The final countdown

Eight days of school
Eight softball games (three of them this week alone)
Seven days until hubby leaves for a golf trip
One soccer practice
One final soccer game
One kindergarten program

May has just flown by. Part of it is that we have had something going on every single weekend, and with the exception of the very first weekend we have had guests of one sort or another every weekend. Usually school would be done this week, but because of snow days this winter Emma has school until June 4th. Yeah, the kids thought it was so much fun to have a week off in December because of the cold temps and bad weather, but they're not laughing now.

Soccer is winding down and we are in the midst of softball. Emma loved doing soccer--we were with a great team and an awesome coach. Sign-ups for fall soccer started last week, so I'm sure we'll sign up again. Emma also does great at softball. When they bat they get 5 pitches from the machine, then if they don't hit any of those they get to hit off the tee. Emma usually gets a decent hit by the second pitch. Most of the girls on team do very well.

There had been talks of a men-only family golf trip for many years now and the timing finally worked this year for hubby and his brothers and dad to meet up in Nevada to do a week-long trip of golfing and Vegas. I know they are all very excited and I can't wait to hear about the smack talk and excuses that go on during the week. I just have to figure out how to get hubby to the airport at an ungodly hour and have someone here to get Emma on the bus. Darn snow days.

Summer will be busy as well. I volunteered to be in charge of crafts at our vacation bible school which is in three weeks. I have not much of a clue of what I am doing! :P I need to get my act together and get some things ordered. We also have our annual trip to Omaha for the 4th of July, the 150th celebration of the Franklin County Fair, swimming lessons, summer reading program and whatever else comes up.

How come this morning I was already getting excited about buying school supplies for next year?! Sick, I tell you!

'Cause it's a good cause

I just sent off my order form for this t-shirt from The Parker Reese Foundation (PRF):



Jes and Ashley lost their precious Parker to CDH and started a foundation in her honor. In three short years they have done amazing things, one of which is having a whole house/property for CDH families to live while they have a baby in the NICU at Duke or UNC Chapel Hill in North Carolina. Parker's House is free of charge for families needing to use the facility and provides families a real home to stay in during a very stressful time. For $16 these t-shirts pay for one night--what a deal. I got one for me and one for Leah; her picture hangs at Parker's House. We were grateful to have the Rainbow House to stay at during our stay at Children's in Omaha, but it was not a "real" house like Parker's House. How awesome would it be to have a facility like Parker's House near every hospital serving CDH babies. My hope is to wear it in some 5K races I want to run so the people behind me can read about CDH. (Hopefully there will be people behind me--ha! I run pretty slow) The deadline for ordering is May 31st and for more info contact Jes at info@theparkerreesefoundation.com. Now if I can get my act together, Leah will be featured at the website listed on the t-shirts. Jes asked me a long time ago--time to get crackin'!

Another great CDH cause is Connor's Books. Connor McLuckie was born 9 years ago on May 15th and lived only 14 hours. His family collects and donates books to a local hospital in his honor every year. Soon after Leah was born I sent in a small donation of books and have every year after. If you remember, Emma's birthday is also May 15th so I always think of Connor as well on that day. Connor has two living sisters (one named Emma) and now has twin baby brothers born earlier this year. We once again sent in books this year, but the real hope for Connor's Books next year is to become a non profit organization. This takes a lot of paperwork and money, so they are trying to reach that goal for Connor's 10th birthday in 2010. His sisters' Girl Scout groups also helped in collecting books this year and they got over 3000 books--WOW!



One more activity I hope to do this summer is Letters for CDH. It is a mass mail campaign to spread awareness of CDH. Maybe you will see some of these CDH kids show up on Oprah or Ellen someday! The person behind the idea is adorable Carter's mom, who happened to be one of the first families who stayed at Parker's House.

Not yet

Okay, so I don't have any pictures from the party up yet, although if you are lucky enough to have me as a facebook friend, you have seen them. And even though about 99% of my readers are also my facebook friends, but I am still going to post some pictures here. Sometime. I've been too busy today getting stopped in the middle of my workout by the electricity cutting out and I've also been busy trying to figure out how to fax something and not have it cost me more than the price of admission to a movie. Copyworks wanted $2 a page for a long-distance fax--I had 7 pages. But it was 25% off! Um, no. I figured out how to get what I needed in a PDF file and just e-mailed the darn thing. Isn't technology wonderful? Okay, so it was hubby's suggestion to try and get the info as a PDF file, but he forgot to take the information to work with him today in the first place which was why I was trying to fax it with no access to a free fax machine.

Anyway I've also been busy wasting my time reading really important things online. I'm sure most of you already visit this site regularly but I thought I'd post it again since it had me laughing this afternoon. I just hope one of my cakes doesn't show up on there someday. Gotta love your Cake Wrecks! I see she is coming out with a book, that may be one I need to get. Got your copy pre-ordered, G?

It's Done!

