It's Officially Over

Whew! The book fair is finally over and I can get back to normal life as we know it. Today was "Dress as your favorite book character or movie star day" and I thought long and hard over it. Actually, I am lying. I knew who I wanted to be the moment I decided we would have this special day. She is a lovely red headed little girl who wants to be glamorous and fabulous, so she adds more and more ruffles and jewelry to the point that she is gaudy. Her name.....

Fancy Nancy

I forgot to wear my red feather boa in the picture! Oooops. The boa really made the outfit look like Fancy Nancy. Here is the real Fancy Nancy:

She has a series of books out and a toy line at Target. She is too cute or should I say precious. I found just about my entire ensemble at my mom's shop. It is funny because one of the teachers today said "I would love to see your mom's dress up closet!" I replied, "Yep, this is all of her stuff and Leslie has a ball in her closet too!" If you look closely, I am actually wearing a petticoat my mom wore in high school. I am always telling her to get rid of stuff but I am sure glad she doesn't listen (most of the time) because it sure is nice to go to her shop or house when I need something. This morning as I walked out of the house, Les would not even look at me. He said nothing and did not comment. I only guess what he was thinking.

Nolan, on the other hand, was a huge hit! My mom and I looked and looked for something for Nolan to wear today. Once we found Spongebob we knew that was the one. We actually spotted a punch-out head band at the party store and through some ideas together. We asked the associate at the store if we could have one of the boxes he us unloading to do something with. We ended up covering the entire box in yellow paper and cutting out eyes as well as gluing the Spongebob face to the front. This is what we created:

Nolan was ecstatic to find out he was going to be his favorite character at school. He wore his white shirt and brown shorts, too. Doesn't he look awesome?!

Sadly, he did not win the contest. But I was so incredibly proud of him that I purchased a special Spongebob book from the fair.

I am exhausted! I had so much fun, though, and I will definitely do Book Fair again (if they'll let me!)

Get On Your Knees

Please get on your knees right now and pray for this sweet baby boy in the hospital. I have been watching this blog for a long while now and now her baby is in ICU for heart troubles. You see, this baby was diagnosed with this heart problem at 21 weeks in utero and was not supposed to live. Well he was born a healthy boy with no trace of problems. After fighting cold symptoms and breathing the mom took him into the doctor to be safe. After two doses of albuterol, his heart went into SVT. Please keep this family in your thoughts and prayers. Here is her button to click on and read the story and updates. It is so awe inspiring to hear how she is somewhat at peace with all that is happening and looking so deep into our Lord for comfort. .

Book Fair Crazy

Oh my WHAT A WEEK! I am so sorry I have not blogged in a week and I am sure I have lost some of my loyal readers, lol. I have been one busy volunteer. In case you did not know, but I am currently the PPA President of the preschool and the Second Vise President and Book Fair Chairperson for the elementary school PTO. On this past Tuesday I had both meeting back to back. I laughed at myself as one meeting ended and I actually ran across the street to the other meeting. Ran! I thought to myself, this is crazy!

So, I have been decorating all week and my life has been all about the book fair. As a matter of fact, my kids have learned that anything and everything I have talked about is book fair related. The other night as the four of us sat around the dinner table discussing Leslie's preschool "transportation day", Nolan asked, "What is transportation?" Leslie responded, "Book Fair!" I died laughing and realized how much I have put into this affair. I love it though. Isn't this what I am supposed to do as a stay at home mommy? To be involved in my children's school and volunteering?

Thank goodness for moms! On Thursday, picture day at school, Nolan woke up at his normal time and all was well for most of the morning. Once he had his breakfast and made his way into our bathroom his eye started itching terribly. He looked in the mirror and said, "Mommy, my eye was crusted shut and would not open this morning." I dropped everything and caught a glimpse of his eye in the mirror. Yep, he had full fledged Pink Eye! Luckily I already had drops from last year's infection and immediately laid him down to place drops in his poor little eye. Mind you, I was in the middle of decorating and setting up books so that it would be ready by Friday. I had no idea what I was going to do. Once again, luckily, my mom agreed to come over and babysit for several hours so that I could go back up to the school and finish up. The kids and Grandma ended up having a fun day and Nolan even made the statement, "Grandma, I think I feel better since you came over." Of course that melted her heart!

I had a lot of help this go 'round as far as decorating goes. The room looks outstanding and I am so proud. Tomorrow night is our Open House and PTO supper, so I plan on dressing up Hollywood style to promote our theme of Lights, Camera, Action. It will be fun. Here are some pictures:

This is the bulletin board you see as you come down the long elementary hallway. I plan on adding more balloons on Monday. I did not want them to go down before then. Also, Leslie had to be in the picture because she was such a big helper! I will have a "Walk of Fame" for every child that purchases a book on Open House night gets to put their hand print on.

