Coco the Cowboy

I went tonight to Buffalo Wild Wings with Rob and some of his football friends.  I misunderstood what they were doing, I thought he said they always went there after practice but I couldn't imagine that a bunch of dads or moms did that at his age.  I was wrong, it really was just the coach getting everyone together for a social outing.  So we met the Reeves there and sat at a different table while the boys sat together.  Lewis didn't even make the cut.  Laurel comforted him with some crayons and a coloring sheet.  One of the boys said we could drop them off and go to the Italian place but we said, "Nah."

Lewis went to the Book Fair this week and guess what book he bought, I Love Sharks. Surprise, Surprise.  He got his hair cut today, it was probably the least traumatic time we have had with his haircut.  Lewis heads to China on Friday.  He told me the other night he had figured out he wasn't really going, he was disappointed but not devastated.

Loving work, if you ever want to feel good about yourself teach at a preschool.  Probably teaching computers helps, they love computers.  I love them.  I had one class where all of the boys gave me a hug today and another class all hugged Shannon.  They are so precious to me.  I love the women I work with too.  Shannon and I have a new brown mouse puppet that we talk to the kids with.  We had two white ones called Click and Double Click all last year.  They are back this year with a new friend who we named Coco the Cowboy and he has a great cowboy accent.   The white mice traveled all over last year to the National Championship, Vegas, Snow Skiing, and Canton, MS.  They love them and we love being dorks with them.

Clara has been playing fall ball and enjoying it.  Except for Sunday it was hot as snot.  I mean miserable.  I asked her in front of the ump if she needed some water (she was catching) and she said no.  The ump then yelled to Brian, "Coach get your catcher some water!"  He was not listening so the ump said again, "I said.....get your catcher some water, Coach!"  Brian hopped to it.  I have learned how to work it.

Rob's coach tonight kept calling me "Maam", I tried hard not to be offended.  He didn't know my first name and maybe he just didn't want to call me Mrs. Fuller.  Yeah right.  Oh well at least he has good manners.  He wants the football players who don't play basketball to wrestle.  I asked him if there were other 82 pounds boys for Rob to wrestle against.  He said they just had to be within 10 pounds.

Looking forward to seeing a bunch of family at the football game in Starkville this weekend.  I hope it cools off some but I won't bet on it.

Peppermint Pantry

I have been working on operation Mice Stink * this week.   I am bound and determined that we will not have any furry friends visiting Casa Fuller this winter.  So I have been researching the best ways to prevent mice.  One thing they suggest is putting peppermint oil in your pantry and in any areas you have seen mice in the past.  My pantry now smells like a Bob's Peppermint stick.  It really is quite lovely.  Another thing I did was put EVERYTHING in plastic containers.

[caption id="attachment_273" align="aligncenter" width="350" caption="Everything that would be tasty to a mouse in air tight containers"][/caption]

Then they suggested putting poison bait in your garage because they often come in through there.  I really don't know why the mice picked last winter to visit us but I have my suspicions they heard about the large quantity of sunflower seeds I had bought at Costco.  Sunflower seeds are only allowed in Brian's car now.  I also have gotten three more cans of Great Stuff.  I am being very careful with the gloves this time.  I still have a scar from my last encounter with the Great Stuff.  I really love looking for crevices to fill with the expanding foam.

Tracey and I went to this really cool place in Gardendale today.  It was the Flea Market that is advertised on a billboard on 65.  It had over 300 vendors.  It was like a mix of antique mall and flea market.  When you walk in the door they give you a cart which we wheeled through booths of furniture, tools, baseball cards etc.  It was so odd, there was one booth that had clothing items for $1.50.  There were cute shirts too.

[caption id="attachment_272" align="aligncenter" width="350" caption="My $1.50 shirt"][/caption]




One was actually priced $1.80.  Why not just go for $2.00?  I also got Rob some baseball cards.  They were packaged in stacks of 25 and meticulously shrink wrapped.  They were only $1.00.  I got 6 stacks.  Can you imagine going to all that trouble to package those cards for a buck?  This store had a great software system and gave me a printout of the items I purchased.  It was a neat place, definitely a fun field trip.

Rob had his first Boy/Girl teenaged birthday party tonight.  It was a tailgate party.  I think he had fun.  Clara and I finally watched Twilight  tonight, we weren't missing much.  Weird movie, I think some books are way better in your imagination, at least my imagination.

Lewis has started imitating Charlie Brown all the time. "Good Grief" and" UGHHH" are his favorite words.  He is a good reader but only wants to read comic strip books and Charlie Brown is one of his favorite.  I got him a magical expanding washcloth at Dollar Tree with a picture of Lucy screaming "Hurry up and pitch, You Blockhead."  He played with it for almost an hour today.  He suggested I take a picture of it and use it was my wallpaper on my Iphone.  He cleaned the walls with it and threw it up in the air, who knew a washcloth could be so interesting.

