Happy Birthday Randy!

Today is Randy's 49th birthday! To celebrate, I am taking him out to lunch at a French restaurant in Niwot.(I have to attend another school board meeting in the evening ).

I did however make the standard birthday cake(chocolate with peanut butter icing). I have learned to make a double batch of icing since the kids tend to ice the cake skimpily so there is more icing for them which they will fight to the death over. They are eating other somewhat healthy things for breakfast, but there is just no beating this icing. 3 cups of 10X sugar, a tsp vanilla, 1/2 cup of milk and a cup of peanut butter=children actually agreeing on a food group. Priceless!

BTW, Matt's new favorite word is "discern". He uses it repeatedly trying to set the record for the most uses in a day.

Land lines

Last night around 10pm we discovered our main phone line was not working. For how long who knows. We almost never use it. Everyone I care about has my cell phone #. Randy flipped out(no big surprise there). He can not stand it when something does not work. We placed a work order with Qwest and it will probably be fixed today. The only people who will not be able to contact us because of their refusal to use the technology that the rest of the planet has embraced are Randy's parents. They have his cell phone number but tend to not want to call it. Depending on the cost to get this fixed, maybe they will be forced to. I personally don't see the need for it any longer

I am taking today off to do laundry, etc and get ready for my trip. After watching some of the kids fashion choices lately, I will be packing for them. Camo socks were just not meant to be worn with shorts.

It has been a while

Crazy busy here. Life has been on hold while I wrote a grant. (this process normally takes 2-3 months). I did it in 9 days. House is a wreck. Out of food as usual. Eating out way too much. Today we have bowling, our tax appt, haircuts. Tomorrow the kids have a game night at church. Monday I am taking off, but will probably do some volunteer work in a library. Wednesday is Randy's birthday as you probably know. I will be baking a cake Tuesday night. Wed I will take him out for lunch since there is a school board meeting. The girls from Trailridge who won the grand champion prize at the teen tech fair are being recognized and my director says I should introduce them. Great. My only hope is laryngitis. Anyone know how to bring this on? Hard to believe we leave a week from today. Need to clean up and start packing. Borders is having 25% off for educators, so will probably head over there. Need to charge my ipod, etc.

This week

Another busy week. Spent more time working than I wanted to. My boss and I are writing a grant that will benefit another department that is under my boss. The people that will directly benefit are not being very helpful in providing information. Very frustrating that the people who should have buy in are putting no effort into this while Connie and I are working weekends and evenings to meet the 3/23 deadline. Today she and I are going to a CAL(Colorado Association of Libraries) networking events. It is lunch at an Irish restaurant. Should be fun.

I worked on the grant until 11:30 Friday night after meeting my family for dinner. There was a Sangria induced nap inbetween. Saturday the kids had bowling(Kris did great, Matt not so much). We did a basic cleanup downstairs and then went to Gateway for the go karts for a few hours. Then onto the grocery store and I actually cooked dinner. We had the exciting meal of Hamburgers, fresh veggies and buttered noodles. The nice thing was the burgers were cooked on the grill. 1st cookout of the season(it is actually summer here). Goes along with our summer like temps. 77 yesterday. A/C has been running for several days. Kids have been wearing shorts to school for a few days. There was a scary moment Thursday morning when it began snowing, but then warmed up again. It seems everytime I hold a library meeting at Matt's school, it snows in some form.

Things may be turning around for Matt. He had to do this brochure on a biome for science and the teacher told him she is not giving it back. She told him it is the most creative she has ever seen and wants to keep it as an example for other students when she teaches that unit again. GO MATT. He got an hour of internet back a day as a reward.

Last night Kris and I went shopping. I bought a few new things. I need to take her and get her a new bathing suit for when we go to the beach. Kristen's confirmation class is going to see Amazing Grace tonight. I bought Casino Royale so when I get back from Denver, we will probably watch that.

