Raingutter Regatta 2014

I don't know if you remember that Sport is turning 11 in June, but that means the end of his Cub Scouting career. He has really enjoyed having his dad and brother running the pack! Two of his favorite activities are the Pinewood Derby and the Raingutter Regatta. So my sweetie squeezed the Regatta into the schedule early so Sport would get one more chance to compete.

Then with the ball schedules and school stuff everything was just so busy! They hardly even had time to make the boats. We finally made them during Family Home Evening and we actually did the sails right after school on Tuesday which was really cutting it close since the Regatta was on Tuesday night. I think I told you already that I spent a bunch of time embroidering the hats for the winners. I also picked up and prepared the awards this time. I didn't want any problems since this was a big one for Sport and several other boys. We had 4 boys receive their Arrow of Light in one evening. I think that's a Pack record!

Anyway, my sweetie did the awards first and then we got to the races. Sport was very relieved that his dad didn't say anything TOO embarrassing about him. The races were exciting and quick. My sweetie insists on using electric fans rather than having the boys blow on them. I think that's partly because we have a boy with asthma and my sweetie understands how unfair that sort of competition can be.

We were so surprised when Sport's boat came in first place! And then even more surprised when Curly won first place in Open Class! Prima Donna's boat was chosen the Best Looking Boat in the Open Class, so we brought 3 of those hats back home with us. The kids were pretty excited.

My sweetie put his boat and the Dog Walker's boat up against each other for the last race. But they don't participate in the same sort of prizes as the other people do, so when my sweetie hesitated over what might be awarded, I shouted out that the winner could take me out to dinner. That got a chuckle from the crowd, but the Dog Walker suddenly got really nervous when his boat won. Turns out he didn't really want to buy me dinner. I think the part he missed was that his dad would be paying either way.

So we decided on breakfast instead and the Dog Walker took me, Curly, and Baby Doll to breakfast at Chick-filA this morning. Thank goodness for free coupons (and chicken minis).

Guest Blogger: Mission Location Replacements by Elder Dog Walker

Kauri Sue Hamilton School

I've been asked to Guest blog again about my mission. This time I'm not going to change the subject about the mission and thinking I should talk about Sister Teach. This time, I'm going to talk about things happening on the mission. It was great to be serving a mission in the seminaries at Kauri Sue Hamilton in Riverton and Hartvigsen in Taylorsville. Unfortunately, it's been a lot of months ever since I've been serving in the seminaries at these schools. It's getting close to the summer and I've been praying to see of what I can do to continue to serve my mission. Hartvigsen has been giving offers of having summer classes and Kauri Sue Hamilton isn't having any summer classes. I want to serve at a different seminary or institute if Kauri Sue Hamilton is going out for the summer and I have to wait until Fall to go back. It has been great to serve a mission at Kauri Sue Hamilton and Hartvigsen, but my mission isn't over until January of 2015. I'm still going to have to continue to pray and ask Heavenly Father if he knows another seminary/institute I can serve to in the summer. Would any of you like to join me in praying to see of where I can serve at? If you do, then that would be great. Thank you for your support! :)

Hartvigsen School 

A Letter from Teach in Texas

Texas

Our work space

Hello my dear family and friends whom I love greatly!

So. First of all, good news is that I'm not getting transferred. I get to stay here with the members and investigators I love dearly. (: I am going to finish training one of my companions and the other is going down south to be a STL! (: I'm excited for her. She has served in the south before... it's hot down there!

Speaking of hot, things are really starting to inch up to the summer months. Humidity, tornado weather, and short sleeve shirts. It's HOTTTT! but, it will just get worse as the locals always love to inform us. (: Buckle down. It'll be a wild hot summer!

Here is the weekly update on our wonderful people. We have a family that we taught 2 weeks ago. (: I love them. They were a potential and we knocked on their door during a rain storm and they let us in. So we set a return appointment for yesterday. We had taught them lesson 1 (aka the restoration) and had handed out a BOM to each member of the family. This time when we went everyone was home PLUS the dad!! (: Woot for getting the head of the household involved in the lesson. We were very happy about that. So we reviewed lesson one.
 