[caption id="attachment_271" align="aligncenter" width="350" caption="Lewis's washcloth/toy"][/caption]

Lewis has a wonderful teacher this year and one thing they are doing this year is a trip to China.  They will be building a plane and operating an airport with each person having an assigned job.  Lewis thinking he is really going to China, he asked me "Are you really going to let me go to China with Mrs. Thomas?"  I told him I trusted her to take good care of him.  He told me the other night "Clara says we are not REALLY going to China, but I know we are...."  That is Lewis in a nutshell, love that boy!

* to find out more about my mouse adventures see previous Mice Stink post

The Computer Graveyard

I have been working up at CASA this week getting ready for my friends.  That is what we call all our students.  Shannon and I have been working in our little computer room like two computer geeks.  We have a computer graveyard in the corner of our room that is filled with old printers that no one needs anymore in the church.  We are taking them to Best Buy tomorrow to recycle them.  Whoopee!!!   We are very happy.  We are then going to put two of our old computers from home in the computer room.  In our computer lab our old computers are young again.  That is the good thing about kids software, it doesn't need high-tech to work.

I took my car to Franklin Automotive to get it fixed today, it has made many strange noises since it came home from NY.  They were great and super easy to work with, going back to get some shocks on Friday just in time to go to Starkville.  We went to Lewis's parent night on Tuesday night.  I felt old, I really don't know anyone except for a couple of people that are parents in that class.  Most of Lewis's friend have some type of relation to an older sibling who is friends with Rob or Clara.  I really need to make more of an effort.  I guess it sometimes just works out that way.

Clara got invited by a friend (boy) to come see his football game on Thursday night.  She was so flattered. It is in Vestavia though so she might ride with the parents to the game.   She loooves her guy friends.   Guess what Lewis is going to be for Halloween?  A shark courtesy of my friend who found the cutest costume at Home Goods.  Lewis has a presentation at school tomorrow on his trip to the International Spy Museum.  Most kids have talked things like loosing a tooth.

Apache otherwise know as "Jump On It"

First full week of school was great.  I think everyone enjoyed their week. Rob had his first football game and it was really fun.  It was hard to keep up with, I have never watched a football game that closely.  We didn't have a roster but we figured out some of them.   It was hard to try to follow the individual kids in that huge mass of kids.  We won 62-26.  I had a mom with older kids tell me that she didn't think any Oak Mountain team has ever scored that many points in any sport.  We have some very talented boys.  There is one kids named DJ who was adopted from Ukraine in December.  This kid never grew up watching football, he loves soccer but he is a natural at football.  He is a running back, punter, extra point kicker and field goal guy.  He scored two touchdowns, I think he likes football too now.  Rob got to play most of the 2nd half because of the boys who scored a bunch in the 1st half.  Pam and I laughed because Hall and Rob were talking away in the back field and high fiveing each other.

The middle school had their Gala Friday night.  I was a chaperone in the gym where they were dancing.  They were so much more confident than last year.  They were having a blast.  The boys were in a big group and the girls were in another.  Then for the last hour they merged to one big group.  I was so glad to see them feeling so confident  and sure of themselves.  I have to admit it was kind bittersweet seeing Rob dance across from girls he has know since he was in preschool.  Some of Rob's friends did slow dance...they were so funny.  They were dancing with somehow not looking at each other or talking.  I asked all the boys who rode how with us if they slow danced.  Two told me they did, but they didn't know who with because the girls asked them and the dj said it was girls choice.  One of the other boys said" I know that  girl's brother" and another one said "the other girl is my friend"( I had 6 boys and one girl in my car).   I told them that was the nice thing to do.  I also saw an awkward but surely a future successful 8th grader boy ask a beautiful 8th grade girl to dance a slow dance to a fast song and that sweet girl said yes.  The late bloomer talked to his girl the entire dance.  I told the boys that story and one of Rob's friends said "AWWW" and not sarcastically, I love these boys.   Rob afterwards told me he saw me but I didn't see him, I just let him think that.  The boy's favorite song was Jump on It  but I told them the real name was Apache, it is so hilarious watching them dance to it.  The teachers and administration are so much fun, they are so nice to the kids.  They have such enthusiasm for their jobs it is such a blessing.

