songs that stick in your head

This morning on the way to school, Mac informed me he didn't want to listen to talk radio and that I should find music. So I found a country music station that was playing songs. In the approximately 5-minute ride from home to school, we heard maybe 1.5 songs. I heard Mac singing one of them in the shower tonight. Sadly, it was Big and Rich's "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy." Clearly I need to screen the radio more carefully because things are sticking in that little brain!!

the jack o'lantern has bitten the dust

We never enter by the front door of our rental house, but today I asked Jimmy to park in front so I could check the status of my mum. The plant was fine, but my poor, poor jack o'lantern was mushy and moldy and gross. It has now gone the way of the garbage can, and I'm hoping Mac won't notice because there is simply no time to carve another pumpkin anytime in the foreseeable future. Maybe there won't be pumpkins in Bogota and I won't have to carve again for a couple years.

looking ahead...

It appears to be at least semi-official that Jimmy's next assignment after Afghanistan will be Bogota, Colombia. If all goes according to my plan (which is usually not the State Department's plan), Jimmy will return from Afghanistan by August 1 next year, he'll have a couple weeks of home leave, and we'll move by mid-August so that Mac can start school on time.

More details to follow as we know them.

little bit of Halloween

In our quest to give Mac the quintessential American experience this year, we carved a pumpkin this afternoon. Sadly, this was Mac's first remembered jack o'lantern experience in his 6 years of life. Sad, right?

We bought one of those carving kits that comes with a book of ideas. None of the ideas included triangular eyes and nose and jaggedy teeth, which is about my jack o'lantern speed.

Jimmy totally bailed on me and said that he didn't get any of the creative genes in his family. Nor did I, but how do you explain that to a kid who wants to carve a pumpkin? He didn't buy the whole "the pumpkin will last longer if we don't cut it" story.

So we bought a pumpkin at our next-door church's pumpkin sale, he picked out this design and away we went. I leave you our carving experience in photos.

Tiger Cub Safari

Last Saturday was the big day for Mac and the Tiger Cubs. Thank the Lord Jimmy was home because I would have been way out of my element (not to mention being one of probably 2 women had I gone).

I'll let the photos speak for the fun that was had!

First of all, note that Mac is listening to this guy talk about BB guns with rapt attention (mouth is hanging open). Secondly, contemplate why this guy is wearing an alligator hat. Fashion statement? Cub Scout humor? Your guess is as good as mine.

Check out that posture!

Finally. A new use for holey socks! Now we all need to take up archery at Casa Story to take care of all those socks!
Notice the patches are still hanging on. Possibly for dear life, but still hanging on.

Happiness is...

smelly feet

Mac has really smelly feet for a 6 year-old boy. Or maybe all 6 year-old boys' feet smell this bad.

It all came to a head yesterday afternoon when we got to football practice. Mac pulled off his tennis shoes that he'd worn to school and I was helping him put on his cleats. The smell was really remarkable. He got mad at me because he thought I was making fun of him. I pulled his sock off and told him to sniff it and he'd see how bad the stench was.

He recoiled and said it smelled like dead elephant.

I rest my case.

T minus 12 hours until Jimmy gets home for his first R&R. Mac thinks he's coming home on Friday because we didn't want him to get upset if Jimmy had travel delays. He's going to be soooo excited to see his Daddy tomorrow! And then Daddy can go on smelly sock duty for the next couple weeks.

cub scouts or bust, part two

Why do I even bother to try to be a perfectionist?

Half the boys didn't even have uniforms yet, another quarter of them had uniforms with some or none of the patches sewn on yet, and the other quarter had all the required patches. Glad I only tacked them on, though, because I see some room for placement improvement!

Jimmy comes homes next week for his first R&R and he will arrive just in time for the first Scouting adventure. It's some sort of non-me-sounding all-day activity that includes learning camping skills, camp and fire safety, nature skills, swimming, BB gun shooting, archery, sports and games. On second thought, maybe I should go because I could learn a lot!

cub scouts or bust

If I'd known how hard it would be to sew those blasted patches onto the Tiger Cub uniform, I would've never taken Mac to the registration meeting in the first place.

Sewing them on late last night gave me an idea for an easy business. When Mac and I went to the Boy Scout store on Monday afternoon, there were 3 families in there shopping for uniforms and all the accoutrements that go with the uniform, like the blasted patches. So why not set up a sewing machine on a card table right outside the Boy Scout store and offer to sew on patches for a fee?? I would have paid handsomely for somebody to sew them on Monday and I probably would've given a kidney last night.

As it stands now, I have only tacked them on at various spots around the edges. I sold my sewing machine in Brazil and didn't plan far enough ahead to have Bubby stitch these on with her machine. So it was me, some clear thread, and a needle that eventually bent because it was so hard to get through some of the patches.

I've told Mac not to pull on the patches today because they will come off with insubstantial force and he might be left with holes in shirt. I intend to enlist Bubby's help ASAP!