We had a member with us who is preparing to serve a mission and she shared her testimony of the BOM powerfully. (: I absolutely love opening my mouth and proclaiming that there is a prophet on the earth today. One of the investigators is 16 and she was SHOCKED that there was a prophet. (: In a good way. She was just like, "He is a prophet for everyone? Does everyone know that? How does he know he is the prophet? What if he says no? Does he ever talk to the people?" Spitfire. It was swell. They are committed to coming to church on Sunday, (: so we are excited. (:

Ok, So we do a TON of member work here and we were extremely excited when we were offered an opportunity to work with the activity day girls. We got to go to activity days and talk to those precious young souls about what it is like to be a missionary. They even got little name tags and their own mission calls. Sometimes I feel like a celebrity as a missionary. We truly are the servants of the Lord spreading His gospel. That. is. so. cool. (:

One more miracle story for ya... so there was a former investigator that they taught before I got here but it turns out he didn't live in the area and then he got a job that made him travel and eventually he had to stop taking the lessons back in... January. We have been praying for people to find and lead him to baptism so we were STOKED when we got this text saying, "Hi, this is _____, Aaron (fellowshipper) introduced us at his place and you guys were introducing me to the plan. Do you remember me?" Of course our jaws drop and we text him back and let him know that we are different missionaries, but yes! He asks if he can give us a call. He calls and I talk to him. His life had brought him back around and he wanted to learn more!!! (: We contacted Aaron. Then... turns out we talked to the investigator and he is living nearby. I called him to tell him that we need to help him get in contact with the missionaries in his ward... Get this. Literally while I'm on the phone he says, "Wait, hold on. they're calling me. The caller ID says LDS Missionaries." So he talks to them and it all works out. BUT THE BEST PART EVER... He lives in the ward my old companion is serving in. (: So she gets to continue to teach him. Obviously the church is true. (:

Memorial Day 2014

This morning dawned bright and early. I promised my little brother we would be in Nephi by 10:00 AM and that was about 1 1/2 hours away. My sweetie was up at 6:30, buying potted mums and stuff to make Belgian waffles. I was awake by 7:00 even though I was up late the night before. There was still so much to do to get ready!

I took a shower while he mixed up the waffles and by 7:45 most of the kids had dragged themselves out of bed. I called Bossy and invited her family over to feast with us. Our plan was to be in the van by 8:30. We almost made it. We just had to stop for gas and ice before we hit the road.

We rolled into Nephi at 10:00 on the dot and were at the cemetery by 10:05 where we joined with my brother and sisters to study a little family history and enjoy each others' company. I loved listening to my dad tell stories of when he was a boy! I was wishing I had thought to bring my video camera.

We left Nephi in our little caravan of three vehicles, Bossy's family in one car, Drama Queen with several siblings in her car, and our big van full of everyone else. We drove through a bunch of small towns, Levan, Gunnison, Centerfield until we reached our destination of the smallest town in that area of Utah, Axtell. My grandma was born there, but not buried there. Her brother and sister and their spouses as well as her parents were laid to rest in that tiny pioneer cemetery. We placed some flowers and shared some memories and then climbed back in the vehicles. We still had lots of cemeteries to visit.

It took only a few minutes to backtrack to the Centerfield cemetery where Grandma and her first husband are buried. Again we placed flowers, shared stories and were back on the road. We stopped at Subway and used the 10 free sub coupons the girls earned for Reflections to get some lunch. We got food for all 17 of us for $23. Then we made our way to a little park with a softball field we had passed earlier. We picnicked on the grass and played a couple of innings before it was time to pack up again. As fun as it was, we were "burning daylight!"

It took us almost 20 minutes to get back to Ephraim. We drove past the old houses, including Grandma's that now has renters in it which is weird. Then we headed for the cemetery. We placed flowers on my mom's grave (has it really been almost 8 years?!) and Grandpa's. I wandered a little. I actually love cemeteries and find them extremely interesting. This one from my hometown is hard because I know more people in the cemetery now than I know who still live there in the city.

Once again it was back on the road with several more stops to make.

We took the back roads into Spring City and pointed out our favorite make-out spot to the kids. They were completely appalled! What's wrong with kids these days?

Then we drove through town and my sweetie told a bunch of stories about his dad who grew up there.We tasted the fresh spring water and then drove to the cemetery. My sweetie's grandparents are buried there. His grandpa died in the flu epidemic of 1918 and his grandma died long before my sweetie was born, but we still honor their memory and tell the stories we know. We believe these oral histories are so important! And don't worry, they are also written down so we can keep sharing them through the generations.

