Day Eighteen! A quickie!

Tonight's post will be short and sweet... but probably not...  I just got back from a late night Christmas shopping / date escapade with hubby and have put the kids to bed and got the lunch ready and prepared tomorrow's smoothie and now want to write a fairly quick post before I go to bed! :D har!

So... here ya go!  Today's Act of Kindness is sort of two fold.. or even rather three or four...   To start with we sent 3 bags of fudge with 3 gift cards to Jack's para's and his teacher today.  But I forgot to take a photo so it didn't happen.  Boo.  Of course it did, but, you know.  Anyway, we also had a bag of cookies spare from the other day's baking binge and when our lovely UPS fella showed up, well, guess where the cookies went? :D  He's SUCH a nice man and has been our UPS guy for years and years.  He's just lovely.  He really deserves more than cookies, but that's what we had, so that's what he got! :D

Picture...!! :D

Of course you can't see the cookies... but there ya go.  Trust me, he got 'em! :D 

So then what else happened today?  Well I had two little girls here for Daycare today along with Millie.  They are such LOVELY girls, it's really a piece of cake to watch them and I love doing it!  Here they are playing together...

And here are the three of them...

I like the above pic because my house looks relatively clean and tidy.  Don't be fooled! :D  It wasn't TOO long after this was taken that Millie took an entire cup of Ovaltine and dumped it over her entire body necessitating a bath.  She loves baths so I suspect that was all part of her plan! :D  ( and yes, she is watching Frozen.  Again.  Money well spent on Amazon I can tell ya! ) 

Later in the day Mary and Charlotte came over and the girls ALL went downstairs to play together and make a movie!  I was left alone and with so much to do... so I did this instead! 

Please note the mistletoe hanging over the sink.  Whomever is doing dishes gets kissed!! :D 

But yeah, I made those stain glass thingys with tissue paper, construction paper and contact paper.  Easy peasy and lots of fun! 

At five o'clock we were all sitting watching Winnie the Pooh's Christmas ( or something!) and the little girl's grandpa came to pick her up.  At 5:30 Lilly dog arrived for her Christmas visit whilst her lovely owner goes home for the holidays and at 5:40 hubby arrived from work ready to take me shopping at the mall!  As I said earlier we got back about 10ish, then it was hustle the kids to bed and get my chores done for morning and a "quick" post... how did I do?!!? :D

I just went into the kitchen for something and came back to realize all the animals have congregated around me!  I feel like snow white! :D  

Helper cat, Yogi, Lucy and Lilly! :D  Herman has since arrived too but he missed getting his picture taken!

So there ya have it!  My day in a nutshell!  I can't wait for tomorrow, Jack's last day at school for a couple of weeks!  I'm really looking forward to having him back home! :D

Night all!!

Day Seventeen Trash Talking!

Today started out BUSY!! :D  We agreed to meet my lovely friend Diana and her beautiful daughter at the skating rink again today which necessitates an early start from our house.  But first breakfast, the getting to the bus of Jack, getting Millie up and fed and persuaded into clothes, seeing Hubby off to work, putting the dogs out, feeding the dogs, putting the dogs out again, washing the dishes, changing my shoes, finding Millie's boots, putting the big dog in the crate and putting the garbage out for pick up.  And right away that's where todays act of Kindness came in!  The garbage men!  We treated them to a bag of cookies and yes, another Starbucks gift card each.  Honestly I don't know what people did without Starbucks gift cards!  I mean, if you don't  drink coffee they have tea or hot chocolate or cold drinks and food...  I really don't go there very often, I'm not a huge coffee drinker and I don't like a lot of additives in my drinks BUT I do love a Peppermint Mocha when the season calls for it!!

Nothing like eating food you found on top of the trash can!

Not fancy, but I hope they like it! :D

After everything was said and done we hightailed it to the van, this time making sure Millie had her boots ( but evidently forgetting her Mi' (mittens) ) and headed across the town to the ice rink. The instructor had brought a pair of skates from home for Jess to wear and offered them to us for a bargain price at the end of the lesson.  I snatched them up and insisted Jess take the box too... hey, I can wrap 'em and  use it for another Christmas gift!  Hah!  How fun to have your own pair of ice skates... I always wanted skates when I was a kid but we never had the chance to go skating really.   

