Fried Caterpillars

Mothers Without Borders
Probably the highlight of the week was attending a fund-raising dinner for a friend who works with an organization who works with orphaned children in Africa. These children have been left behind from parents who have died do to AIDS and other illnesses. The family that brought this subject to our attention, Allison and Shayne Stokes, have been several times and have wonderful stories about the children they have worked with and adults that are trying their hardest to provide for their families and others. Linda was asked by Allison to help with the money collection because of her extensive background in off site banking. I was asked to help with the auction. Both of us were happy to help. They auctioned off several hand crafted Zambian items that were the hit of the event. Linda has made it a goal to someday accompany Allison to Africa to help and meet some of these awesome kids. Besides the auction we had adinner of traditional buffet food. Pasta, vegetables, meatballs, and chicken. However, the event would not be complete without the offerings of a few traditional Zambian choices. There was a corn meal offering, a relish (salsa -like) topping or dipping sauce for it, a Zambian fried chicken that was finger licking, and no dinner would be complete without Fried Caterpillars!! We were told they were a real treat for the children and that they were a "potato chip" like snack for the kids. As I put a couple on my plate I had in my head a French's Fried Onion like taste as they looked very similar. I put a big fat one in my mouth. Texture was good, initially, taste was fine. Then I bit into the little sucker. Nope, not an onion!! It had a little bit of an after taste, but at the end of the day and for the purpose of this Blog I can report we both ate a caterpillar, I drank my drink rather quickly, but I ate a caterpillar.

Blue and Gold
Hunter had his last Blue and Gold dinner on Friday. For those that aren't aware what the Blue and Gold dinner is a scouting celebration that recognizes the "Cub Scout Birthday". Hunter did a small charades act to demonstrate some of the activity pins that Webelos can earn. One of the Sisters made an awesome Cub Scouts cake and all who attended brought something for the potluck. Hunter's last cub scout activity will be next month when he builds his final pinewood derby.

Volleyball
On Saturday AnnaLynn and I went to watch some club volleyball. Our friend's daughter who is in the 8th grade plays on a club team and was in a tournament. They played several matches and played very well. They made it to the Championship match and lost in 3 hard fought sets. They had a chance to win in the 2nd set, but a couple unfortunate plays cost them the match. We have not signed AnnaLynn up for volleyball so far this year, but she still has the desire and want to play.

Basketball Update
We won our last "regular season" game and finished 2nd. We will have two weeks of tournament play. We are the 2nd seed and hope that we have a the right mix of players for the last three games. It isn't a matter of the type of players, its a matter of the right number of players. Last week 15 showed up and it is difficult to get everyone meaningful playing time.

Taylor is Taylor
This week Taylor had to do a biography report at school this week. Of all people she choose Taylor Swift. Apparently she likes her songs, she thinks she has 3 songs, she thinks shes pretty, long curly hair with sparkly eyes. Taylor dressed up like Ms. Swift and even had her hair curled. She feels like she did a good job on the report and is waiting for her grade.


Hunter's Cultural Activity
This week Hunter went to the Symphony and has decided that he is not interested in the attending future events. I personally think that it was not the music that he found "boring and hideous" and it was the fact that he had to wear "hanger clothes", Sunday shoes and a tie. The teacher insisted that they kids dress the part and Hunter would rather shove an ice pick in his ear than wear those clothes to school. His standard wardrobe is a Florida Gator shirt and one of four pairs of shorts.

Handi-Craft Club
The girls had their club this week and were able to work on their stuff. They started new projects and hope to finish them both before next week.


Luckily we have a pretty boring week scheduled this upcoming week but as usual we will always have something to report.

A Wicked week

A "Wicked" Week

As normal, this week was filled with lots of little things that occupied our time but the most exciting thing was that we went to the Broadway Across America version of Wicked. We have had been told about this performance by many friends and family members about how great it was and we have listened to the music for some time. However, we were not expecting it to be as great as it was. I was afraid that we had built it up so much in our head that it would not live up to the expectations. I was wrong. The singing was terrific. The dialogue was funnier than I thought it would be and the story weaved in what you know, or at least what you think you know, with new characters and missing pieces.

I had purchased the tickets three months ago for Linda's birthday and 3 other couples joined us for the evening.



Meat, Cheese, More Meat
Prior to Wicked the group went to a new Brazilian Steakhouse next to the theater. Some of the group had been to similar style restaurants so this was a new place for all of us. You start at the salad buffet table which is stuffed with different meat cuts and cheeses, then when you are done you flip your card over from red to green and men with 3 foot long skewers with different cuts of meat seemingly appear out of nowhere to tempt you with their selection. I had a couple varieties. Lets see I had the fillet wrapped in bacon, the chicken wrapped in bacon, the top sirloin, another type of beef, the Brazilian sausage, and ribs. I passed on the lamb and the Parmesan chicken. I hear skipping the Parmesan chicken was a mistake, but I filled up on the steaks. A definite must do again.