As we drove the last few miles into Mt. Pleasant, I could see that the kids were getting tired and the Drama Queen was starting to talk about heading back to Nephi. We had one last promise to keep and that was a shake at Rodger and Jenni's Dairy Freeze. Jenni is my sweetie's little sister and since we get down there so rarely, we like to support her if we can. So we feasted on ice cream and french fries. By the time we were finished, some of us were beginning to feel the strain of too many sweets and treats so we decided to walk back across town to the cemetery.

My sweetie came along later with the van and we shared our last memories and stories near his dad's grave. What a wonderful man he was! Then we hoofed it across the cemetery with our last pot of mums and placed them at my sweetie's maternal grandma and grandpa's grave.

Our last stop was a nice visit with my sweetie's mom. We didn't stay long since she was tired after a full day entertaining company. It took us about an hour and a half to drive home. Most of the kids dozed off in the car and I even got a minute or two to snooze.

It was a wonderful, happy day, full of memories and family.

My favorite things.






Happy Memorial Day!

Memorial Day Weekend

Did you miss me? Drama Queen stepped up and posted yesterday because she knew I was taking a little break. It's been such a busy couple of weeks and I finally felt like I had a minute to relax. So let me tell you how I've been spending my time.

Thursday night was Princess' Dance Concert. She did a beautiful job and then rushed right off to her Youth City Council meeting. That left my sweetie and me free for a date so we went to Outback and enjoyed steaks with the gift cards the Gym Rat gave me for my birthday. It was delicious!! (Wish I had some right now...  but I digress..)

After we got home and the kids off to bed, I stayed up embroidering the hats for the Raingutter Regatta we are having for Pack Meeting on Tuesday. I got nine of the twelve done, but finally headed for bed around 4:00 AM to find that Baby Doll had climbed into my bed and ... well let's just say I had to pull off all the bedding and start over.

Friday dawned bright and early when the alarm rang at 7:30. Fortunately for me my sweetie was home and helped get the kids off to school. So I was able to sleep off and on until about 9:00. I checked Sport out of school and took him to the doctor at 10:00. Thankfully he had only bruised his elbow, not broken it.

I had Bossy's $1200 Tupperware party to pack out and help her deliver so that took most of my afternoon. Curly had a baseball game at 7:00.

Saturday was my day to tie up some lose ends. I finished the last of the hats and quickly did a bunch of mending that had been piling up. I emailed everyone about the Beach Party for the 5th grade that we are having on Thursday. It's for 3 classes and I'm the head mom for one of them. The girls had a library meeting and we were able to finally get feedback on the Book Trailer we made last week. The librarians loved it just as much as we did! I'm so excited to be able to show it to you in a few more days. They have to add a bunch of official type headings and stuff to it first.

I sewed the binding on the quilt we made at the Girl Scout sleepover and we called Bossy to see if they wanted to play softball with us. They were up to their elbows in strawberry jam but agreed to come for a little while. We played for a couple of hours and then we all went to the Village Inn for dinner.

It was late when we got home so Bossy brought her 6 flats of strawberries back to our house to finish them up. Our little army can accomplish amazing things when we all work together. All told we ended up with about 65 quarts of strawberry jam. And that took almost 75 lbs of sugar. I know, disgusting, huh?! We managed to watch both Johnny Lingo movies while we were working.

But it also meant another late night. I crawled into bed about 3:00. My nephew's homecoming was this morning at 11:00 in Orem so I was able to sleep in until about 8:45 which was nice.

We went to their sacrament meeting, then a family party and then we rushed back and attended our second two hours of meetings. Then it was run back to the house again to quickly change our clothes and run back to Lehi for our niece's graduation party.

We got home again about 8:00 and five minutes later, our home teacher showed up. After that we quickly assigned jobs and got things cleaned up so we could watch the final episode of Granite Flats. I really like that show. It is on KBYU and they film it in Utah. You know we aren't TV-watchers here, so that's saying something. We also managed to fold all the laundry I had been washing all week during that hour.

And now I'm back here in the office, rambling on and on about the craziness of my life. Tomorrow we will go to the cemeteries and remember our ancestors because that is my favorite part of Memorial Day.