Fancy skates!  Filthy glass...! :D

We went by Target on the way home to pick up some bits and pieces (including Yoga pants which were on sale.  I accidentally came home with a "skinny" pair ... har har... THAT wouldn't work... I look bloody HORRENDOUS in skinny yoga pants!  Like a pair of toothpicks with a big fat ass. )

When we arrived home at our front door the dogs started barking and I said... "hmm... Yogi sounds a bit too close to the door to be in her dog crate."  Sure enough... she had busted out!!  Happily she hadn't destroyed anything other than the blanket that had been in the crate with her...  Yikes.  I was very grateful the curtains, the tree and the dining room chairs were still intact! 

Innocent?? :D  Pah!

 Millie insisted I sit with her and give her some "side" so I did whilst Jess and I watched The Incredibles together.  Predictably Millie fell asleep for her nap so I took the chance and shot back to Target to switch out my pants!  Terrible waste of gas I'm sure, but I REALLY wanted to change them.  LOL!!  Don't judge me please!! LOL!  As it is I haven't even tried them on yet!  I guess I'm afraid to incase they look awful on me!  Only a few things can make my rear look decent and most of those things involve copious amounts of lycra!! 

Anyhoo, I get back home and Millie is still napping!  Fabulous!  Jess digs out her roller blades and proceeds to roll about the place as I prepare cookies, bake bread and make dinner.... Diana's delicious baked spaghetti squash!  Later, when Millie wakes up again I had to snap a pic of her because she was STILL wearing Clo' !!  She'd managed to stay dressed from 8am until about 4!  It's a record!  (she DID try really hard to pull off her socks but they weren't socks, they were tights and she could NOT get them off from under the poppers on her vest and her jeans!!  (not my first child!!) 

Millie!  Still in Clo' !! :D

Now it's late, Millie is hopefully sleeping .... hubby is PROBABLY sleeping alongside her and the other two kids are most likely snoring too.  Helper cat has shown up again tonight, hauling his stretchy self out from under the couch now no one is around to chase him or otherwise mess up his groove.  He's a really loving cat when he wants to be... but it's so DRY in the house that if I pet him his fur sticks to me with the static and gets all over my face .... ack!  

He's just waiting for me to pet him!!  He looks so serious!

So anyway, now it's time to get the dishes washed, the kitchen back in order and I'm going to work on finishing my book...  I don't really want to finish it because I love it...  weird eh!?  

Toodles!

Day sixteen .. Recycling dude and a Christmas Tree dilemma.

So today was another easy one for us!  I baked a batch of oatmeal and choc chip cookies and put them into gift bags.  I then added a $5 Starbucks card and set the cookies and card out for the poor fella who has to pick up our recycling every week!  He's a nice guy and very conscientious, I hope he enjoys the cookie and a nice warm drink somewhere... MAN it was cold out this morning! :D

The next project was to decorate the Christmas tree... now... some might say I'm a bit weird.... (shut up you) because I like to have all my chores done before I do any "fun" stuff so I wanted to wash dishes, make the beds, run the laundry etc etc before I could decorate the tree but Millie wanted to nurse nurse nurse and poor Jess was desperate to get started on it...  I promised I would be ready by noon.  I sort of was but just could NOT get motivated.  I wasn't sure where I was going to put the tree ( we usually have huge ones but this year because of the puppy it is much smaller ) and we have enough decorations for two seven foot tall trees and this year we have one about four foot tall so we have to decide what to put on and what to leave off... you know, silly ass first world problems like that.   So we began what ended up being a really complicated rigmarole.  Firstly I strung the tree with colored lights and then we chose a theme ( we don't usually have much of a theme ) .. blue and silver and white decorations.  We put the ornaments on, stood back, and Jess said we should probably have white lights rather than colored to go with the silver....  so we took everything off again ( one plus of a teensy tree!) and re strung it with white lights.  Put all the ornaments back on... hmm... now if we set the tree next to the Eiffel tower with it's LED white lights our tree lights look like yellow teeth.  

