Leadership Conference

Sarah attended the youth leadership conference today that was sponsored by the Menomonee Falls PD. When I got home I asked her about it and she said it was fun. I'm not exactly sure how since the day was nothing more than sitting in lectures, but she loved it. I suppose that anytime you can get out of school, it is fun by default.

What she did find out though when she got home was that at school today, there was apparently some sort of outburst in the lunch room. So as a result the administration is instituting assigned seating in the lunchroom, as well as having silent lunches. Sarah is upset by this, but I have to say I agree with the school. Hopefully it will teach them a lesson.

Drinking the Wine

I forgot to add last night that Alison is freaking out about having to drink the wine at mass. I have to say I am a little bit scared myself. We are going to be fifth in line on Sunday. That means the chalice will be full when Alison receives it.

First, she is afraid of the taste. When Sarah had her 1st communion their class at least practiced with grape juice. Ali's class didn't do anything at all. The second thing is if the chalice is full when Ali gets it, I have visions of her being afraid, and dropping/spilling all over her dress.

Tomorrow night after dinner we are going to try practicing with Alison. We told her she only needs to take a small sip, just wetting her lips, if she is afraid. Then after Sunday, she never has to receive the wine at mass again if she doesn't want to. Hopefully we'll get her calmed down before Sunday morning.

Rehearsal Results

Dress rehearsal was tonight at 5:30, so I left work a little early to get home and help Kris get Alison ready. I arrived home to a temper tantrum. Ali had taken a shower as soon as she got home (they were going to be taking pictures tonight) and she didn't want to have her hair blow dried. It was a complete melt down.

Luckily we got things calmed down and ready in time. But that put both Kris and I in a bad mood for a bit. Then when we finally got to church, Ali decided to be shy and try to bury her head in my chest. After about five minutes she calmed down and I convinced her to let me take her picture in front of the old altar, in front of the tabernacle.



Then we lined up and practiced the procession into church, learned where we would be sitting, and practiced coming up for communion. It wasn't that bad though it was long. It was a little over an hour and a half total. After we got home I had to go run and buy ice cream to pay off our bribe.

Here are a couple more shots in front of the statue of St. Joseph, and in front of the blessed virgin.


The final picture Ali wanted me to take of her because I pointed out to her that Kris and I had our picture taken under this stained glass window on our wedding day. She thought it was cool so she asked me to take her picture here as well.

Dress Rehearsal

Tomorrow night I have to clear out from work early. We have 1st Communion dress rehearsal for Sunday. There are also going to be pictures taken. Ali is very worried because the children have to get up in the front of church and sing a song in from of the entire congregation. It is amazing how scared Ali gets, especially when this is no different than putting on her spring concert at school, except for the dress. Details of the night to come when we get home.

More Problems at School

Over the weekend we pryed out of Alison that she has been having more trouble at school. She said there are a couple of other girls who are picking on her out on the playground. From what she told us I am not sure if it is them picking on her or just normal child arguments. But whatever it is, it has Alison upset enough that she didn't want to eat all weekend. She was in tears Sunday night saying she didn't want to go to school

Monday when I dropped her off at school her day care teacher saw that she was upset and clinging to my leg. She came over and asked what was wrong so I gave her a brief lowdown. It turns out that she used to work as social worker with children and asked if I would like her to try and talk to Alison and put her at ease. I thanked her and said if she could that would be great. This is the kind of attention that I fear we are going to be missing next year when we go to Shady Lane.

When I got home Monday Alison said she had a good day, and today when I got home I got a big hug and she told me she didn't cry at all today. Hopefully she is finally over this.

More Painting

This past weekend was spent trying to get the den painted. We had (2) big problems. First we didn't want to move the furniture out of the room and second, I had to paint all the woodwork. It was easy enough working around the furniture, easy meaning awkward but we dealt with it. The walls themselves were done in about an hour. The other 10 hours of painting was taken up by doing the detailing.

The problem with the woodwork was deep burgandy color. It took one coat of primer followed by two coats of paint. Plus, the light in that room is terrible, so by 9:00 Sat. night I had to call it quits because I couldn't see very well. One of these days I need to get some spotlights.

By noon on Sunday I had everything done and it was time to start putting curtains and shades back up. Once we were finally done putting things back together I noticed all sorts of small spots where the paint is tin and could stand a slight touch up. Depending on my time this week, I am going to try and get it done. If I don't get it done and you are coming for Ali's 1st Holy Communion, don't look in there.

