Cowboy Party!

Today we threw the cowboy party and it turned out great.

I took a suggestion and the boys played Pin the Badge on John



My DH did wonders and tracked down the last two rubberband guns in the Metroplex. I hung stuff from the clothesline and we had a shooting gallery.




We used the fire pit we built and the kids roasted marshmallows & made s'mores.



It was a gorgeous day. In the 70s and sunshine and not too much wind. It was actually too hot for a fire but we did it anyway and the boys enjoyed it. Once the games & s'mores were done, the boys ran wild for an hour or so. Luckily the men stood around the fire pit which prevented the boys from accidentally running through the fire pit.

So the funniest part of the party is this.

The whole reason I suggested a cowboy party to J was because a friend of mine gave me western ice cream sandwich makers. I wanted to use them. So this morning I found that I was way more organized than I've ever been in my life. I had made the sign for the shooting gallery & pin the badge game. I had gone to the grocery store. I had even taken a shower which I generally skip on days like these. I had time to bake brownies and make them. They turned out great.



By the time half the boys had left, I realized that I forgot to serve them. So we're having a couple of friends over for the super bowl tomorrow and they are going to get Sheriff badge ice cream sandwiches for dessert!

Cowboy Panic

J's birthday is December. Bad planning on my part. Five days after Christmas is not a fun time for a birthday. He wanted a birthday party this year but I put it off for a month so I wasn't dealing with the party during the Christmas holidays.

J decided he wanted a cowboy birthday. I ordered hats & bandannas from Oriental Trading company. We built a fire pit from leftover landscaping rocks so we'll making s'mores instead of having birthday cake. But now I don't know what else to do. Luckily it is suppose to be 70 and gorgeous tomorrow so I can probably just have the boys run around and play but I should probably have a game or two to play.

Any bright ideas out there? I guess I need to go google and find some games.

Ice Storm 2009

With great apologies to my family and friends in truly cold places like Calgary and Chicago, this post is about the "Great Ice Storm of 2009" which really wasn't much of an ice storm. It was predicted to hit hard yesterday but it never quite dropped below freezing so it was just a cold miserable raining 34 degrees most of the day. Once night hit, the temperature finally dropped and the rain switched to sleet and we got a decent covering of ice. Since this is Texas, everything shut down.

I got a call at 5:55 this morning telling me that school was closed and I needed to start the phone tree for the class. Again, why did I agree to be room mom again??? And why didn't someone tell me at the beginning of the year that I was suppose to make a phone tree for weather emergencies? And why was I calling people at 6am to wake them up when they could sleep for another hour and then find out by email or by television? I don't know. I called all the families I could, leaving messages for most of them and waking up a few. I'm sure they were very happy with me. Well, at least their children were.

(I heard that another room mom thought the whole thing was ridiculous. She waited until 7am and only called the families that she didn't know because she figured the ones she knew would be watching television and would figure it out. I'm going her route next time. I didn't get a call from J's class so they didn't even bother!)

The kids were excited to go out and sled. At least this is a good time to test out all the gear we've bought for our spring break ski trip to Canada. Of course, this is Dallas (no hills) and it was almost 9:30 (ice was already melting) by the time they got dressed and went outside. Our poor Texas kids didn't know any better. I found them dragging each other around on the cement driveway in a lid to a big plastic container. Once J hit the small patch of ice that was in the shadow of the gate, he promptly slipped and fell over. That was the end of sledding.

I did take pictures.








This is ice in Texas.

melon

I've slowly been knitting the melon shawl.

I've got 27 out of 60 repeats of the main body done. After that is complete, I have the border to knit on. I highly doubt that I will finish in time for the school auction, but that's okay. I'm enjoying this for now.

Cupcake hint

Do not ice all 20 cupcakes and then have the 3 year old shake the rainbow sprinkles on top. If you ice the cupcakes all at once, the icing dries so when the 3 year old shakes the sprinkles, they roll off the top of the cupcakes all over the table and onto the floor. If the sprinkles are rolling all over the floor, you have to take them away from the 3 year old which makes him very mad and he throws a big fit. While he's throwing the fit, you have to vacuum the sprinkles off the floor around him. Once sprinkles are vacuumed and fit is over, you have to re-ice each cupcake and sprinkle as you go. This appeases the 3 year old but icing each cupcake individually will him impatient and he will growl and tell you to go faster.

At least an impatient 3 year old is probably better than the 6 year olds in J's class will be after eating double-iced cupcakes with tons of sprinkles. Won't a Friday afternoon sugar high be lots of fun!