We turned off the Eiffel tower lights here because it looked crazy!

Took everything off again and put on white LED lights....  yuk.  Too big, too garish.  At this point I gave up and slung the lights over the tree and quit.  I decided to wait until Hubby got home to see what he suggested.  We went through various scenarios including going out and buying new lights etc etc.  Finally, after a little pity party on my behalf we came up with a new plan.  Or rather I opened my eyes to what Christmas is really about.  I had been totally caught up in making the tree "look pretty" so I wouldn't let the kids really hang any ornaments or anything... they could PASS me them..  ( what is WRONG with me ) and I'd even said to hubby that if I let them do it "they would wreck it" !!  I KNOW!!  I SAID that....!  But anyway, as I said, I did come around and realize that the BEST way to decorate that tree was to put the colored lights BACK on and let the kids totally do it themselves with NO help from me at all!  

Teamwork!

Millie working hard ( can you tell Blue is her favorite color?)

She cheered after each addition!

Jess the tinsel tosser!

Concentrating!

Safely tucked away from the dog ( I hope! ) 

And the tower gleams alone!

And you know what, the tree has never looked more beautiful.  Making memories people!

G'night!

Day Fifteen.. Neither snow nor rain

Today's Act was an easy one and one I enjoyed doing.  Our mail carrier, Becky, is a lovely lady.  She's so friendly and kind.  When Millie was born she and Cathy, the post mistress, both came over to have a look at her!  She leaves candy for the kids on Valentine's day AND ON THEIR BIRTHDAYS!!  (How does she know it's their birthday?!) .. so to give her a little surprise was a no brainer for me!  I'd cooked up another batch of fudge ( oh fudge how we love thee! ) and put it into a pretty bag and then into a nice dish.  That along with a greetings card and a small Christmas tip was tucked with the mail into our mail box.  A little something extra for her on her rounds this morning!

The rest of the day was spend fuddling around.  Sometimes it's hard to get moving on a Monday following the sloth of Sunday.  Today was one of those days!  I had a lot to do, and got only a little done.  Never mind.  Progress is progress, right?? :D  I got the beds stripped, changed and washed, I ordered a BUNCH of Christmas gifts online, I made dinner (boxed Mac and Cheese... shhhh!!) which the heathens scarfed like I never feed them!  Believe me if I'd slaved for hours in the kitchen over some exotic gourmet dinner ( or heck, something with more than one pan...!) you can bet they'd have turned up their noses at it!  But box Mac and Cheese ( albeit G/F ) was a DELIGHT!  Two whole boxes, three kids...  **blink and you missed it!!**

So there ya have it!  Tonight it's blowing a freezing gale but none of the promised snow.  I really would enjoy just a little of it, just to make it feel a little more seasonal.  Hubby has offered to do the dishes if I wanted an early night... DO I want an EARLY NIGHT?!!?  Heck yeah!  So at 8:30 at  night Millie and I are headed up the apples and pears!  (I hope to read a little in bed, SUCH a treat!)

Catch y'all on the flip side!!

Day Fourteen ... What goes around..!

Well today started in the 50's, cloudy and drizzly.  An odd start for a winter day but there ya have it!  I'd promised the kids that I would take them to the dog park so they could run with the dogs again and I had also promised to take them to the mall so they could so some Christmas shopping and I had ALSO promised myself we would get the Christmas tree today.    Hubby went out this morning with his bud for his usual Sunday morning breakfast so I got the kids ready, two sets of clothes each, two pairs of shoes each, three kids two dogs and one Harried Momma to go.  We went first to the dog park and everyone had a great time.  The puppy is getting the hang of the place now and knows where we are when we pull in.  She was barking and rocking the dog crate no sooner had I turned off the engine!  She was in puppy paradise!

