Quick Takes Volume 58

~1~

VBS planning is now well under way for this year.  Earlier this week I sat down with the amazing ladies who are taking care of the arts and crafts portion of the program to discuss craft ideas.  The meeting was really productive and we have just four of the five days set.  The kids should have a lot of fun doing these meaningful crafts.  I'm excited to see how everything will turn out.

~2~

This year I'm trying to get as much of the supplies that we need for VBS donated as I can.  I was given a great suggestion to see if we could have a professional tee shirt business apply the iron-on decals for the camper's shirts instead of having someone volunteer to do all of the ironing manually.  I mentioned this to our DRE and he has passed our request on to the person who handles the parish carnival tee shirts.  Hopefully she will be able to get the business to donate this service to us.  I'm also working to see if I can get donations for the camp snacks.

~3~

Ellie is all set to receive first penance tomorrow morning.  She's been practicing how to go to confession using a silly list of fake sins.  She's been laughing a lot as she says "I stole five llamas from Target.  I didn't feed the llamas.  I made fun of the llama-faced boy who sits next to me at school...."[Why yes, we do watch The Emperor's New Groove on a pretty regular basis.]  I'm praying that she does not confess those made up sins tomorrow morning.  I am glad that she is so excited to go to confession and seems so relaxed about it.  It occurred to me a few days ago that she will receive this sacrament on Candlemas.  How neat is that she will receive this soul-cleansing sacrament on a feast day that celebrates the purification of our Blessed Mother?  I had already decided to make either a cake or a bread in this beautiful bundt pan, but now it seems even more fitting.

~4~

Catholic Schools Week is coming to a close today.  This week we had to hand in our notice that Ellie will not be returning to the school in September.  I really wanted this school to work out for both of our girls but sometimes things look better on paper than they do in reality.  We were mildly amused yesterday when Ellie came home with a card she made that says that "SMS is a bully-free school" on the front with a thank you from Ellie for sending her to the school.  Madeline took one look at the card and said it was a lie.  Perhaps they don't consider the cliques to be in the bullying category.

~5~

We're trying to help Katie kick her pacifier addiction.  The past two days I haven't let her have the pacifier outside of her crib.  She was pretty upset about it early in the day yesterday but she seems to be adjusting.  She seems to have them stashed all over the house so I have been grabbing them and tossing them in the kitchen sink as I come across them.  We find that she actually says words when she doesn't have a pacifier in her mouth.  You can't understand anything she says when she has her pacifier.

~6~

We had snow this morning.  Thankfully, it wasn't anything bad enough to cancel school.  Any day that it snows that doesn't cause a snow day is just fine with me.  I can handle it in small amounts, just not when it piles up.  Ellie's school already has two days to make up from the hurricane so we don't need any snow days on top of it.  For some reason the public school isn't making up those hurricane days but that's just fine with me!

~7~

Madeline went to school all Flyered up with her Flyers shirt and sparkly orange finger nails. [Bryan thinks she's trying to butter him up for something.]  She was a bit upset a few weeks ago that she was the only one  that didn't have a Flyers jersey or tee shirt.  It took a couple of weeks of me stalking the Flyers section at Target, but I finally found her a ladies tee shirt that she loved in a size small.  It amazes me that she can already wear some small and x-small women's tee shirts.  Is she really that big already?  It seems like she's grown a lot since September.