Hope yours was fantastic! What did you do?

Guest Blog: Trying New Things by Drama Queen

When spring rolls around, you just have to find a way to break out of the winter rut.  For me, I've been changing up a lot of things recently.  (It started with a spontaneous 6-hour spring cleaning last week.  It felt so nice to have a fresh-start feeling!)  Here are my suggestions for something new to try.

1. Go to Sonic and get a Dr. Pepper with fresh lime, raspberry, and a shot of whipped cream.  So, so, so good!



2. Try out something from the past.  Thursday night I slept on rollers all night - weird, but oddly fun.



3. If you're feeling patient and have a little sister (or mother's) head handy, try out Cute Girl Hairstyle's Zipper Braid Tutorial

4. Try a new kind of pie.  Scout here has the White Chocolate Key Lime from Village Inn.

 

 

5. Go play a game of softball...Oh, wait, I don't have a picture yet.  Guess we better go do that right now!

My New Calling

I told you a week or so ago that I got a new calling in our church to replace my work in the nursery. Thank goodness I'm still in charge of the women's sports for our stake! I have to get my fitness fix somewhere now that I'm no longer a member of Curves.

It's funny, I've been a Girl Scout leader for 20 years and my new calling (or opportunity to give service) is very similar. I'm doing Activity Days for the 10 and 11-year-old girls. We had our first meeting today and of the 8 girls on my list, only 3 showed up. I was a little disappointed at first, but we had so much fun making fondant and decorating cupcakes, that everything was perfect.

Princess is an amazing teacher for girls this age and she was a pro as usual. I hovered around and tried to be useful. The upside of only 3 girls when we planned for 8 is that they each got to make 5 cupcakes instead of just a couple.

I'm excited to work with these cute girls. They are wonderfully creative and so happy to be here. Hopefully they will all come next time. :)

Blast from the Past: Drama Queen's 17th Birthday

Drama Queen, Prima Donna, Crafty, Princess, Sport, Scout

The year was 2006. It had been a rough year for us. As I mentioned before, my mom passed away the end of June and we were still struggling with that one. We had not lost a close family member in 17 years and the kids and I were not dealing well with the change even though we didn't see my mom that often since she was on dialysis and in a care center.

Bossy was newly pregnant with Burrito and it was somewhere around that time that she was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Expecting made it that much more difficult to get her sugars under control, especially with all the other stuff going on.

The Drama Queen was getting ready to start her senior year in high school. She had just finished up most of her last courses at SLCC so she could graduate from high school and with her Associates degree in the spring. Teach was already wrapped up in Marching Band for the season, remember, she was the Color Guard captain?

Bossy holding Taco and Scout

My sweetie and I gave the Drama Queen the car of her dreams that summer, a 2000 white Mustang. We got a good price on it and we decided that a little used car could be the gift for any of our children who were willing to work hard enough to be a New Century scholar. She absolutely LOVED that car!! I'm sure she has some pictures of it. Maybe she can sneak a few in for us.

I'll leave the story of its unfortunate demise for another time.

We were all hoping for a better happier beginning to a new school year. As it turned out, we got what we hoped for.

Princess gave me crap for leaving this as a cliff hanger, but good things happened in 2007. Burrito was born in February and although he spent some extra time in the hospital, all was eventually well.

Drama Queen graduated from high school and with her AS in English in the spring. She got a bunch of scholarships and picked her favorite one, SUU in Cedar City. We got to see her perform in several plays. I love watching her become a totally different character! She was definitely on her way to becoming the amazing adult we see today.

Girl Scout Sleepover

I promised to tell you a little about our Girl Scout sleepover this year. I have hesitated because I didn't remember to take any pictures this time because I was running on empty in the sleep department.(Forgive me for posting pics of last year's sleepover...)

The girls arrived right on schedule at about 6:30 last Friday night. I took off for Curly's baseball game as soon as I was sure that Bossy and the Drama Queen had everything under control. As part of one of our badges, instead of ordering pizza this year, the girls were cooking dinner. It had to be an ethnic theme so we chose Japan. We had already spent some time doing Japanese crafts and planning our menu, so putting the food together was the last thing.

