after I took this picture.  I later overheard the stake rep talking to another person about how it was VERY IMPORTANT to let the ward leadership know that a pack committee chairman has to have certain  qualities/be of a particular type.  Interesting.  I didn't hear what those qualities were or if I had them.  I was too busy doing stuff.  

In any case we made it through this year's Blue and Gold dinner.  The cub scout leaders all worked together and the boys had a terrific time, and that's what matters.  And like many other events, there were a few lessons learned:

1) People like corndogs more than they want to admit that they like them.

2) Balloon animals make kids a little crazy, particularly balloon SWORDS*

3) People don't like cupcakes as much as we think they like them

4) Popcorn might be a bad idea for a scout event

5) It doesn't take as much time to set up as you think when you have LOTS of people helping.**

So Blue and Gold is done for another year.  Hooray.  I won't be around to do it next year since we are moving, but I have a feeling my work with cub scouts is not yet done.  I have three sons after all.  ;)

*The balloon animal debacle of 2013 is another story that could fill a blog post.  I don't even know how to sum it up except to say that we ended up with balloon animals (made by one of the scout parents) on terms deemed acceptable and appropriate to me.   The "terms" were much in question.  In retrospect I wish we hadn't had them though.  They made the boys too rowdy.

**I learned this lesson last year.  Last year for Blue and Gold we had a bunch of scout leaders show up to help set up and 90 minutes to do it.  With everyone helping we were done in 45 minutes and then stood around with nothing to do for 45 minutes.
This year I asked if people could come an hour early to help set up (I was coming 2 hours ahead to get things ready) and one person (let's call her my "problem child") got mad and sent emails around about how irresponsible I was to only leave an hour to set up and how she didn't want to set up "right before."  She wanted me to meet her at the church FIVE HOURS prior to the event to set up.  I told her it wasn't going to happen but she could go set up at that time if she could get a key.  She and another leader went and set up for about an hour early in the day and then left.
At five I showed up with my crew and everyone was mad at me because everything was already set up and there was nothing to do for an hour but stand around.
(Mad face)
I submit that no matter when it was done there was still only an hours worth of set up.  Oh well.

Welcome Home Daddy

I'm behind a little bit on things I want to blog about, but this one is breaking news, so will jump to the front of the queue.  Today we went to the airport to pick up Scott.  He's been in Afghanistan for 6 months, since a few days after John was born.  We were all very excited!

 

 Waiting and waiting for him to come...

 Do we see him?

 There he is.  He was instantly swarmed by little people.

And Johnny came for a snuggle too.  John was only 4 days old when he left.  Boy has he grown!  He'll be six months tomorrow.  John did his characteristic big eyed look.

All together again.  Someone took a picture for us and after I was sorry I didn't get down or have Scott get up...'cause we're all over the place.  Oh well.  I like how Grant kept turning his head up to look at me.  I wasn't sure if he was worried I was leaving or just wanted to see what I was doing.  He was happy to see dad, as we all were.  And I don't think they've been feeding Scott well enough there...he's due for some home cooking!  Glad to be together as a family again.  So glad!

John Time

Here are a few pictures of John from the past few weeks.  He's growing so fast and getting pretty heavy!!  At least he seems heavy to me!  Here are Matthew and John talking to each other.

 

John is getting more and more wiggly.  He can pivot around (with his head as the pivot point) and roll over onto his belly.

 

 

He loves talking to everyone and being entertained by them!

 

 

 He is pretty good natured...but of course, wants to be held a lot.  Here he is fussing to be held.

 Aaaah...he got picked up.  That's better.

When he falls asleep he will sometimes look way up on the side...like he doesn't want to see any of us anymore.  Then he can sleep.

 Here's a blurry picture of Grant hanging out with John

Best buds!

And all my boys together.  Grant and Matthew played Hungry Hippos while John just got to be near by.  He was ok with that.

And Anna, when she's in a good mood, is very happy to fuss over her littlest brother.  She gives him lots of hugs and kisses.  I notice his blue eyes more when he's next to one of his brown eyed siblings.  We love you Johnny!  Keep growing big and strong!

When I Grow Up...

Anna: Mom, I want to be a lot of things when I grow up
Me: Let's make a list
Anna: I want to be an artist, a dentist, an astronaut, a teacher, a store owner, a librarian...

(pictures were drawn about each and we talked about what they do and how she would be good at each one)

After drawing her pictures, she came over and helped me mix some brownie batter I had been working on. She was having a lot of fun using the hand mixer to help me beat the batter. She laughed and said, "this is fun, I guess I want to be a mommy when I grow up."

It kind of makes up for the other day when I wanted to sell her to the gypsies.

Painting Time

I have a pretty well stocked supply of crafts.  Maybe too well stocked.  I have a lot of things sitting around taking up space that I haven't done with the kids yet.  But when things get really desperate I can usually grab something for us to do.  On this particular day the kids were running around screaming (literally, that's what they were doing) after school and I grabbed a package of ceramic figures I had purchased in the Walmart craft section (PS: their craft section is definitely worth checking out).  We got the paints and things set up and the kids got painting.  On a normal day, I probably wouldn't have been able to drop everything at dinner prep time and do this, but since my mother-in-law is here helping and we were only having a modest dinner that night we were able to make this happen.  I love it when the kids paint figurines like this...they seem to get more into it than painting on paper.  Anna is working on her zebra...which was orange and then became black.

Matthew usually has a short attention span when it comes to art projects (unlike Anna), but he spent quite a while painting his figures.

Never wanting to be left out of a big kid activity, Grant had to be a part of this too.  I let him use some dot markers (Walmart also has a generic brand of these).   He had fun and managed to get quite painty.  He's just dangerous with paint, what can I say.

 Matthew still concentrating hard.  I think that might be a tiger.

 

Anna has a lot of stamina when it comes to art projects.  She loves painting and drawing and she will work and work and work at her creations.  She has said several times that she wants to be an artist when she grows up and I would like to introduce her to new mediums, like sculpture...you know at a preschooler level (is that just play-doh?).  I know little to nothing about art by the way.   She's very focused on painting her elephant here.  The painting activities are always fun, even if the set up and clean up seem to take longer than the activity, its still worth it.