Ronald McDonald

Last week for scouts Kris and Ali drove down to the Ronald McDonald house. Their project was collecting can tabs. They had the whole school (Riverside) collecting tabs and did is as a contest. They ended up with a total of around 150 pounds to take in. Thursday must have been some big deal there for turning in tabs because Kris said it was a zoo with people driving in, and Ronald McDonald was there as well so the girls had their picture taken with him. When I asked Ali about it she said Ronald McDonald was a fake because she saw him adjusting his wig in between taking pictures. It's nice to know my daughter is so observant.

Catching Up

I have gotten behind with things the last couple of weeks or so. So instead of trying to go back and fill in the gaps, I'm just going to start fresh with the past couple of days. Sorry for slacking off.

Spring Time

I finally got out to get the grass worked on last week. I managed to get three big yard bags full of grass dead leaves and sticks to the dump. Things just look so much nicer when the grass is raked and all the dead stuff is gone. That is one thing I hate about spring.

But we had a couple of days of rain about a week ago, which resulted in the grass greening up and growing. The bad thing about it is that the lawn mower went kaput last fall. The motor and blades still work, but the walk behind transmission is semi-locked up. Well the grass needed cutting and couldn't wait any longer so I had to try using it. It was like pushing a 50 pound weight back and forth across the lawn. I was halfway finished with the back yard and sweating like a pig. I definitely got my workout.

So now I am waiting until I get a new mower before seeding and fertilizing. Which is OK anyway since I have had no time to work outside yet. And with Ali's first communion coming up, it doesn't look like I'll have time to do that any time soon.

Sick Kids

Starting on Thursday night, Ali has been running a fever. She was feeling a little sick Thursday night and all day Friday, but not that bad. Friday night she said she was tired and not feeling well so I felt her head and she was burning up. Kris took her temp and she was 101. Even Gizmo decided to lay by her to make her feel better (which is something he NEVER does).


Saturday she spent the day resting and we thought she was feeling better. Easter Sunday she woke up feeling much better, but by about noon she was back to running about a 100 fever. By Monday night she was back to feeling better, which was good since Sarah is the acting babysitter.

Thursday Kris gives me a call at work and says that Alison called her to tell her that Sarah was sick. In fact, Sarah was throwing up sick. She then spent the next three days in her pajamas recovering. With any luck this thing has now run its course and Kris and I won’t be the next to catch it.

Alison Has Email

For the longest time (about the last year) Alison has been asking me if she can have an email address. I had resisted for a couple of reasons. First, it takes her 10 minutes to type two lines of text. Second, who is she going to email? And third, there are enough pedophiles stalking the internet, that I didn’t want to give anyone a head start on my daughter.

Well I finally caved and got her an email account. I even downloaded and reinstalled Incredimail so that she can attach all the funky animations and emoticons to her messages. So far she is only emailing grandma and grandpa in Florida, but she thinks it is so cool to walk past the computer and see the notifier on the screen showing that she has a message. Every day when she gets up she says she has to go check her email. So if you want to send Ali a message, let me know and I’ll give you her address.

Communion Banner

Sunday after I was finished painting I cut out the shapes for Ali’s 1st Communion Banner so that Kris could get everything laid out and ready to sew down. After everything was laid out and I measured to make sure everything was centered and symmetrical, we put a few dabs of fabric glue on the pieces to hold them in place so they could be sewn on. the instructions said not to glue the pieces, but what can I say, we're rebels. Hopefully we won't burn in hell for disobeying. It'll be dry in a day and then Kris (or I) will start sewing away. The dress rehearsal is April 28th, so I thin we'll have time to get it finished. At least we know we don't have to rush.

Happy Easter

So how do you go about celebrating Easter Sunday? This year we celebrated by.... painting. We spent the majority of the day priming and painting over the burgandy walls in the dining area of the family room. It was a real pain trying to go around the crown molding without getting anything on the wood. As it is, I had to do a lot of touch up with a model brush in the more detailed areas.

We painted the walls the same as the rest of the family room so I was able to touch up a few of the chips, and scratches as well as some old nail holes. Well when I painted over them, I didn’t realize we have different finishes on the paint. The paint on the walls now must be a flat finish, because the spots I touched up look shiny compared to the surrounding wall. So now it looks like we’ll have to go and buy a pint of flat finish and go over the spots I already went over so we have a uniform finish. This is the stuff they never show on the home improvement shows!

Easter Morning

Alison was first up Sunday morning to see if she could find where the Easter Bunny left her basket. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she proceeded to exclaim “That darn Easter Bunny, he sure hid my basket good:”. Five seconds later she had found it. I guess he wasn’t so tricky after all.



