Nov 23

Those who can't sit in the press box to judge. . . .
Resort to producing the event . . .

Saturday, Nov 17 was the Savanna Field Tournament, and since I am the sucker who misses my days in Special Events, this was my second year as Tournament Chair. After many hours of coordinating rentals, helping organize volunteers, taking inventory, shopping for everything under the sun, writing programs, making and taking countless phone calls, and overseeing all the details of a 14+ hour event that had over 7,000 folks attend, my son hands me this note attached to a flower. I might make it a third year. . .

Nov 13

So it's been a whole month, maybe more like six weeks now, and LOTS of things have been going on beside the usual school and homework routine.

Sammy has had his share of football games and performances:

Also went out to dinner with Kathleen and Cris, spending a few hours at TGI Fridays hogging a table and catching up. After figuring that two of the last three times we saw each other was at funerals, we actually made and kept a dinner date. Only took us 8 weeks to coordinate and fit it into our schedules!

Matthew's cub scout troop came over last week to the house and we decorated cookies for Halloween. It's not any one of the activities for a badge or a trail, or whatever they call them in Wolves, but we did it just for fun. There were six kids and four adults all crowded around the table getting frosting and sprinkles everywhere.

Matthew also has Flat Stanley's cousin Flat Matt visiting Karen in WA. He helped Michael with the backhoe and planting two Christmas trees for Grandma Elta and Grandpa John. He has been sending emails to Matt on his adventures, which Matt loves to read.

Jacob got some new pets - Bob, Steve, and Spikey the goldfish - who swim around two of the shells from mom's bathroom. Snoopy is shown here welcoming them to the house. She sleeps with them every night, making sure they aren't lonely.

Lastly, the four guys got dressed up to go out for Halloween. We walked over a couple blocks where there are a few haunted/spooky houses and hundreds of kids trick-or-treating. We had our own spooky ghost, a ninja, Darth Vader and my own favorite "Green Burrito".

Yeah, I could be the starring role in either of today's comics ...

Fun at In-N-Out

In the day and age when $75 gameboys are so last week, we have .019 cent ketchup cups to keep the kids entertained...

And no, Matt has NOT eaten his hamburger yet - have yet to figure out what greasy thing he played with at school!!

Sept. 26

Tried doing a post a few weeks ago, and blogger had some funky-weird posting box. I gave up and never came back to it!

In the last month school has started, we've been to a football game, back to school nights, board meetings, parent meetings, done two fundraisers, gone to boy scouts, doctor appointments, to Disneyland one evening, worked a car wash, and celebrated a birthday, and spent a few days wandering through mom's house packing things and tossing the random bath rug and empty box in the trash.

I have boxes of papers and photo albums here in the office, some that have successfully made the round trip from Buena Park to mom's house, back to Buena Park. I'm sure they missed being here and all, but man, there is sooo much. Just in going through them I have found such gems as a "Welcome to the World of Jim Nabors" cassette tape; a coupon for a free roll of film at Fotomat; a .25 coupon for Friskies cat food; an article from an 'educational magazine' on how to stay young...like President Reagan; a 1960 Marine Corp memo asking if anyone is interested in attending a motion picture projection training class; and mom's elementary, jr. high, and high school homework assignments. And that is just in the top 2" of ONE box.

Other boxes include photo albums of wedding pictures; baby books; newspaper clippings of nothing that I can figure out; a video tape of Grandpa Murdock riding Looking Glass; Scattered Pearls; Scattered Thoughts (I found my copy - woo hoo!!); geneaology papers that I am pretty sure mom and I input into the computer over the years, but the last folder I know we left off at I haven't run across yet. I am seriously needing to re-do the design of this room so that we can stop tripping over the stuff. It's also no help that I have not been able to concentrate on any one thing lately, either.

Kevin has started playing flag football after school with his good friend Thomas. He's also playing trumpet in the band... he's still trying them both out, which is good. Sammy is busy with band stuff, they've actually had a quiet month performance-wise, they will kick off non-stop schedule this Friday nite. Jacob and Matt are enjoying their teachers Mr Foster and Mrs Hansen, and have started in with a Flat Stanley project and multiplication tables.

I took a sigh of relief earlier this week - I had a spot biopsied on my arm, turns out it wasn't cancerous, but has sun damage on it. Tomorrow I get the joy of freezing it off my arm...yea. The doctor wanted to keep an eye on it for another month, but I said with my mother's history of melanoma, and my 80 or so sunburns in my life, I wasn't going to take any chances with waiting for anything. So, I have dodged the first bullet at age 41.

Here's a kinda spooky picture taken of the Castle at Disneyland:And here we have a cat-pee stained Christmas tree skirt up for auction - any bidders!?!?