Going Once, Going Twice, Sold!!!
This week was also the youth fundraiser at church this weekend. I volunteered to assist the Young Men's president in the logistical side of it and let him focus on the boys and the marketing. It was decided to conduct a dinner and auction to raise the money. We had done a similar event two years ago and it was a huge success. This year we did not fair quite as well. some of the youth chose not to participate and we didn't have as many "wow" items and the few large items didn't go for as much as they should have. However, the event was more than successful for those kids and families that took advantage of it. We were given some Spurs tickets to help Hunter pay for Scout camp, and although they went for a fraction of their face value, we were able to make enough to cover his cost. We even got a deal or two along the way.

Basketball
We are no longer undefeated. We had a rough start and although we had a valiant come back we came up just short. The other team played a more physical game and the refs allowed them to play that way. It threw off a few of our players and they never recovered. We also started in a 3-2 zone and fell behind before going to man to man and limiting any inside shots. Tournament starts next week.

Others Events
We had the normal Activity Days, Scouts, and birthday parties this week.

Hope everyone else has a good week.

Party Time and the New Dresses

I can't believe another week has come and gone. Just when I thought we had it all together the weekend came. Busy Busy Busy!!! I'll start with the weekend and work my way backwards.

Florida Basketball Game

The family has adopted University of Florida as the one team we can all seem to root for. So, when they are on tv we always seem to watch them. On Saturday they played Tennessee in basketball on ESPN. Hunter is an absolute train wreck when it comes to watching any of his teams on tv. He lives and dies with every call, every made or missed shot and every turnover or steal. This game proved to be too much for him as the Volunteers seemed to have control of the game from the opening tip. However, as the game started to wind down Florida made a valiant come back a took the lead, which they lost and then got back and as Hunter turned Florida blue from holding his breath as the Volunteers dribbled the last 13.6 seconds and shot the ball ----- off the side of the rim. Gators Win!! Gators Win!! As hard as it is sometimes to watch the games with him he tends to make it fun at the end.

Dress Shopping

Taylor has had a little mini growth spurt and has started to show a little too much leg when wearing dresses to school or church. Since she loves dresses and typically only gets "new" dresses when AnnaLynn has a growth spurt I decided it would be nice to take her shopping at the outlets. How hard can it be to find a 7 year old a couple modest dresses at the outlets? Plus while I'm there I can get some shoes :). Hunter didn't have anything else to do and I thought he could help me pick out some shoes so he came a long. First store - Children's Place. We have gotten some dresses there before so I thought we'd run in a get a couple and move on to Nike. Went in and they had a couple cute dresses, $25. Went to look for some other styles, nope that was all they had. Option 2. Justice, typically over priced, but I had a coupon. Surely they will have some cute dresses. Um, no. I never saw the price because they were ugly. Backup plan 1, call Linda. She had some good ideas but I had one more store to try. Vanity Fair. 0 for 3. At this point we threw in the towel and went to Nike. Found some shoes, tried them on, discounted and on sale, flashy yet stylish, sold. Why can't dresses be that easy? Linda called told me she went online and Walmart had some options so we headed that way. Quick detour to McDonalds, I pulled in asked the kids if they thought they had dresses there. They said no so I started to leave. I asked again, You sure they don't have dresses in there. They might came the reply. They didn't but they did have happy meals and double cheeseburgers. On the way to Walmart, I had a a thought, what about Burlington Coat Factory? We stopped in and hit the motherload of dresses. She found 4 size 8s all too small. My baby girl wears a 10! She found several and we bought em all.

Birthday Parties

Three of the four kids were invited to attend birthday parties. Hunter went to one Friday night. Laser tag and movies, oh to be 11 again! Nathan had one at a Chuck E Cheese like place

and since I had the other two and Linda had to go AnnaLynn tagged along and got some tokens. then after Nathan's was over Linda dropped AnnaLynn off at a party of her own. Too much cake, ice cream and goodie bags for my liking!

High Priest Social

Friday night was the annual High Priest Social. I used to really not enjoy these since I always felt we were the youngest couple in the room and most of them had kids our age. However, in our High Priest Group now there are several families that have kids younger then our youngest, so I feel more comfortable now. We had a great dinner and sat with people from the ward that we never get tired of visiting with, but we never get to visit enough. Once they announced that our table had not danced enough (or at all) and the Stake Presidency looked our way the 4 couples at the table all got up, and .... Left.

Basketball

Still undefeated and un-injured.

Handicraft Club

This week was another first for the young ladies in the group. They used a sewing machine. AnnaLynn had done so previously, but the other girls had not. When they finished their look knitting purse they were able to finish it off with the machine. It was a smaller group, but they had fun with it.

Valentine Boxes and Other Vinyl Projects

This week was another interesting week with the vinyl cutter. The kids had to make valentine post office boxes and were told to decorate them. So they did. I took pictures of AnnaLynn's and Nathan's. Taylor has already taken hers to school and hunter not so much on the decorating. We also made a sign of a quote we saw on Lark's (Linda's oldest sister) blog for Hunter's contribution to the youth fundraiser next week. The sign is made of concrete and is 5 inches by 18 or so. The last one was a sign I made for a friend at work who is a huge Packer fan to celebrate their recent win. I wish we could make the cutter work a little better, but it has been fun so far.