My Finds at the Foundry

I started out my day going to the chiropractor and getting a Route 44 diet coke.  Two great things.   I STILL forgot to bring the returns for the Polo store.  I got directions to The Foundry Thrift Store from Dr. Myers.  I had a great time there.  I found all these cool bumpy green vases for $.50-$1.00.  I put them on my white shelves.  I also bought some silver trays of various sizes for entertaining.  They were not real silver but none were over $3.    I found the coolest lazy susan I put in the middle of the table.  I also bought this aluminum little basket for napkins.  It was like a treasure hunt.  I also bought a coffee table for $15, and it is awesome.  I would have bought it for $75.  I decided to move the pine blanket chest I was using as a coffee table to the foyer for shoes.   While I was enjoying the treasure hunt, the girl who cleans up my house was fleeing my house because the alarm was going off.  We got our wires crossed and I got the day wrong.  It felt so bad but thank goodness she laughed about it.

I will post some pictures of the finds.  It was a fun field trip.

Hueytown and Hooters

Mom and I started our weekend by going to the Renaissance Consignment store where almost the entire store was 80 % off.    Mom, Clara and I were there from 11:00 until 4:30.  We stopped for lunch at Edgars for about 45 minutes.  The prices were too good to stop.   Most of the things we got were between $4 and $10.

I took Clara out to Hueytown to our chiropractor on Monday.  Mom was here visiting.  Her appointment was at 2:00.  I got on a long technical support call with a guy from Bell South who started telling me about his cornea transplants and all these things about my Internet service I didn't really need to know.    I think he was just excited I actually understood what he was trying to tell me.   He talked and talked.  So when I got off the phone I was kind of flustered.  I ended up leaving an hour before I needed to at 12:30, I must have been on auto pilot headed to the Galleria instead of Hueytown and ended up going the wrong way.  We finally got to Hueytown at 1:45 just in time for the real appointment time.  Clara and I are no help to each other with directions.  I then needed to run into the outlet mall and return some things.  His office is two exits away from the mall.  I somehow managed to leave my wallet at home so I couldn't return anything.  I am glad I didn't get pulled over during our field trip of 459.

We  were passing by Hooters today and Lewis said "I saw a Hooter girl in there!"  I said, "ok".  He said "What do they do in there?"  I told him they were waitresses.  He said, "Oh, I thought they just sat around and talked to customers.  I thought they were just there for entertainment for grown ups."

We are meeting the teachers tomorrow.  Here we go!

Lewis + Sharks = LOVE

We are back in suburbia and glad to be home.  I went to the chiropractor Monday and I was totally out of alignment possibly because of : sleeping in a bed older than I am, running with Sallie,  walking 5 miles on the streets of DC or riding in the car for 12 hours on Sunday.  We finished out our time in Cooperstown and said good-bye to the baseball wonderland.  We drove back to DC and went to a National/Phillies game Friday night which was awesome.  Brian had gotten us great seats and the Nationals whooped the Phillies.  After seeing how crazy the Phillie fans were I was glad.  Also there is an Alabama boy who plays for the Nationals, he had Sweet Home Alabama as his coming out song.

We then went to the National Aquarium on Saturday morning and it was Shark Weekend (in honor of Shark Week)!  Lewis was ecstatic.  They were able to make Shark T-shirts (never mind most of the coloring came off the first time we washed it), Shark shrinky dinks and they were giving out free shark teeth.  He was slightly disappointed when the tiger shark was the biggest shark they had there and the tiger shark is about the size of a bass.  The highlight was getting this book of comic strips from the cartoon "Sherman's Lagoon."  He also got the author to sign it.  He has laughed and laughed over that.  He read it the WHOLE way home on Sunday.  He asked me what "nude" meant and laughed even harder.

We then went to the International Spy Museum.  It was expensive but awesome.  It was so innovative and interesting.  It was almost like a Disney production, in its attention to detail.  They had fascinating video throughout and it went through spies throughout history.  They really understood the kids of this generation.  Loved it.

We then got up and left our beautiful hotel and hit the road.  Brian drove pretty much the whole time and asked me to drive once.  I was sleepy though so I had to drink a bunch of diet coke and then I had to go potty so I got bumped.  He said it wasn't worth it.  The drive was fine though, I read 2 books and the kids never fought.

I spent most of Monday washing clothes, you would not believe the clothes.  I obviously had dirty clothes here when we left too.  I have been cooking every night because we got so tired of eating out.  The food up there is not good (Cooperstown) unless it is pizza or ice cream.  They go all out for those two, not for anything else and they charge for refills.  Another reason I love the South.  I will say this trip made me appreciate the friendliness and kindness of the South.  I think I thrive on it.  I missed people looking me in the eye or smiling for no reason .  Life is too short to be grumpy.  I loved going to Wal-Mart  here on Monday and noticing how many people I didn't know were so polite and friendly.  Sweet Home Alabama.

If you do get the opportunity to go to Cooperstown with your son or daughter (they are opening a softball facility next year)  do it.  It will be worth all the trouble and money to get there.  It was a special time with special people.