  

This was Millie's first time to the dog run though and she caught on FAST!!  She ran like mad to keep up with everyone!! 

It was pretty muddy which is why I suggested the two pairs of shoes etc....  one puppy got a little friendly with Jack....  LOL!!

So from the dog park it was straight on to the mall.  We live out of town so it didn't make sense to drive home and drive back when the mall is only a few minutes from the park.  We gave the dogs some water, put Yogi back in her crate with a chew and a blanket and we changed our clothes and shoes to look a TOUCH more presentable for Christmas shopping!  ... To the MALL!!

I like the Mall at Christmas time but only for the atmosphere.  SHOPPING at this time of year is disgusting to me!!  I hate if I don't know what I'm looking for and I wander aimlessly from store to store dragging unwilling children and nursing sore feet.  Bah!  We wandered around a bit as a family and then Jess said she'd like to go her own way for a while so we agreed to meet up in thirty minutes by the food court.  Jack, Millie and I pressed on in search for a gift for Daddy...  but instead we chose Runza fries and a salad!  We met Jess and all had a snack to keep our spirits up!! :D 

Of course it's fact that Runza fries are simply a carrier for ketchup...!

And then who did we see on his way back to the HUGE crowd in line to see him??  Oh yes, the big man himself! 

Well we were having a pretty good time considering!  We really expected it to be a lot more stressful and I think if we had stayed very much longer it would have begun to get that way so we boogied on out ready for home.  As we were leaving we spotted the carousel and the large line of folks waiting their turn.  I made a quick enquiry as to how much the tickets were ( $2 each ) and so explained about our random acts and told the lady I would like to buy the next 7 tickets.  We quickly ducked out of the way as the lady began to explain the deal to the customers.  I hope they had fun!

So off we went home.  The dogs got in the door and flaked out and we all pretty much did the same.  I made another batch of fudge ready for our trip to the tree farm and after a while we gathered ourselves up ready to go again.  We go to this farm every year and headed off excited to pick out this year's tree.  Imagine our chagrin when we encountered THIS....

SOLD OUT?!?!  :(  Boo.  So we drove off to the big city and wow....  there are hardly any trees anywhere.  Those that remain were cut in SEPTEMBER ( can someone tell me why they have to be cut in September??? ) and were SO expensive....  So anyway.  We came home with nothing but are making a new plan.  We haven't quite figured it out yet, but we will.  I'm sure we'll have a tree by the middle of next week.  One way or the other!  

So tonight sees us eating dinner in front of the TV watching Alvin and the Chipmunks nibbling fudge for afters.  It's raining and 55 degrees outside...  oh do hurry up and snow or I'll never be able to get my shopping done!!  

No cat tonight... he's outside enjoying the balmy temps!  

Toodles!

Day thirteen.... Easy as pie!

It has become a habit for hubby and I to do the week's grocery shopping together on a Saturday morning.  We tend to get pretty much the same stuff and have it down to a fine art but we also have lots of fun clowning around, tossing bags of frozen foods across the aisles to hubby is  a common thing to catch us doing and the folks at Trader Joe's love to see us play.  We often stop for a coffee or maybe pick up some lunch, it's kind of a date and we enjoy our time together.  today was no exception.  We made several stops today and even did a little Christmas shopping to try and get into the spirit.  60 degrees in mid December makes it hard for me to feel Christmassy that's for sure!  Anyway,hubby treated us to THIS which I love 

It reminds us of our trip and is so pretty!  I noticed it last year in the store and loved it then so I was delighted when hubby noticed it today and wanted to get it!

I wanted to make sure we did an act of kindness whilst we were out so we stopped at the Village Inn and paid for a holiday pie!  

Who ever came in to get a pie would find it was paid for and get a treat!  We picked out a very festive one!  

hope it's tasty!!

The evening was spent with a French theme as we watched Ratatouille whilst eating dinner!  Now I'm wrestling with Millie as I attempt to write this post on  my phone  at the same time as nursing her to sleep.  It's Not Working!   