The Concert

I gave Randy concert tickets to a combo Asleep at the Wheel/Ray Price/Merle Haggard/Willie Nelson for Valentine's day. Tonight was the big night. It is a night I will never forget. I made a new friend. His name is Bruce. Bruce and his girlfriend Mary were given tickets by Bruce's daughter and included a DD(designated driver for you non white-trash, rednecks). Apparently the daughter dropped them off early so they could get started with their buzz. Bruce was a large gentleman with long stringy hair and 3 teeth. I do believe that beer is his main source of nutrients. Anyway. Apparently, one of Bruce's buddies came along but paid for the expensive seats way down on the floor. His nickname is UGLY. So every 45 minutes or so, Bruce is yellings"UGS" to get the attention of his friend. Bruce also shared that his heart's desire was to share weed with Willie in Willie's bus. Great. Bruce had a box of Marlboros that did not have smokes that could be bought in a 7-11. But the real kicker, is the horseradish party hosted by UGS. Apparently the highlight of Bruce's social season is this horseradish party where all the men dig it up and all the women peel it. Bruce apparently passes out after this, because I doubt he does anything sober. My guess is that they either smoke it or distill it. I will never think about horseradish in the same way. At one point Bruce was rubbing my arm, saying it was ok if my leg rubbed up against his. NO-IT-IS-NOT-OK.
BTW, the concert was really pretty good, better than I expected.

The Teen Tech Fair

Well, it is finally over. A few loose ends to tie up, but it was held last night and was a huge success. We had 56 entries from 9 schools and for a first time effort, it was overwhelming success. I have never seen the director of my department smile like that. I thought he was going to dislocate his jaw. We had over 200 people show up. The superintendent as well as several school board members. The entries ranged from digital art(mostly summited by the art teacher from my former school), to power point presentations to websites, to instructional videos, etc. The prizes for students were monetary for groups, and ipods for individual entrants. There was also a grand champion prize of 280.00. Kristen's school had one entry-a promotional video for the elective teachers and it won 1st prize for middle school and also grandchampion so these three 12 year old girls split 480.00. Awesome. Axel is now my friend for life. The newspaper was there as well as the local TV channel who videotaped it for broadcast after spring break. So there you have it. I started this whole thing 1/23/2007, so a mere 6 weeks later, we have fulfilled my director's dream, showcased the school distrit in a positive light. After the whole thing was over, 5 of us went to Outback to celebrate(I never got a chance to eat) and the director picked up the tab for me to eat and several rounds of drinks. My day started at 7:30 and ended at 10:30 that night. Not bad for a 15 hour day. I made my department look like stars. I really feel like I have accomplished something and made a difference.

Weekend

Friday night: Dropped Kris at church to go to youth quake and Randy, Matt and I went out to Mexican restaurant. Most unflavorful Mexican food ever.

Sat-Matt did bowling and did great. Went over to Connie's house to work on the Teen Tech Fair. I will be so ready for this thing to be finished. Bill(her boss)has acknowledged several times the work we have put in on it. Sat night, Randy, Matt and I went to Ankor restaurant for Cambodian food. very good and large portions

Today-Picked Kris up after church and Matt and I went to see Wild Hogs. Very funny. Off to grocery store shortly. Then watching Grease and then more work, work, work.

So much for embracing anonymity

I had this whole long post typed about my evening last night and somehow bumped the wrong key and wiped it out. Ok here goes again:

For the past month I have been working on a teen technology fair. It is the district's 1st attempt at this and a dream of the director(my boss's boss). Last night was the school board proclamation that next week is Teen Technology Week. Connie and Bill the director were going to be speaking. I said I would go as a show of support- after all this is my project. I have lost countless hours of sleep, had many mini-nervous breakdowns, etc. First there were mind-numbing bond committee reports, followed by coma inducing financial reports(how anyone can find this stuff interesting is beyond me). Finally it was time for the proclamation. Connie and Bill went up to the podium(everyone has to speak into the mic there for the TV audience(all 5 of them). Bill motioned me to come up.(uh oh, this was a bad sign). He whispered to me that he wanted Connie to introduce me to the board(I already knew three personally) and wanted to give me credit for all the work I had done. Ok, kind of nice, but since I still had not spoken I was still somewhat anonymous. They then started asking questions which Connie did not have answers for. So I had to speak. No longer anonymous. Thank goodness I had changed into something nicer than what I wore to work.