The girls spent considerable time chopping and slicing veggies for tempura. Bossy cut all the chicken and that made it pretty easy for the girls to turn it into teriyaki chicken. I walked back into the kitchen with my little ballplayer just as they were finishing up and I wasn't a bit sad about that. I'm not very adventurous when it comes to cooking and I was happy to turn the entire project over to the girls.

I was excited to taste the finished project and I wasn't disappointed. They did a great job! The girls loved the cream cheese wontons the best, but my favorite part was the veggies. Bossy even made a delicious dipping sauce.

When dinner was over and mostly cleaned up, the girls went back outside to play night games while I entered Bossy's very large Tupperware party into the computer. Her total sales number was over $1200 and she got a bunch of awesome free stuff, but it was still a lot of work to get everything ordered before midnight.

The girls eventually came inside and started a movie. Bossy turned the sugar cookie dough Princess made into a delicious fruit pizza. The girls had also brought treats and drinks, so there was plenty of food to gorge ourselves on. Some of the girls trickled into the living room to work on the quilt we had set up. The fact that they are getting older meant I could let them choose their own activities rather than have to plan every little minute of their time. I love that!

When the movie ended they migrated to the basement and set up another movie in the projector room. That seemed like a great time for me to go to bed. It was about 2:00 AM.

My alarm went off about 8:30 and the house was still mostly quiet. I heard Bossy in the kitchen gathering used cups and silverware and straightening up. When I got downstairs we started making crepes. We began that tradition with our very first sleepover about 10 years ago, crepes with fresh strawberries and bananas and cream cheese filling. Over the years the girls have started adding a little chocolate syrup and this year Nutella was introduced as a second option for the filling. The Drama Queen and I fried crepes for a couple of hours until everyone was satisfied.

Parents started coming and by 11:00, all the girls were gone.

I just love the Girl Scout program! It gives us the opportunity to have this kind of fun and learn things at the same time. It doesn't get any better than that. :)

Letters from Teach in Texas

Teach is working so hard to be a good missionary! She shared this experience today.


We had an amazing opportunity last Monday. We had a full night planned and one by one throughout our preparation day everyone cancelled. It was slightly devastating for a moment but we had placed a less active family that lives in the outskirts of our area as our backups so we were planning to head out there. We also had a potential investigator that we felt we should visit. We visited our less-active family (he has agreed to read The Book of Mormon again) and then headed to the potential. We debated for a minute if we should go in because there were a lot of reasons not to go-but in the end one of my companions said, "Why not? Let's just knock." So we did! We were able to come inside and teach the family (Mom and 3 teenagers) the Restoration and we invited them all to be baptized. They want to learn more and we have a return appointment! It was just such a great experience. The teenagers know two members from school, so right when we got out to the car we called up the members and our Ward Mission Leader. We are so excited for this miracle and we are truly hopeful that this family will be baptized this summer! This experience builds my faith in the power of the Holy Ghost and just knowing that God really is leading this work. He knows His children.

I think because she is working so hard, Satan is hard at work on her too. I hope this experience was not so personal that she would not want me to share it.

I also had another experience this week that opened my eyes to the reality of the adversary. I was laying in bed on Wednesday night and I was fast asleep when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It woke me up and I realized I had to go to the bathroom. When I got back into bed I was overcome by a crippling fear. I can't even describe it, but I felt very much alone- even though I could see my companions in the beds right next to me. I am grateful for the powers of Heaven as I called down upon that power to protect me. It became a mind game as the adversary tried to put thoughts in my mind of fear and very real terror into my heart. Yet, the Lord is always stronger. I kept praying, quoted scriptures, and sang hymns to myself. I couldn't fall back to sleep. For a while I just laid there with my body tense as I let the Spirit and the knowledge of covenants I have made comfort me. There came a point in my prayer when I said, "Father, if it is necessary that I lay here all night and face this agony, I will- just please stay with me." This is really the last thought I remember before falling asleep. I woke up in the morning feeling like a champion. The Lord protected me and I am so grateful for that experience. It's interesting because as I was recording it in my journal I just thought to myself how ridiculous it all sounded, but I know it was real. I know that the adversary has been licking at my heels this week. Why? I'm not sure. Yet I know with all of my heart that the Lord is stronger. The Lord is on my side. It builds my faith in knowing that this work is truth because as Elder Corbridge said in conference, "The truth will always be opposed." I felt that opposition in a very real and personal way. I am grateful for that experience because I learned so much.