Sarah came trudging down about an hour or so later (she was fighting a bug all weekend) and Alison was hopping to get Sarah looking for her basket. Ali had actually found it while looking for hers and had to bite her tongue to keep from telling Sarah where it was. The good ting was that at least Sarah allowed the myth to be maintained for another year.

Sarah is on Facebook

While Kris and I were feeling generous this past weekend, we decided to set up a Facebook page for Sarah. Her friend Jessie was over on Saturday and they spent a lot of time in the basement on the computer. Sarah set up her own homepage on google and was having fun trying to find gadgets to her page, so we decided that she could have a Facebook page.

We figured that as long as it was set up so that we could review everything, we would allow it. A lot of her friends have pages already so she is getting connected to all of them. The only thing that she doesn’t like is that I was letting her play games using my page and she had built up a pretty big farm in Farmville. Now she has to start all over. Maybe I can look for a way to transfer the game into her name now.

Bathroom Window

I finally fixed the bathroom window. I had to call the company at tell them that I got the parts they sent, however, there were no instructions with them. I tried for an hour to figure it out, but couldn’t, and ended up wasting a total of about 2 hours trying to do it. I complained that they should have a place on their website where I could download the instructions as I was doing it on a Saturday, and since they are closed on the weekends, I was at a standstill.

The woman seemed apologetic enough at least, though I am sure she was gesturing at her computer screen as I was talking to her in a rude manner. But finally she ended up emailing me the instructions so I was all set to get the springs replaced. When I read the directions I was a little disturbed by the fact that I had to cut into the frame to get the old pieces out and the new ones in. I don’t like the thought of cutting into the frame at all, but as such I couldn’t replace the springs without doing it. It was easy enough with a hacksaw and a utility blade. The hard part was getting the window back into the track because it was a little awkward to handle and because of the angle that the window had to be at to get it in and out.

But after an hour or so, I was finished and the window is sliding up and down again. And just in time for the warm weather. So that is one thing complete of about fifty of the fix up project list I have. Hopefully by the end of the summer I'll be down to about 25.

Sleepover

Sarah had a sleepover on Friday at her friend Jessie’s house. It was good I think since Alison wasn’t feeling real great. I went in to work Saturday morning for a few hours and when I got home I found out that Jessie and Sarah were at our house for the day. Kris and I are just so amazed every time we hear that she is doing stuff with a new friend. This is the girl who in Kindergarten and 1st grade would latch on to our legs and beg not to be left alone.

They spent most of the day down in the basement watching TV, playing the Wii and playing on the girl’s computer. Jessie must have shown Sarah some things because she came running upstairs telling me all about iGoogle and how she was in the process of customizing her page. I’m torn between being happy she is getting more familiar with the computer and the things you can do on it, and also being afraid that she is getting familiar with the computer and the things you can do on it.

More Raking

I stayed home today and got the raking done. The girls went over to their grandma’s house to color Easter eggs so they were out of my hair (for a little while at least) so I figured I could get at least the front grass done.

I always forget how much I just hate raking until I start. It is something that I obviously need to do, and something that looks much nicer after its done; face it, the grass all matted down and dead after the snow melts just look crummy. But you sure get worked. My arms and shoulders hurt for 3 days. I suppose that should tell me I need to get back in shape. Plus, with it being Good Friday and having to fast, I had absolutely no energy after about 90 minutes.

I eventually got it done, and now I have (3) bags I grass I need to take to the landfill to compost. The next thing to do is spread some topsoil on the low spots in the lawn and spread some seed and then fertilize, but that will be in about (2) weeks.

Raking the Leaves

Easter weekend is coming up and I have a ton of stuff to do. I cut out of work a little early today to get a start on raking the grass. I am supposed to be off on Good Friday but I need to go in Either Friday or Saturday to catch up on work. Tomorrow is supposed to be the better of the two days, so right now it looks like that will be the day I stay home and rake grass. Usually I don’t get out to rake until the second or third week of April so it is going to be nice to have a head start. I think I am going to have a lot of projects outside this year and this will just be one that I can get finished early.

Skunked

Tuesday morning I walked out into the shop at work and was hit with a foul odor that was something like burnt rubber, machine coolant, and hydraulic fluid. I figured someone was cutting some new material, or someone didn't have their machine lubed properly. After a few minutes, one of my inspectors says to me, did you hear there was a skunk out in the shop? Apparently a skunk found its way inside while the overhead doors were open to dump chip hoppers. The doors had to stay open the rest of the day to get the smell out. Luckily no one got "skunked" trying to get it back out, but apparently it did spray a couple of things while it was being herded back outside.

When I got home and told the girls they thought it was amazingly funny. It wouldn't have been that funny if I had come home stinking like skunk and needing a tomato juice bath.