G'night!!

Day Twelve .. one for the animals.

Today was almost 60 degrees.  Seriously!  I sent all the girls outside to bounce on the trampoline and Millie didn't even have to put on Clo' !! :D  They had a wonderful time and really enjoyed the lovely temps.  I went out later in the afternoon and was really surprised at the number of people walking around town and just sitting outside enjoying the warm temps!! :D

As for me I spent the day writing Christmas cards.  It probably would have been fun to have counted how many I sent..... but I didn't...!! :D  Suffice it to say it was quite the stack when I took it to the post office!  We racked our brains trying to think of today's random act and then an ad in the mail inspired me.  Today we wrote a Christmas card to Hearts United for Animals, a non kill shelter in Nebraska.  We added our donation and a thank you note for all they do.  What a wonderful organization. 

I wish it could be more.

No helper cat tonight... he's still under the couch!! :D Silly muppet.

And now, I've got all my chores done, my blog is written and once I've got Millie to bed the night is my own!  I wonder if I'll sleep it away on the couch or maybe I'll watch a movie!!....  Whooot!  Friday nights!! LOL!

Day Eleven!

Day Eleven!  Already?!  Oh man...now I'm starting to get that little butterfly in my stomach.  The one that says....  You DO realize you haven't bought / ordered one gift yet... not one... and some of them have to go to ENGLAND.... you know... that butterfly! :D

Anyway, we had a fun day!  The usual toddler type amusement.  We have a little girl who comes to be with us on Thursday and Friday so she and Millie played and watched Frozen ( again.. )  I baked a few more Christmas cakes for hubby's work folks with more than a little help from the neighbors since it turns out I had run out of eggs and cinnamon.  But I didn't notice them both at the same time of course... that would be too easy!!  ...   Gah!

We managed to fit in our act of kindness today.  This one was an easy one in theory!  We had a bunch of Christmas themed scratch cards and wanted to send them to random folks!  We were going to go through the phone book shouting STOP at random places and then mail a Christmas card containing a scratch card and a little message to whomever we picked from the page.  Great idea!  Only.... no phone books.  I recycle them as we never use them!...  almost never!  OK so we'll use Google maps and a die.  ...  only Google maps kept crashing..... OMG!!  I finally got it loaded and we used the die to pick whether to turn left or right and which side of the road, which house number etc!  It was kind of fun!  A TAD time consuming, kind of fun and TOTALLY random!! :D

So there ya have it!  Today's Act!!  I popped down to the post office and dropped off the cards as I had to go to the local store to get (more) eggs.  I totally had spaced off that I needed egg whites to make the royal icing frosting!!  Sometimes I worry I'll forget the kids!! Har!!

OK, well no Helper Cat pics tonight... he hides under the couch when we have company and Jess's friend is here for the night soooo....  You'll just have to imagine him!! LOL!!

Toodles!

Day ten! No Fudging!

Today started out early and fast.  We had our usual breakfast routine (which is pretty involved and you'll either think I'm crazy or bragging so you don't need to hear all the details! ) ...  Got my boy off to the bus stop and then came home to quickly wash all the dishes and clear up and get some clothes on Millie before heading across Lincoln to the Ice Rink! :D  The lovely Diana managed to persuade me to sign Jess up for an ice skating lesson and basically Jess and Diana's daughter had the whole rink to themselves for an hour!!  It was fabulous!  If I didn't have miss Millie to watch I'd have been out there in a heart beat.  The instructor was fabulous and in no time Jess was out in the middle of the rink like she was born to it!  Next week the instructor said she'd see if she had some skates small enough for Millie!

Anyway, after all the excitement of skating I made a quick stop at the grocery store and also the library then we headed on home.  Millie wanted to watch Frozen ( can't think why?! ) and I sat and read my books  napped a little.  It was rather pleasant I must say.  Anyway as the afternoon wore on I made a batch of fudge and bagged some up along with some Candied Pecans we'd made yesterday.  I drove into our little town and dropped some fudge off to the mail lady and the rest of to the city office next door.  A very quick and easy but also quite tasty act of kindness!  