Snow Day in San Antonio

Cold Cold Cold and Snow Day
This week started very cold. I’m sure not as cold as some places have been and definitely not as long, but dang it I forgot just how cold 15 degrees is. Throw in a little wind and the fact that I don’t own a “heavy” non hunting jacket and it gets cold in a hurry. The week ended with a snow day, That’s right, a snow day in San Antonio! Thursday night the temperature was in the 20’s a light rain started around 8:30. The rain quickly turned into a blanket of ice and covered with a layer of snow. The city and the Texas Department of transportation closed every major road in and around the city. School and work were closed. Businesses shut down, mail and UPS stopped running, and the kids occupied the community streets “sledding” with cardboard, plastic bags, cookie sheets, garbage can lids, skateboards with no wheels, and slick shoes.

The community next to us has a really cool water park, but unfortunately they forgot to turn the water off prior to the cold coming in.

By the end of the day the kids were in the backyard, no shoes jumping on the trampoline. Today it is 75 degrees.

AnnaLynn tried to scoop together as much snow as she could to make a snowman. Once she was finished she came and got us, but by the time we got over to see it the neighborhood problem child smashed it. We all came back somewhat disappointed. Nathan asked if he could go back out and play. A little while later he came back and said the snowman was back. This time we hurried out to see it. He had “resurrected” the snowman!





Words Can’t Describe Her.
Taylor is…..well she’s… no I guess you might say shes’s….I think you might call her… no that’s not right either…I just can’t think of the right word to describe her sometimes. Words like sneaky, manipulating, crafty, all come to mind but those sound so wrong. For those that had not heard the story from last summer, we went to get ice cream with another family who has 5 kids. So we had a line of 13 getting cones. One server had helped the first two or three kids when a second, more generous, server started helping. Taylor who had not been helped was watching everything take place when my friend cut in front of her to place his order. He quickly turned around and poked Taylor and jumped back out of line. Taylor replied, “No you can go ahead of me.” Nathan, thinking that she was polite and sweet declined the offer. She insisted. He refused. Again she insisted, but before he could refuse again the first server asked Taylor what she wanted. She begrudgingly placed her order, got her cone and went and sat down. Nathan turned to me and commented how sweet she was. I had a stunned look on my face and replied, “What?” He told me the story, not knowing I was watching the whole thing. I smiled and said, “Oh you didn’t notice the scoop difference between the servers. Taylor wanted the other server to get a bigger cone.” Nathan almost started to feel bad for her because he would have taken the smaller cone for himself so she could’ve gotten the “bigger” cone.

The reason I bring this up is because she did it again. This time the 2nd grade was having a little performance. Her class had been chosen to play a variety of xylophones. Taylor leading the class to the stage started to slow down at a loud pair that uses two sticks with rather large balls on the ends to play the instrument. The teacher motioned her to lead the group to the next and last section to play a very small xylophone. Taylor, still leading the
group took the middle position and motioned for a fellow student to her right and one to her left. I was a little frustrated because I wanted her on the end so I could get a better picture, but whatever what does the position really matter. Oh it matters! With Taylor it always matters! They sang the song without instruments, and then played the song with the instrument in front of them. The song finished and clapping ensued. The teacher quieted the crowd, looked at the kids and said, “Rotate”. This is where my lack of vocabulary comes into play; do you think they rotated 1 spot? Nope. They rotated two spots. This put Taylor on the one instrument she wanted to play. I don’t know if the word is sneaky, crafty, calculating, manipulating, maybe it’s just logical and smart. We love her though. If you think of the word let me know.










Basketball Update
We won again. Not that my outstanding defense, dead eye shooting, and near the rim rebounding was the key, but it felt good to contribute. Luckily, we have several guys that can play and we distribute the ball well. It’s fun to be out there playing again.

Activity Days
The girls had a great time watching church movies in their pajamas. They had a mock “sleepover” and had a great time watching movies, feeling the spirit, and eating popcorn.



THE NEW TOY
Linda’s Christmas gift is getting more and more fun for her, and me. It is fun to see how creative you can get and all the things that you can do. Linda’s project of the week was a sign for teacher appreciation day. It reads, “Parents send boys and girls to school, Teachers send Champions home” The school our kids go to is called Cibolo Green Elementary and their mascot is The Champions. It’s done on a 24 inch by 6 inch street sign.



We worked together on a large tile. I worked on the layout and she cut out the vinyl and applied it to the tile. I have always liked the scripture and thought it would be a fun tile.


The last was one I worked on using a couple different programs. I did it for a friend whose daughter is a huge volleyball player. Not that she is a big girl; just that she really really likes it. It is intended to be window decal for a car. It’s only 4 inches or so wide.

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