The weekend is over and the two parties are behind us. They both went well and pictures will be coming soon. I promise. Right after I pick up the plethora of presents from the living room floor and go buy snacks for 19 children for the next 5 days. And get back to Shredding and my C to 5K workouts. I'm not eating another dessert for three months. ;)

Party Planning--The Final Countdown

Now I know why my only childhood birthday party memory is a giant strawberry made out of newspaper where we played "pin the stem on the strawberry" for my Strawberry Shortcake birthday. Parties are a lot of work. After that I remember having my birthday parties at the local community college swimming pool where the only planning is making sure everyone brought their suit and towel and knows how to swim. Good thinking, Mom.

I'm not going to shell out big bucks to have a over-the-top theme party, so my kids will get a "Mom tries really hard" theme party. As I've mentioned, Emma picked Webkinz as her theme so we're running with it. I scoured the internet for party ideas and found quite a few. For those of you who are well versed in Webkinz, you will know what I'm talking about. If you don't, just pretend like you care.

We will have a sign greeting the kids that says "Today in Webkinz World" with activities listed. I haven't figured out what order to do the activities yet, but here is what I have:

• Gem Hunt--they will search for gems. I have some "rocks" made out of brown wrapping/packing paper. There are 6 with gems and the rest are slag. They can find one rock with gems in it. After everyone has found gems, we will make crowns of wonder. The crowns are glittery visors I cut to look like crowns (or fire, if you ask the birthday girl) and the gems are all sicky back gems or glittery foam stickers.
• Jellybean Challenge--guess the number of jellybeans in the jar.
• Quizzy's Corner--ask them some trivia questions
• Zingos Pop--unload a bunch of blown up ballons onto the floor. Assign each child a color, and see who can sit on and pop all their balloons first. Will work better once I buy balloons, which I remembered I forgot on my 5th trip to WalMart yesterday.
• Kinz Pinz Bowling--let them bowl with the plastic bowling set.
• Webkinz Mini Golf--let them golf with the mini golf set we have.
• Pizza Palace--make their own pizzas for supper.
• W Shop--they can buy and decorate their own pet carrier.
• Wheel of Wow--spin and win a fabulous prize. I wasn't going to have a Wheel of Wow until I felt guilty enough to make one. I mean this is one of the things you do everytime you go to Webkinz World. I have the wheel made and the prizes, just need to figure out how to rig it to spin. All my engineer of a husband could suggest was a brass fastener--duh, I thought of that but somehow I missed the brass fastener aisle at WalMart. Believe me, I looked.

Do you think that is enough to keep 6 six year olds busy for two hours? We have lucked out for Emma's last two parites and when everyone is bored and all my planned activites are done or were flops, we went outside and blew bubbles and ran around. The forecast for Friday from 5-7 is rain, so that may not be an option.

Today's activities include baking a cake, picking up the house, finishing up the games, grocery shopping, mailing packages for hubby, soccer practice, decorating a cake, making cookies, making a brownie pizza and wrapping presents. Think I can get it all done?!

My Betty mojo is MIA

Emma's birthday is in 4 days and I have no idea what I'm making for her cake. I know I posted those cakepops awhile back, but I'm not feeling them. I've searched online for Webkinz themed cakes and haven't found any I'd care to make. She'd be happy with anything that is chocolate cake with frosting, that was her request. I need inspiration and I need it fast.

Maybe it's because I'm on a dessert overload. Last weekend I made a peanut butter brownie pizza and a white chocolate raspberry cheesecake for guests we had over. It was my first attempt at a real, baked cheesecake in a springform pan and let me say the results were oh-so-good. I've had at least three pieces of the cheesecake, it is creamy sweet goodness on an oreo crust. Yum. And for the brownie pizza, chocolate and peanut butter are always a good combination. Emma saw me chopping up the mini peanut butter cups to put on top and she said, "I just can't look away--it looks so good!"

Since she was in love with that treat, I am making that to take to kindergarten on Friday. And I'm making soccer ball sugar cookies on a stick to take to her soccer game on Saturday. But I still need something to serve at two birthday parties. So that will be one brownie pizza, a cake or cupcake, cookies, and another dessert in three days. After that I'm swearing off sweets for a month or a week or a few days.

Happy Mother's Day

Last year hubby and I each spent Mother's Day with our own mother's in separate states. I got breakfast in bed, a yummy brunch, and my curling iron broke.

This year I got

and

Both have already been used by the entire family. Isn't that so nice of me to share?

I love the ipod. We haven't downloaded any music since Napster was free, so it has been a long time. In anticipation of getting the shuffle, I started a list of music to download--most of it is upbeat Top 40's type of music. I wanted some music to get my booty up and moving while I'm running jogging. We got some songs on and Emma went off to school singing, "Apple bottom jeans, boots with the fur . . . . she gave that big booty a slap"

Mario Kart also rocks. I'm sure its a little different playing it on a handheld rather than on the Wii with the wheel controler, but it is still fun. Let's just say I rock the 50cc circuit. I'm telling you, my hand-eye coordination may improve yet. I had such a late start in life to this whole gaming thing. Like a 33 year late start.

I love being a mom. ;)