Thanksgiving and Beyond

Sunday, Day 5.5 of Thanksgiving break. The day is coming to a close and back to school and work for everyone. It was a nice break but now it is over.

Tuesday was the Kindergarten Feast! The kids celebrated Thankgiving with a feast of turkey, cornbread, pumpkin pie and veggies. I spent the morning seting up and getting ready. My class had a lot of parent volunteers so I helped in the bi-lingual class where there were less volunteers. What I found were homemade tamales - delicous! One mom brought in four or five different kinds - what a treat!

The Feast consisted of the kids eating their snack together with all 130 classmates. That was it. No program, no festivities, no celebration. The Feast was followed by playground fun at recess and then Walker and I headed home.

Wednesday Walker, Reese, Bryce and I went to Chuck E. Cheese to play games and eat pizza. Fun for all. The kids really enjoyed each other's company.

We had a lovely Thansgiving with surrounded by our family and close friends. As always, Don roasted a beautiful turkey. I made Betty Grandma's yummy cornbread dressing and everyone else brought the rest. Reese asked to watch carve the turkey so he could learn how.

Following dinner, the sports fans found a football game, the kids found the Nintendo and everyone else gathered for a chat.

Saturday, a dear friend organized a ladies lunch. The tea room was fabulous and the company nice. We are going to try to organize again, maybe next time at a wine bar. Sounds good to me.

Today has been a lazy day. Don and Reese saw a movie and Bryce and Walker played together nicely until Reese returned and they ganged up on him.

Life is good.

The Week To Come

The "busy" time of the year is descending upon us. I just realized that Chanuka is early this year and I am completely unprepared.

Last week I spent quite a lot of time at our elementary school:

• Monday I volunteered at the Book Fair
• Tuesday was banking day - I was the volunteer teller, making deposits for our students who participate with our community partner bank.
• Wednesday I provided 20 baked potatoes for a teacher appreciation luncheon
• Friday I again worked at the Book Fair

That's a lot of time volunteering with our school PTA, whom by the way, I find most active members to be snooty and unfriendly.

Next week I have a PTA meeting and am volunteering in the Kindergarten classroom's annual Thanksgiving Feast. I was lucky enough to be selected to bring the paper plates so no cooking for me.

The kids attend school Monday and Tuesday only, so I will be figuring out how to entertain them for the rest of the week. Walker is a beginner agoraphobic, who will leave the house only when forced, which I balance with Reese who is always ready to go, go, go.

Don is off for Thanksgiving only. He was scheduled to be off on Friday, but since he missed so much work last week being sick, he will now go in.

I am super thankful that we do not travel on this busy holiday.

Link Goes Outside

Our cat Link is not a people cat at all and pretty much avoids us. He does sleep at the foot of my bed.

His litter box is in a closet with a pet door access. For the past five years, we have had a doggie door for our dog Ozzy to go outside. The cat has not once tried to use the doggie door.

We just got a new door and new doggie door to the outside. Link is now goes to the great out doors. He is very skiddish, but he seems to enjoy being outside. One day I saw him soaking up the sun in the middle of the yard, another day, I saw him watching leaves fall.

We went to change the litter box today and it had not been used. Guess he is doing his business outside (yeah)

Life

.. The weather woman said a cold front is coming through today - we should see cooler temps and 38 overnight!

.. DH is home with bronchitis. He thought he would be a good idea to have the windows open today. I begged for air conditioning

.. IT IS 85 DEGREES OUTSIDE right now

.. I am baking 20 baked potatoes for a PTA luncheon so each of my double ovens are baking at 400 degrees for 1.5 hours.

.. I dressed today for the cold and am burning up - please, oh please, let it come soon or I am going to change into my bikini!

Life

Reese

• Finally received his first ROTC promotion. He was thrilled. Three more pins to take on and off his uniform for laundry. He also received a decoration: a fancy cord to signify his participation with the honor guard. ROTC is SO about the uniform
• Begged to attend the last football game of the season on Wednesday
• Double begged to attend the last senior high football game of the season on Friday
• The senior high team is going to the play offs. When WILL the final game be?
• Still spending no time on his studies. Pre-AP classes are kicking his butt!

Walker

W: Is Reese home?
B: No.
W: I am going to Reese's room to play Zelda
B: Why are you playing Reese's game?
W: Because he is not here. Tell me when he is coming!

• Spent the majority of the week on the "Sad Pad". Teacher sees an extreme lack of focus. Medication made a huge difference Friday.
• Played school Friday after school. He is Mr. Walker and I am Miss Beth. He fussed at me for not following his exact instructions not coloring the butterfly like HE wanted it colored.

I Love the Zoo

It is fall in Dallas! The weather is perfect in the 70s and time to be out doors!
Today's activity was visiting the Dallas Zoo. Many years have passed since our last trip there. Everytime we are there it is better and better. The city continues to make improvements and make it a better place

I think the aviary was our favorite place.

Complete House and Halloween

Halloween was fun - both boys enjoyed trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. Reese would have liked to have stayed out until midnight collecting a giant bag of candy. Sadly, that was not realistic. Walker knocked on doors, well doors that did not have scary decorations - he skipped those.

Reese wore his Scream costume...again. Don asked him if he could please not wear it again. I think we will begin prepping Reese that this was his last year to go door to door. Walker dressed as a "karate guy".

We left a large bowl of candy on our doorstep while we were out. It did not seem like much was missing upon our return. I personally opened the door for only two trick-or-treaters - that was it. On our walk through our neighborhood less than half the homes were participating.

* * *

Our guest bathroom was completed today and our renovation projects are compelete for now. Anthony and his crew did a great job. I am so happy to have my house back to myself. I can cook, I can clean, I can do anthing without having a crew in the house! If only I could find our lost remote!

I was too late taking a before photo. This is our guest 3/4 Bath. I sponge painted the walls green when we moved in. I defintely did an okay job. The vanity has always been too large for the room. We removed the vanity along with the mirrored wall directly above it. When we tiled the bath (originally carpet) we saved a few tiles to fill in the vanity area -for when we remodeled.

Demo. Whe we moved in the room was painted lavendar (the previous owner's color theme).

Walls were painted a soft white/tan to match the rest of the house

Smaller vanity installed. Without the dark paint and with the smaller vanity the room seems SO much larger. The mirror is hung too high, but any lower it would hit the faucet