my insanely crazy week

This week has been absolutely nuts! My back and my feet are so glad it's over.

I lie... sort of... the whole week hasn't been nuts. It was just enough crazy to make it feel like the whole week was a sort of time bomb. The whole culmination was Friday.

Friday, the Day of Three Parties.

Party #1: The Preschool Party

M2's school party was Friday morning. As Homeroom Mom, I'm in charge of crafts. That means I have to come up with ideas, resources, and application of an age-appropriate (and skill-appropriate) craft for 19 3- and 4-year-olds. In this case, I decided - with the help of Google - to get some 20-oz. or 1-liter bottles and some orange paint and some of the foam sticker sheets and make bottle pumpkins where the kids shook the orange paint in each bottle and stuck on pumpkin faces. Now... sounds simple enough, right? Right. But me being me, I couldn't stop there. Nooooooooooo.... that'd be far too easy. So I painted the lids of each bottle green. And I had to cut out the eyes and noses and mouths for the kids to stick on, and of course they all had to be a little bit different. And then the lead preschool teacher found a foam pumpkin kit that I decided should be customized with each kid's name (in black glitter glue - more about that later) and turned into necklaces (which means I had to punch out holes and cut strings).

Then and only then was I finally ready for the party.

We did have fun, though.


The assistant teacher is a hoot. She's truly a riot, and the kids love her as much as I do. I'm seriously going to miss both preschool teachers next year when my kids age out. I've had one kid or another in that preschool for three years now!


This is M1 with a girl from M2's class. They get along very, very well. He and that little girl played the entire time, and when I swiped my kids for Party #2, she stood at the edge of the playground and hollered bye to him over and over and over till he had to shut the van door.
Here's another shot of that cute little girl. She's got a sweet personality. M2 likes her just as much as M1.

The owner of the farm we were visiting (which belonged to the family of a classmate) kept trying to make a scarecrow. The kids kept trying to spread the hay as far and wide as possible.

Mom and her baby. The baby is the first girl for the family and is just a doll. She hung out in that sling the whole time just contented as a clam! The lead teacher and the farm owner are chatting in the background.

The resident kid. With the teacher. It is actually a full-grown goat named Precious, and at one point she nibbled the assistant teacher's leg. She just thought it was a student tugging on her pants!

This wee girl riding on a miniature horse was one of the ones who 'adopted' me. It's so darn cute when preschool kids adopt you until you realize that there are three of them waiting for space on your lap and you've only got two legs!

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So that party was what I would call a success. Then it was a quick trip home for lunch and a rest for the kids before heading to

Party #2: The Homeschool Party

Our homeschool group meets from 1-3 every Friday at a local community center. It's a bit of a drive for me, from my side of town, but I try to make it as often as I can because M1 really enjoys it. The Halloween party was the biggest event with the group that we've made it to so far, and we participated in a card swap... which meant making approximately 40 cards for 40 kids who attended. MAN, was it crowded.

But, again, it was fun!
Some of the moms dressed up, too, though I wasn't creative enough to come up with something in time.

Even the punch was creative! Gotta love those ice cube hands.

The kids had a costume parade. Later on, they played some games, but M2 took a nasty slip-and-fall right on that hard linoleum floor right before the games started, so we headed out early. It was tragic, and she's got a lovely bruise right beside her left eye, but she'll be all right. Look at those costumes!

After the kids and I got home, I hung out for a little bit and then headed out again for

Party #3: Girls' Night Out!

This was a wine "tasting" event where we were supposed to bring a bottle of wine that described our personality.
This is what I found. It used to hold a German Riesling, but soon I hope it'll hold some flavored oil! It also comes in green and blue, and I may have to go get those. I thought it immensely appropriate for several reasons: One, because it's a cat; two, because it was a German wine; and three, it was a rather small bottle and I'm not much of a wine drinker! It was a good wine, though, and one of the first bottles that was completely emptied.

I was the designated driver for one of the girls in the evening, though, and she got me a giftie:
Ain't it cute?

I'd share what happened at the wine party, but that'd be just wrong. Suffice it to say, I didn't get home till almost 3 a.m.

Trick-or-treating and Halloween photos to come later! Can you believe it's already November??