This is the entry to the Fair and I will have "red carpet/paper" down on Open House night. I also plan on doing something above the door, I just don't know what yet. Can you see the velvet curtains? I also have a blow up Oscar trophy that sits outside the door. Where did he go? Hmmm.

This bulletin board is directly across from the entrance to the Fair. On Monday as the kids come in they answer the question, "If you could make a book into a movie, what book would you choose?" They will write their answer on a star and place it on the board.

This is what you see as you walk into the Book Fair. Oh, there is the other blow up trophy! Look at all of those books. You can only imagine how that got my heart pumping opening up those cases. I love books!!!

This is the cashier table with Hollywood hills in the back.

Of course it would not be Hollywood with Marilyn and Elvis! The bulletin board you see here is the teachers' wish list. On Friday, we had the Teacher Preview where they come in and pick books they would like to receive and have refreshments. I will tell you about those in a minute. Anyway, the parents then come in during the Book Fair and pick a book off the teacher's list to donate to their classroom. Here is a closer look:

Yes, those are popcorn sacks with the teacher's name and white slips for their wish list. And yes, those balloons you see are supposed to be popcorn. Hee hhee.

Now, are you wandering what those cute little jugs are in the far left corner? Here they are up close

These are jars that I decorated from Leslie's dress up closet to resemble a boy and girl. As people buy books and get change back, we ask them if they would like to donate their change to help buy books for the library. We will have a contest of boys vs. girls.

Oh, yes, the refreshments. The PTO President and Vice President made these adorable cupcakes to serve to the teachers. Can you tell they look like popcorn! Too cute, huh!

So that is it for now. I hope I did not bore anyone too much. At least I know my sister will enjoy this post because she is in charge of her book fair with the same theme in Illinois. So, here you go, Sis. This is our Book Fair!

Making the Most of Mud

Yeah we got out of the house today! We had to set our alarm clock this morning to get up in time to hit the road to Round Rock for Kensley's 3rd birthday party. Cheri had her fun party at a place called Ready Set Play, which is a wonderful place to let your kids run around like a bunch of monkeys while parents get to lounge on comfy couches and chat. There were huge inflatables for the children to jump and play on. Kensley looked too cute in her handmade outfit that Cheri's friend, Courtney made. Unfortunatly I did not take a camera, so I have no pictures to show. We had a blast, but now we are home again with not much to do! Thank you Cheri and Ken for inviting us to the party. We hope Kensley had a wonderful time.

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However. Les and Nolan had a great idea up their sleeve once they saw all of the muddy ditches. They loaded their 4-wheelers and hit all of the mud spots the rain had made. Here is a before picture:

Here is a during the muddin' time:

Here is the after picture:

Nolan loved loved loved driving his ATV through the mud because it gave so many new challenges.

It's Raining......It's Boring

Cat in the Hat, Where are you?

We need you to come entertain us while it rains outside!

Okay, so we prayed and prayed for our terrible drought to be over and the Good Lord has blessed us with three days of rain. Thank you! However, we also have 30-40 degree coldness to go along with it and tons of mud. Therefore, we can't go outside for the rest of our Spring Break! So this is what our last three days have consisted of.

Where is the Cat in the Hat when we need him?

A Dino Spring Break!

Do you see this picture? This is what Leslie does when she is nervous or in deep deep thought. She finds curls in her hair (which is not hard to do) and puts her finger inside the curl and twists it. She did this our entire Spring Break vacation to Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose. We tried and tried to explain to her that dinosaurs lived a long long long time ago but she still did not comprehend the time issue. She kept asking if we will see and feed the dinos as we drove to the park on Sunday. She and Nolan were extremely excited to go camping, but Leslie was a little apprehensive. We told her that she had been here before and that we will see footprints and replicas at Dino World. It was a beautiful and hot day when we arrived, so once we unloaded and set up the trailer we rode our bikes down to the first footprint site called the Blue Hole. The water was amazingly blue and deep in this particular spot of the Paluxy River. The kids wanted to go swimming so badly, but we didn't bring the right equipment for swimming. So we waded in the water on a rock and enjoyed the cold water. Afterwards we headed back for dinner and a board game.

The next morning we hit some trails on our bikes to see some more dino prints in the river. It was so amazing to see that these enormous creatures walked this land. I mean, there is not mistaken that some huge animal made these imprints.

Then visited Dinosaur World right outside the state park that had over 100 life size dino models set up in a winding mile walk. It was super neat and well kept. However this is what Leslie did most of the time.

Here are some pictures of that exciting day.

The park had a Fossil Dig where the kids were handed a sifter and a bowl to collect any fossils they found in a huge sand pit. The got to keep three fossils they found.

