Anchors Away

Tonight my good friends, the Alfords, hosted a going away party for John. We are leaving tommorrow so this is John's last night in Dallas. All of the Youth from the church who like John came, so about half of the kids showed up. Suspicously absent was the girl John dated last year. Amazing how that happens. Bob and I warned him against fishing off the ward pier last year but I guess he had to learn that little lesson for himself.

The food was great, all of the hotdogs and chips you could eat! Then Angie brought out a wonderful cake that she had decorated. John the skinny boy has decided that he really likes cake. He found out that the Naval Acadedmy cafeteria serves cake at every meal so he is pretty happy. I just hope he does not lose weight during Plebe Summer. While everyone was enjoying cake I fired up our karaoke machine. I sang one or two songs just to give the kids the confidence that if Sister Muir could do it then so could they. I just love Karaoke. The hit song was Bohemian Rhapsody. I could not find my signature song or I would have dragged Angie and any other girl up there to sing I Will Survive. I would have liked to sing Dr. Hooks Sharing the Night Together but I didn't want the kids going home and reporting to thier moms and dads about the totally innappropriate song Sister Muir sang. I have to save that song for family parties because who are my kids going to tell?

Lost and Found

For the last few days I have been on a hunt for some missing receipts. I have been the hospitality chairman in the Spring Creek Elementary PTA. I buy and serve all of the goodies at PTA functions. A few weeks ago I was separating out all of my cub scout receipts from my PTA receipts. I submitted my cub receipts and I was waiting until I completed the New Principle Coffee to submit all of my receipts since January. I had several hundred dollars outstanding. When I got finished with cub camp I was ready to submit the reimbursement form, but I could not find the receipts anywhere! I looked and looked. I kept having a vision of putting them in a ziplock bag and in a purse. I cleaned and searched and still could not find them. I prayed and tried to live a good life so God would bless me with finding them. I finally gave up. I went to Costco and Sams and asked them to print me all of my purchases since January. Sams said no problem but Costco told me that I would have to go to corporate and they would not even guarantee success there. I decided to look through a sack of receipts that I had gathered together which were not reimbursable, just regular receipts that I was planning to throw away soon. I was going to try to rebuild as much as I could. I was trying to see if I had overlooked any reimbursable receipts. I found one, then another, then the whole wad of PTA receipts emerged, without a ziplock but glorious nonetheless. I guess all of that righteous living payed off.

Cub twilight Camp

Don't you love the look of concentration on Joey's face. He is building his first marble maze. This is pretty serious stuff.

Last week we took our cub scout pack to twilight camp at Breckenridge Park in Richardson, Texas. What I hate about twilight camp and scouts in general is all of the paper work involved to drive a group of kids 7 miles to a city park. Each cub and adult had to have an application and a medical release. The forms were pretty detailed and required an accounting of our lives since birth. I had to fill out a tour permit to allow us to carpool the 7 miles. We had to list driver's license numbers, insurance information, the make model and year of each vehicle which might be used in the carpool and how many seatbelts were available. Each adult then had to take an online class on preventing and detecting child abuse. Then each adult had to fill out a volunteer information sheet reiterating everything that we had just submitted. All this to go to a city park 7 miles away with our cubs.

What I really liked about cub twilight camp is the experience the boys got by participating in games, skills and crafts. Some cubs are golden boys. Everything they do is good and perfect the first time out. They are good looking. They have a lot of friends. They hit the bulls eye everytime. Then there are the rest of us, like my son Joseph. He really had a hard time with archery the first day. He did not even hit the target. It is pretty hard to be a Webelo and to miss every arrow. On his second day at archery I insisted that he change the hand with which he was holding the bow. He really fought me on it but I reminded him of how successful he had been so far. Just leave it to a mom to do that. He hit the target for the first time in his life! He got two bulls eyes that round too. So the lesson to be learned when you fail is to change things up, a little or a lot, but especially listen to your mom.

At camp we have a tradition of doing swaps. Swaps are little things you usually pin to a swap hat that you would willingly trade with other campers. Some swaps are cute homemade crafts. This year Joey got the great idea to use wrecked and irretrievable dvds or cds as his swaps. He drilled a little hole then stuck in a safety pin. On the last day of camp I brought a gallon sized bag of giant gumballs. I could not have gotten more attention than if I had been walking around a Navy base without a shirt. I swapped with everyboy who liked gum. Amazingly enough, one boy came up to me and told me he did not like gum and another told me his mother would never let him have gum. Poor things. Everyone else was willing to swap an eye or a limb for a big colorful ball of heaven.

Feast or Famine

I'm going to jump right into the deep end! I have never had a blog but I enjoy keeping up with my daughter Megan's Muir Coincidence on blogspot and I can see the potential to keep up with all of the friends that I have a hard time keeping up with. I have always been hesitant to send the family holiday letter. I love reading other families' letters but when I start writing, the great things that happen sound like bragging and, well, the bad things, though juicy and interesting, are just too painful for me to share in a Christmas Card.

I am going to have to learn to put pictures. My technical skills are primitive so please be patient with my attempts.

About the name Feast or Famine, several years ago my sister Deanna and I decided to go on a diet the day after Thanksgiving and ending the day after New Years Day. We ate very sparingly all of the time except when we were going to a party and then we were allowed to have a small feast. The diet was very effective not because it was the best nutritional plan around but because instead of gaining 10 pounds over the holidays I actually lost five pounds so that means that I had a real weight loss of 15 pounds. Now that is creative math!