After some rain delays and scheduling conflicts, we finally had our first campfire at our Girl Scout meeting. I have been a Girl Scout for over 15 years. When I was in high school, I helped to teach the camp training class to the new adult leaders. I still was not allowed to build a fire with my girls because I did not have the official San Jacinto Girl Scout Council Camp Training. I am not about to break any rules, so I found someone who was camp trained to come to our meeting and teach us how to build a fire. To stop off the event we made . . . s’mores. What else!! You can’t have a campfire without them. Even Ben got involved.
Last week I gave out candy to everyone who wore their uniforms to school that day, so Ben came up to me after the meeting and asked for his candy because he wore his Girl Scout uniform today. His tshirt says “Brother of a Girl Scout.” Got to love Ben!!!
The pumpkin to the left is Ben’s from his kindergarten class. The pumpkin to the right is Madie’s entry into the library’s book character contest. Madie decorated her pumpkin as Molly in the Victory Dance from The American Girl Doll: Molly. I can’t remember the exact title of the story right now. But she was so excited. Madie, Ben and I went to the craft store and she planned what she needed to make her character. She was so proud of her project until she went to school. Most of the kids at school were not child created. I didn’t realize the professionalism that would go into creating these pumpkins. I thought that this was suppose to be your child’s creation without mom and dad intervening. Wrong! I spent the rest of the week consoling Madie that I thought her pumpkin was awesome. And that no I wouldn’t do her pumpkin for her next year. I was talking to some of the moms at one of Ben’s class parties and I found out that this contest was pretty competitive and a lot of the parents had a “heavy” hand in what was done. I had told the kids when we got started that the goal was to have a good time so matter what happened in the contest. We had an awesome time doing the whole project. So our goal was met.
After an afternoon spent at the doctor, the children and I decided to find something to decorate the house with. At Garden Ridge we found this very scary cat, who made us think of Rosie, and we decided to put her in our front yard. There were many days when we would come home from school to find the cat “eating” grass in the front yard. The cat wasn’t very good at standing upright, but she sure was a lot of fun for us to put up. The pumpkin was the creation of Dad and company (which included the neighborhood kids). They had the pumpkin scooped and carved before I could make it outside with the camera. Everyone had fun!
Ben fell off the truck today. He thought he broke his head. If you look closely at his goose egg, you can see the imprint of the concrete on his forehead. After the tears and hugs, he now realizes he has an awesome story to tell his friends at school. Of course, he was laying on the couch recuperating and he tells me he feels woozy. Who says woozy? I don’t even think he knew what it meant, but I called Chris to come and look at him. He is fine! But seriously Ben, how do you know all of these trigger words to make me worry?!
We had so much fun this year. We went around our own neighborhood this year. It was the first time. Last year Chris had to work so I took the kids to my sister’s house. This year Dad got to go with us. I was so glad he did. Gordon came to our house for the day (yeah!) and we took him trick-or-treating with us too.
I had the honor and privilege of being the room mom for Ainsley’s preschool party. We had a ton of fun! They decorated pumpkin cookies, played games (pumpkin in the brain was one of them! ), and ate tons of food. I think that the kids had more food then they knew what to do with, but at least there was a large amount of healthy to choose from. It was Red Ribbon Week so the kids were all dressed in red for the day, and they had worn their Halloween costumes earlier in the week. This was the first party of the year, so its always hard to be the first one but I think that we pulled it off. One of the mom’s showed up in full Halloween witch regalia. I didn’t go that far.
The Puddles 