I'm so grateful that I'm a missionary. I love this work. I love the Lord. 

Amen.

The Big Prize

I still have so much to tell you! The Dog Walker helped me out last night with our baseball game story. It was so fun! I was SOO sore this morning! I'm not sure he explained well enough that my sweetie pitched me about 100 balls that I popped into the field so the kids could practice catching flies. And that was after a brisk game of workup and 4 innings of a real game.

But I digress...

I really wanted to tell you about the Scouting Expo. After we finished our Girl Scout sleepover (we can talk about that tomorrow), my sweetie made the boys weed the garden before we could head out for the Expo. We got there just after lunch. There were so many booths! We split off into several groups. I took Scout, Curly, and Fajita to the rock-climbing booth. Bossy took the other kids in a different direction. After waiting in line for quite some time, the kids finally had their turn. Fajita and Scout each got about 5 feet up before they gave up and were done. Really!!

Curly was a bit more persistent. He was up about 8 feet when his helmet came off and they made him come back down. But after tightening it up, they gave him another chance. He got quite a bit higher than the girls. I was pretty proud of him!

We wandered other booths. Curly liked the blowup obstacle course. We built a little catapult, but Curly's favorite booth was the Army booth. They had big trucks to climb in and they were giving away all kinds of free things, water bottles, key chains, pencils, stuff like that. Curly loaded up everything and was so excited about it! Then he saw one of the guys in his fatigues carrying a couple of camo backpacks. He was so entranced that he actually asked the guy if he could have one.

The officer laughed and told him they were for a drawing but if he would hurry he could still get his name in. We hustled back to the army booth and I madly scribbled his name on the entry form. Then I grabbed a second one and entered my name. About the time I reached for the third paper, the Drama Queen came up with Prima Donna. Soon we were all entered, with a pact that the winner would definitely give the backpack to Curly.

Five minutes later they had the drawing. Drama Queen's name was pulled and Curly was so happy! They had him pose for pictures. I wouldn't be surprised if he actually joined the Army when he gets old enough. I'm sure they would be happy to know that their branding methods work. :)

Meanwhile, he has this awesome backpack I think is big enough to carry Baby Doll around in.

Guest Blogger: Playing Baseball by Elder Dog Walker

I know that I'm still a missionary and you were hoping that I would write something about my mission, but Mom wanted me to guest blog about what we've done today. We've done a lot of fun things today, but for now, she asked me to talk about one fun thing. We went down to a park near my sister, Bossy's house and we played a game of baseball. We wanted to have some fun while we were doing that. We were a bit disappointed that one park that we thought we go to was packed with a lot of people. But we went down to a baseball field where it was considered as being the Sandlot. We were playing some practice at first and then we were playing a game for real. Some of the time, when I was asked to bat up, I did and then I accidentally made a home run hit and the ball went over the fence and into the canal. Mom was totally upset that it was one of her best softballs. Anyway, we continued to play some, and some of the time right when a sibling hit the ball at bat, I was running from second base to third and Sport was trying to get the ball and he was right on my path that there was no way I could slow down and then I accidentally collided into him and we both got road-rashed. He thought I did that on purpose but it was really an accident, he some gets way too upset to admit that every accident that I cause he thinks there not accidents at all. Anyway, once we were done playing a game, Mom and Dad kind of made a bribery deal to all of us. They would hit some balls with the bat and see if all of us can trying catching the long balls without dropping them. If we did get the balls without dropping them to the ground, each of us would get five dollars. I thought that is totally bribing, but Mom and Dad were just trying to be nice. It took us like almost an hour for everyone to try to catch the balls without a single bounce from the ground. It was close to dusk and then we got done when everybody got the chance to catch the long balls. We went home and celebrated the rest of Bean Dip's birthday with the family before his actual birthday the following week.

Not a Typical Friday

I know I tell you about my crazy days sometimes, but today was a rough one even for me.

I was up too late last night. I headed upstairs around 1:40 AM, but as I was trudging past the kids' bathroom I noticed that someone had spilled a bottle of red mouthwash all over the floor and counter. It took the Dog Walker and me about half an hour to get it all cleaned up. That was sort of the way my day began.