I took the dogs for a lovely long walk this evening and checked out the lights in town as they started to flick on.  Some beautiful displays out there.  I returned home in time to make dinner after which Jack allowed Millie to sit on his lap as they both played Toca Kitchen together on the iPad.  If you know Jack you know that this is the biggest news of the day.  It's a BIG deal folks!

He kinda loves his sister!!

So now the house is quiet.  I fell asleep putting Millie to bed.. again...  and I had wanted to put a loaf of bread in the oven to cook for tomorrow's breakfast so I'm going to be up a while as it bakes.  I may not manage to stay awake the whole time...  **yawn!**

Anyway... here's helper cat.   Helping. 

LOL!!

Night all. 

Day nine ... Hitting the Target.

It was time for me to get my hair trimmed.  I took Jess and Millie and dropped them off at Target and stopped at the local Cost Cutters to get my locks lashed.  I had a really nice girl cut my hair... about the first thing she told me was she was wearing a wig ( nice long brown hair ) and under that was bright pink shortness!!  ( I love pink hair and had pink hair myself for much of last year! )  She asked where I was from, I said England...her last name is England...  she loves the English accent ( well, really, who doesn't !? ) and would love to go visit.  She told me all about some cool markers she used to draw on her mirror ( I want some! ) and told me the name of the place to get cheap wigs!  When she'd finished with my hair she rang me up at the check out and I gave her an 80% tip.  She was pretty happy about that and said "It's because my name is England, isn't it!?"  ( Maybe...!!)  ( It wasn't an expensive hair cut! )

Meanwhile in Target Millie and Jess were having an adventure of their own!  We'd set out 10 one dollar bills and written a little note on each one.

Jess and Millie hid them all over the store for people to find.  I'd hoped Jess might have been able to take pics but apparently Millie was being rather a handful.  ( really?  Millie??  Nah....!! )   When I met them in the store Jess was getting over heated and fed up with chasing the toddler hither and yon so whilst she went to purchase a little something for her brother, I thought a small Peppermint Mocha from Starbucks might cheer her frazzled soul.  I headed up to the bar to get her one (and me, I won't lie) and there was a lady there in front of me on the phone and rifling through her wallet to find a couple of dollars for her coffee.  "I'll get this!"  I said.. and so I bought her coffee for her.  She was very grateful and surprised.  It was literally only a couple of dollars but makes a difference in someone's day.  I'm telling you, these acts of kindness are totally addictive!

Later that afternoon the book mobile came to town.  I wanted to go by and see if I could find a book I always read at Christmas time.  I can never think of the name but it's always there for me to read!  I took Miss Millie along with me at her request (she even went to put on clothes for me!) and I was happy to see that my friend Rebecca was driving the bus today.  She said she was so glad I came along as she wanted to tell me something.  Apparently at the previous stop a teacher had come on the bus and said that in the book she had checked out she had found a dollar bill with a note on it... !!  From us!  Rebecca explained to the teacher all about our acts of kindness and said that she should do something good with it to pass it along.  The teacher was excited and said she certainly would.  Rebecca and I couldn't remember if it had been one or even TWO years ago since we put bills in the books, but the awesome thing is that one dollar bill was still in action even today. I remember the kids having such fun picking out books to hide money in, we had a ball.   And then we would think about how surprised children would be to find money in their books..  I'm not making myself very clear, it's late and I fell asleep putting Millie to bed, but I'm trying to get at how lasting an act of kindness is.  One dollar, one or two years ago and it's still having an impact today.


And now, one more act of kindness for the day.... Helper Cat... having his chin scratched!!!

Night night!!

Day 8 ... One for the kids!

Today was pretty darn productive... at least...on and off anyway!  It certainly wasn't productive from the get go, but on reflection I got quite a lot done.  Prepare for a stack of photos! :D

Let's start out with one from breakfast shall we? :D I just LOVE how Millie has laid her napkin nicely across her lap!  Makes me warm inside.