Things I like

• Online Flashcards - A has been doing multiplication since before Christmas. She is required to do 15 minutes of flashcards every night. This was a dreadfully horrible experience for me and for her. She whined and cried when she didn't remember a fact. If I tried to move her along or give her a hint, she yelled and told me that I'm the reason she was going to fail. She wailed that she would not get an A and she would not make honor roll. Notice this is all past tense. After Christmas break was over, she failed to find her flashcards. Very suspicious if you ask me. Rather than come up with random multiplication facts on my own, I googled and found this site. I'm not positive that their random number generator is the best but it does a good job at mixing up the facts. Now, A knows her 0-12 facts even though she's only suppose to know 0-8. Even better, she actually looks forwards to doing her flashcards and I don't have to listen to the drama anymore.


• Large Cookie Scoop - I had this on my amazon wish list and my SIL bought it for me for Christmas. I don't know if I'll make giant cookies that require a large cookie scoop, but I found the perfect use for it. I was informed on Tuesday that J was suppose to bring birthday snack for his class on Monday. He was highly disappointed that I hadn't done this the very first day back to school. Tonight I finally got around to making cupcakes. The large cookie scoop is the perfect cupcake maker. I was able portion the batter into all those little cups without a mess. Not once did I use my finger to scoop out the measuring cup and then lick my finger and then scoop again and then feel guilty that I had licked and scooped and then convince myself that the oven would bake out all my germs. I sure that anyone reading this is appalled at that run-on sentence and will question all of my baked good from now on, but trust me, if you are going to make cupcakes, this is a necessary tool.


• The Key Tether - This was my Christmas present from my DH. I knew all the presents I was getting for Christmas. I had purchased most of them and accidentally opened my surprise. I wasn't expecting anything else so this purse was a total surprise. He picked it out because he had read my Keen post and recognized the brand at REI. I love the bag. It has a flap with magnets that hold tight but it is so easy to open. It is casual and my stuff fits in it well. The best thing is the key tether. It is a string with a little caribiner clip. When I need my keys, I just pull the cord and out they come. No more digging and emptying my whole purse just to find the keys. Now all I have to do is get into the habit of always putting my keys on the clip and I'll be happy all the time.

Deja Vu or a Dream

I was driving in the car today to pick up B from school and listening to NPR. There was a local show on called Think. Today's episode was an interview with a man who wrote a book about karaoke.

All of the sudden I had a rush of a memory. I was in a bar, maybe Humperdinks or someplace in Addison, sitting in a booth near the bar. I think was with Michelle, maybe Susan and Julie or Courtney or maybe all of them?

There was a waitress who was serving us all night long. She had hooked up with another waiter at the bar and he had totally blown her off. She was very upset and telling us the whole story as she served us. Eventually she went off shift and I think she joined us at our table and drank with us. This is where the memory comes into play. She decided that she was going to sing karaoke. I think she had been drinking while she was working and then she had more with us. She was pretty toasted and I didn't think it was such a good idea. She got up and sang any way. Boy, she blew me away. She was good. It didn't matter that she was drunk, she could sing.

So was that a very vivid dream or did that really happen?

Ticket to Ride

We were inundated with Wii games for Christmas & J's birthday. The kids and I have been playing a lot of Wii this past week and having lots of fun.

However, tonight, I was at my sister's house and I played a new board game, Ticket to Ride. I can't wait to buy it for myself. It was so much fun. It is a strategy game where you have to draw cards and play your trains on the board to complete destinations across the US. It is my kind of game. I'm still going over the game to figure out what I should have done differently. I came in 3rd. I don't like losing thinking games!

This goes on my all time game list along with Labyrinth & Blokus.

What are your favorite games???

Six, Shiner & Space Invaders

J turned 6 on December 30th. We had a small family party that afternoon with presents and a chocolate cake with chocolate icing. He said no decorations, just chocolate.



On New Years Eve, we met some friends at the park to play. B has a small run in with a pole and got his first black eye. This picture was taken this morning. He's a quick healer.



Last night some high school friends and their families came over. Courtney was on her way down to San Antonio to visit family. Michelle lives here and Shannon was still in Dallas visiting her family. We took a picture of the 10 kids. Well, okay there are eleven because my niece was spending the night. This was the best we could do at getting all of the kids together.



At some point the kids all start going hysterical over ufos in the sky. There were multiple sightings and they were all convinced the aliens were going to land in the backyard. It was very cute until some of the kids got too scared to go outside anymore. A & E took care of this by making a sign for the aliens.