I fell into bed about 2:30, but at 3:09, Baby Doll was awake and moaning. I took her to the potty and finally settled her down. Thankfully it's Friday so the alarm didn't go off until 7:30, but I was awake before that. I sent the kids out the door a few at a time and I ran the last carpool at 9:30 for Crafty. Friday is her late start day.

After a quick minute on the computer and making a list, I headed for the first of 4 grocery store trips I would make today. I also made a trip to JC Penneys, but that was much later. I was trying to close the Tupperware party we had this week all during the day so I was fielding phone calls and answering questions. I was also coordinating with our film crew and getting ready for the book trailer film shoot.

I'm not going into any details on that other than we got it done after a little craziness in getting the bus in the right place and trying to gather all of our actors up. And Prima Donna had hair trauma... Filming took a little over an hour and then I came back to the house and tried to clean everything back up and leave for Sport's baseball game. I wanted to watch the first hour if I could and keep score. I came back just in time for the girls to begin arriving for the Girl Scout sleepover.

I gathered up Burrito and Curly and took them to their game along with the treats (because I'm the team mom). Sport's game was almost over by then and he and my sweetie joined us for the little boys' game. After the game (poor guys, they were trounced 16 - 2), I rushed back home to help clean up the cooking so that the girls could eat. Bossy and the Drama Queen did a great job helping the girls make teriyaki chicken and tempura veggies while I was at the game.

After we ate, I went into the office to do my Tupperware order while the girls headed outside for a few night games. We always make a quilt on our annual sleepover and I was really glad I took the time to set it up last night because it wouldn't have happened today.

I made one last trip to the grocery store at midnight to buy more cream cheese for the fruit pizza the girls were making. I still have piles of stuff to do, but the girls are watching a movie and it's 1:30 AM. Three nights in a row with about 4 hours of sleep each night is starting to take its toll on me. I'm definitely dragging a little and not nearly as fun as I could be.

I'm hoping a little sleep will fix that.
Or maybe more caffeine.

Prima Donna's Book Trailer

I don't think I've talked at all about Prima Donna's book trailer. And I'm not sure why because it is consuming huge amounts of my time this week!

So a couple of weeks ago Prima Donna took on an assignment with our Student Library Board to write a book trailer or a commercial, teaser, whatever, for one of the Top Ten Teen books for a national library program. It will play in libraries across the country! She chose the book Eleanor and Park although she had never read it. She liked the look of the girl on the cover and the author's name is "Rainbow" so that has to be good.

She immediately started dreaming up the perfect way to stage this trailer including herself as the main character. Then she met with the librarian. Her dreams were immediately dashed when she was told that usually somebody just puts in a few pics from Pinterest and they call it a day. She came home pretty devastated.

Of course I had to get involved (why do I put myself through these sorts of things?) and I emailed the librarian. She sent me the rules and Prima Donna's ideas fit well within the guidelines, they were just much harder. Well, you know I can't resist a challenge...

We first rounded up the actors and then found a film crew in an awesome guy named Shane, but I will let Prima Donna tell you the particulars when she does her final post on this one. He should get some credit somewhere, because he is not even charging us!

She found the perfect actor to play her love interest in Princess' friend, Jacob. The boy, Park, in the book is supposed to be half Korean and that is Jacob's ethnicity. He complements her perfectly and after convincing Princess she could play the evil bully, it was time to write the script.

The book takes place in 1981 and she had to have a Walkman and some vintage comic books. The Walkman was easy, Amazon for $17. We finally found the comic books after several phone calls at a local store. At $6 I thought they were pretty reasonable.

The last piece of the puzzle was finding a bus to film on. Yeah, a school bus.

I contacted transportation, but we were told that only someone working for the district can hire a bus. After several dead ends, Prima Donna's theater teacher finally agreed to help us. Our bus will be parked for 2 hours at the high school tomorrow where we will be directing and filming.

Princess Braids

Do I have to tell you that I am totally out of my comfort zone on this one? Remember when I told you Prima Donna dyed her hair red last weekend? That was for the trailer. We spent an hour braiding and rolling her hair tonight so that she would look like a natural frizzy redhead. Then I braided Princess' hair in small braids so she would have big hair like we did in the 80s.

Hopefully we have rounded up enough kids to fill our bus. Everything is in place. Here we go...

Lights, Camera, Action!!