Her buddy from next door came over to play and they wasted NO time getting right down to it.  We had snacks, they JUMPED around all over the place and laughed their little tails off.  Millie is SO lucky to have a girl the same age as her living right next door.  I know Jess and I are totally jealous of Millie's fortune!  They enjoy each other's company already, I do hope it continues as they grow older! 

We did a little arts and crafts~ing using this genius idea I saw on Pinterest (probably, isn't everything to be found on there?!?) ...  a clothes peg holding a pom pom for easy painting!  Make them all the same color and coordinate them with the paint..??  Even easier!! :D  The girls made these lovely Christmas trees and then painted some more and more and more!

We follow ( ahem, rather loosely sometimes) the Flylady method of house cleaning and organization. I honestly swear by it, that and Minimalism!  The less you have, the less there is to clean!   Anyway today is whole house cleaning day so that means stripping the beds, vacuuming the whole house, cleaning the windows and mirrors, emptying all trash cans etc etc.  

... Can you spot my awesome hose repair here????  I went to vacuum this morning and the thing was making a really scary hissing noise!  I came to find that the hose was torn almost completely through!!  Quick!  To the Duct Tape!! :D  I wrapped it up nice and tight and Voila!  I can vacuum again.  Good thing too.  I narrowly avoided getting a blasted Vacuum cleaner for Christmas.  Some one would have gotten hurt!! :D

Anyway... onward and upward! ... So then it was time to bath the dog!  Remember the trip to the park yesterday!?!  I had not realized just how FILTHY the little dog got !!!  OMG.  Jess ran a nice deep and warm tub full of water for us in the basement sink and I stuck her in it.  For the first time ever she was wagging her tail as I bathed her!  I think she really enjoyed how warm the water was!   I actually took a pic of all the MUD left in the sink when we were done but it's on Jess's iPod and she's in bed so you'll just have to imagine a sink so gross you are shocked!  And also imagine a picture of a REALLY blurry dog as she ran off from us once we had dried her off!!  Hilarious!  The big dog was chasing her all over the house as she wasn't convinced it was actually Lucy who came back upstairs! 

So anyway, down to today's Act! :D   I decided to go for a walk as it was a ridiculous 51 degrees this afternoon.  We should have all gone really but one thing and another.... you know how it is.  If you don't have kids or you don't know how it is, just guess.  It just is.  Trust me.  Anyway, off I went, taking BIG stretchy leg strides and breathing in deep breaths! I headed to the local little grocery store again for I had a plan.  I wanted to get some candy canes to give to the kids off the bus like we did a year or more ago.  I chose the candy canes and then thought, huh, I can do better than that, so I also got some cocoa mix, some marshmallows and some of those tree shaped cake things.  I took them all to the checkout and then paused.  Huh.  I'd left my money at home!!  :D  Ho hum!  I walked home and picked up the money DROVE back ( it was getting a bit close for time!) and we put together ten bags of treats with a note.  

The note included that the gift was from the neighbor in an attempt to not make it look like I'm trying to sell crack to the kids off the bus.  I was leery of the small sized baggies I was using for the 4 marshmallows !! LOL!!  I watch too much TV sometimes I think!  Anyway, we picked Jack up off his bus and went across the street from our house to the bus that stops there.  We waited a little while ( as I said, it was a warm day ) and soon the bus arrived.  

Jack, my crazy helper!

The faces of the kids still on the bus are funny!  HEY!!!

We handed out bags to each child who got off the bus but ended up with 5 bags left.  We knew there were two boys on that street who come home with their mom so we went to their house to see if they would like a bag.  

Knock knock!!

They were very grateful and I heard one of them say to his Mom as we were walking away "Well, that was nice!!"  :) 

We still had three left and we have neighbors right across the street with three boys, so that was a "problem" soon taken care of! :)  10 happy kids.  Easy and fun!  (A big thank you to Jessie who helped me stuff all the bags and helped with the holly on the notes! ) 

(*no helping Kitty tonight... he must be outside on the prowl!)