I don't even have words.....

just go ahead & have a good laugh....

Totally 80's cycling day

I decided to have some fitness fun & announced that we would have an 80's cycling day at the end of May. I encouraged everyone to dress up in some sort of 80's style and I made an 80's playlist to rock out to. Not everyone dressed up, but we still had a lot of fun and, of course, had a killer workout. I rewarded my class with a treat of banana bread, they like it when I bring snacks. : )

I had also did a theme day of sorts in April. I didn't tell my class about it in advance, I just showed up in this:

and had Army cadence music playing for the whole class. See fitness can be fun....

The sky is falling....the sky is falling

I know, I sound like Chicken Little. I sure felt like it when I went running downstairs exclaiming that the ceiling collapsed. First let's back up to how this happened.

We had a Friday back in May that is rained, and I mean RAINED, all day. That next Monday night/early Tuesday morning Jim & I were awoken by a loud thud sound. I heard the sound and mildly woke up, Jim shot up out of bed and asked "what was that?" Now, normally Jim sleeps deader than a doornail so for this sound to wake him up is a pretty big deal. I shrugged it off and mumbled that it must of been that one of the kids fell out of bed or dropped something. Jim went upstairs to investigate and came back down to report that everything appeared to be fine. We went back to sleep without another thought.

Fast forward to the next day at bedtime. I went to go put Carmen up in bed & Mandy tells me that the night light in the toy room was not working. I go to investigate and found this:

Insert me running downstairs to exclaim my findings to Jim. Well....I should confess that first I went into the kid's room demanding to know WHO DID THIS? It wouldn't be the first time that a should of know better kid kicked a ball or threw a toy in an unacceptable manner. Once I saw the totally confused look on their face I knew they were innocent and didn't know anymore than I did at this point.

I find it amusing that when I am calm Jim is freaking out and vice versa. And it was vice versa in this case, I felt like a raving madwoman (well, ha ha, that's not too far of a stretch for me on some days) when I yelling "the ceiling fell down". At first Jim thought I was making up such a far fetched idea. But I insisted and he looks at me calm and almost peaceful like and says "I bet that was the sound we heard last night". Ah-ha, the light goes on. Now it made sense. I mean the happenings of the night before, not why the ceiling had fallen in.

We went back upstairs to investigate, we're looking through the debris. I pick up a toy bucket and say...."why is there water in this bucket?" Ah-ha, another light bulb goes on. The roof must be leaking. Which is not good when you remember that we just had a new roof put on less than a year ago. Jim gets out the ladder & is crawling up into the attic crawl space and while he is up there, throws something down and asks me what I think it is?

It took me a few seconds to realize that it is a bird skull. Not a decomposing one, but one that was completely decomposed down to the bones. EEEEWWWW! Maybe it got stuck up there last summer when they had the roof off???? I don't know, but that is GROSS!

I had to throw away a lot of the toys and what was not ruined I had to individually clean (oh, that was loads of fun). But we are very fortunate, blessed to be exact, that is happened in the toy room. If it had been a bedroom there would have been some serious consequences. Since we live in an old house all the walls & ceiling are made out of plaster. Some of the toys were literally crushed and mutilated. If that had been a child's head or any body part....

Well, it's no surprise that God was protecting us, all of us, from what might have been. Thank you Jesus!

Boo

If you've seen the movie Monsters Inc. you'd probably agree that Carmen looks like Boo, the little girl in the movie. I love putting pigtails in her hair. She is so cute!

First Haircut

I hear a lot of comments about Carmen's hair & how long it is. She has been blessed with the Luna hair. She does have a lot & it is awfully long. It's been fun to play with it & fix it up. But it was time to get a cut to give it some shape & form. We went to our entrusted hairdresser, Lori, who has a shop in her home. She is wonderful. She didn't even charge me for the haircut, but I paid her a few dollars anyway (we were there anyway getting some other hair cuts).

Post Office Food Drive

The Galva Post Office (where Jim is postmaster) was part of the national food drive that took place in May. People were encouraged to put out food on their porches and the post office promised to pick it up & deliver it to the local food pantry.

Jim needed some extra helpers and the use of our big van to help collect food. I recruited the big kids and a friend to help with this event. I mostly drove up & down the streets of Galva looking for food & then sending a kid out to collect it.
We made several trips to the post office to unload what we had collected. It's the first year that Galva had formally participated in the event. Jim was hoping for about 500 lbs. of food. In the end though about 1,300 pounds of food was collected. This picture is just some of the food, not all of it. We were not there when the final load of food was brought in & weighed. I'd say though that it was quite a success.

Things are not as they appear

It might look like I haven't been updating the blog. When you check in you probably see the same post sitting at the top and think there is no new news. Well, a few weeks back I had an idea to start a bunch posts and leave them as a draft. I figured if I titled them & put the pics up then saved it it would make it easier for me to get back to them & post. What I didn't realize is that when I do finally post them, it posts them under the date that I started them on.

So, if you scroll down you will see a bunch of new posts. They are down under there, so go read & enjoy.

In other Peterson news....so much has been going on and I can't seem to keep up. Here it is the end of May and I have well over 150 pictures to edit & organize. And several events to match those pictures to blog about. Aside from being so busy I'm also getting away from the computer more & being outside. I already have a very nice set of tan lines appearing. School is going to be out in a few days, the kids are going to be consuming more of my time. So just a heads up....I might not be blogging as much or as frequently. I know you all understand.