However, the Dino World did not last all day, so we decided to go to Wal-Mart. I don't know how or why, but every single camping trip we always end up going to Wal-Mart at some point. This trip was for a new bigger bike for Leslie. She had a really hard time keeping up with us while we biked all around the park and her knees hit the handle bars. Once again she started.......

She was nervous about a new bigger bike and thought her falling down would be more damaging, but once we found a purple princess bike, she was cool with the idea. The rest of the day was spent biking on neat trails through the woods. Leslie had no more problems keeping up with us from then on.

On Tuesday we biked more. I asked Leslie if she was enjoying her bicycle and she replied, "Yeah, but my bobo hurts!" I dyed laughing because it finally dawned on me that that's why my butt hurt so badly. We had biked so much that we were so sore by the time we left! The trails were so fun and the kids enjoyed it. But OwEEEEEE!

Like I said on Tuesday we got up and went trail riding more and then visited Fossil Rim. No, we did not drive through the safari of animals because to be honest it was over priced! It would have been $78 for us to drive through and not even guaranteed to see exotics! That is not even counting the price of food to feed the animals! I thought it was ridiculous, so we decided to go to the scenic overlook and kids' petting zoo for free instead. The kids enjoyed it just as much because they got to pet goats and see an Ocelot.

This was in the goat pen!

Afterwards we were running out of things to do in Glen Rose and we knew the weather was turning bad, so we decided to go to Big Rocks. It is a special place on the Paluxy River that has huge rocks on the river side. I have grown up driving past this place and even have been there many times, but it was so different visiting with your own children. They loved climbing and observing the rocks. We even got to see a Water Moccasin Snake in the water!

Later we went back to camp and packed up so that we would not be packing in the bad weather the next day. We drove to my mom's for dinner and then headed home. Now we are just sitting here on the rest of our Break and looking outside at the horrible weather. We are glad for the rain, but not the 40 degree coldness.

A New Passion

Actually this is not a new passion for me, but I just want to talk about it. I am so in love with children's books. I truly have a passion for them. I have been a fan for as long as I can remember, but I started collecting books when Nolan was born almost seven years ago. My ultimate dream is to someday publish a children's book. No, I don't write right now, but I sure would like to. If I find I can't write, then my next goal would be to open a book store. It seems now-a-days everyone is writing kids' books! I will never forget reading the most ridiculous book in college called Yo! Yes! and saying to myself, "Man, I can write better than that!" Like I mentioned, I never have tried to just sit down and write but I sure do love to read. It is so ironic, though, because in elementary school, I hated reading. I was always so worried about wanting to be the fastest reader in my class that I did not comprehend what I was reading. Therefore, I need extra help and hated it. Once I learned to block everything out, I learned to love the joy of reading. Some people love novels, romance stories, or such. I love children's books! Now, I do have my favorite authors, though. I love to collect as many as I possibly can. Let's see, I have 32 books by the author Eric Carle who wrote the famous book The Very Hungry Caterpillar (which happens to be the 40th birthday this year!). I have 10 or so Jan Brett books, 3 Jamie Lee Curtis books, 3 Margaret Wise Brown books, and many many more. I have so many books, I can't even count them. We have so many books that I organize them by holidays, authors, and good stories. I get extremely giddy when the kids bring home Scholastic book orders. I can live at the school when the Book Fair is set up! I love love love children's books! It is funny to watch how the books change in our house hold. We started with Eric Carle since he wrote simple stories and illustrated such vivid pictures. Then we moved onto Goodnight Moon and My World by Margaret Wise Brown for the story factor. Now we are onto longer and more complex stories like The Hat by Jan Brett or Skippyjon Jones by Judy Schachner. I am just as excited to move onto chapter books when Nolan is ready. Am I crazy or is it really a passion? I am currently waiting to buy Where Do Balloons Go by Jamie Lee Curtis, The Moon Shines Down, a new book by the late Margaret Wise Brown, and I See a Song by Eric Carle. My collection keeps growing and for you family members that have trouble buying me a gift for me during the holiday season, just go out and buy a children's book! hee hee

The First of Many to Come

A week ago I asked your opinion about posting scrapbook pages on my blog and heard from a few people that replied "yes". So here you have it. This is the first of many, I hope. My only problem now is taking the picture of the page without getting that awful glare in the photos (I do not have a scanner big enough for a 12x12 page). I will work on it, but until then here is one to start. These pictures were taken a year and a half ago at the start of football season. As you all know, we are big fans of my Alma Mater, the University of Texas. I find it hard to make pages on premade paper, but it will do for now. As I post more I will eventually put a slide show to the right of my blog for you to view all at once.