Around America with the Blue and Gold

Nathan's cub scout pack had it's annual Blue and Gold banquet on Friday. This year's theme was Cities around America and our den's city was New Orleans. We chose a Mardi Gras theme so beads ...

...and masks abound.

In the annual Mother and Son Cake Contest, Nathan's cake won for the best birthday cake...

we were going for most regional but the King Kong cake was a shoo-in for that category.

The face in this blurry photos says it all... he was THRILLED to win.

We're a Talented Bunch

At least the men in the family are! And they were able to show off all that talent tonight at the church talent show. We've been attending the talent show for the past few years and the boys have participated every year but this was the first year Kevin got in on the act.

This is the only picture I took. Sully was "Luke" who had just wrecked the Land Rover and worried that his dad was coming to holler at him. Darth Vader is Nathan, newspaper, fuzzy slippers and all. Sully's other number was a ventriloquist act... he doesn't do ventriloquism... it was funny! Kevin did three great impressions while reading from Goodnight Moon... gonged (by request) each time, to the chagrin of a few audience members.

We enjoyed both dinner and the show. The youth group uses this as one of their major fundraisers for a summer trip to Montreat.

BBQ Dog

Some of you may remember this post of Duke ON the grill. I'm happy to report that he hasn't been up there since we got rid of the picnic table. He did find another grill inspired spot.

And for anyone who has missed reading about the antics of Duke, he's still a ball of laughs... or a large pain in the rear, depending on if you're a glass half full or glass half empty type of person.
For starters, his foot has almost healed from the when he was stuck on the fence but I did have to call the vet last week when he decided to help himself to a plate of chocolate chip cookies... and I mean the ENTIRE plate... made for a lot of people... there were A LOT of cookies! I now know that he'd have to eat 2o ounces of chocolate to be in the danger zone. 20 ounces is A LOT of chocolate. Unless of course he decided to eat bakers chocolate- then he'd only have to eat around 12 ounces- YUCK!
He whined and cried when he was under the BBQ and acted like he was stuck. The largest way in or out is shown in the last photo, and he's a pretty big dog! Fortunately ,with a little coaxing, he crawled out- unscathed.

Let's Party... and Skate

Nathan had an ice skating party this year and what a blast that was!!! Several of the kids had never been on ice skates- not a surprising thing for Florida kids, but they had a ball. The adults had a pretty good time too! We were fortunate to have Grandma Kate and Wally drive out for the party and boy, is Grandma Kate good on skates! Nathan explained to me that Grandma's prowess on skates was due to her growing up in a cold state.

And FINALLY some photos!!!! Sorry for the blurriness- We are still getting used to the new camera and many of the "action shots" were taken by Kevin, while he was skating backwards... a feat in itself!

This was how Kevin and I spent much of our time... pushing kids around.




Since Nathan is officially a "pro", this being his third time on skates and all... he was all over the rink. And Sully? Well, he's a hot-dog on skates... that's what impresses the ladies, ya know?

Nathan didn't care about impressing the ladies!

We had a great time and I can't wait to go back when we aren't hosting a party.

I thought "winter" was over

We even turned our ac on last week but this week we're looking forward to some chilly nights ... and beautiful days (high 60's to low 70's). I LOVE winter in Florida! Summer? Now that's another matter entirely.

Still no Pictures but a Quick Update

We've been really lazy about getting the memory card for our camera so I don't have any photos to share but wanted to get a quick post out about our week. The boys both had football games today and as I was sitting out on the field, I noticed what a great view of the cruise ships we had. (not that the boys would notice as their focus was on the ball... or should have been) They have really enjoyed playing flag football. It's very low key and the boys all get to play. I'm planning to have a memory card for the next game so I can take photos of the boys before the season is over.

Duke added some interest to last week by getting his back paw stuck on the fence top while trying to jump over. Dorky dog will sometimes jump the back fence in hot pursuit of a cat or squirrel. He then gets stuck in the field behind our house and has to be lifted back over into our yard. You'd think if he made it over one way, he could figure out how to get back, but we haven't been that lucky. Anyhow, this time his paw got stuck and when he freed himself, he got a pretty nasty cut. We've been drugging him with Benadryl and doggie aspirin so he'll stay doped up and off of his foot. His bandages have been removed and he's licking his paw like crazy but so far it looks OK and we haven't had to make a visit to the vet.

On Monday, the boys went to see a show called Black Violin, a group of guys playing kind of a hip-hop on violins- they really liked it. This was the day of Duke's injury and fortunately a friend offered to go in my stead. This meant that the boys were able to go hang out with their friend Gabe after the show... needless to say, they were thrilled.

Other than Duke's foot issue, we've had a pretty low key week. We are having some uncommonly low temperatures this year, but today warmed up to almost 70, so "spring" should be around the corner.

We'll go to a Valentine's Day party on Friday the 13th with a group from our defunct homeschool co-op, and then we have all of our normal activities... scouts, Kids Klub and football practice. We're studying simple machines in science so if I can coordinate photos with our projects, I'll post those soon.

Hurrah! New Computer

Kevin came home with a new computer today- what a great guy!!! And none too soon either. Although I'd figured out how to charge my laptop without any sparks shooting from it, today was the day it decided to completely shut down. I'm hoping we can still get info from the hard drive but if not, I did back it up pretty recently- live and learn.

So, this hopefully means back to some more regularly scheduled posts.

Still Dealing with a Flaky Computer

But life goes on.

Last week Nathan turned 8. We haven't had his party yet but we did eat cupcakes on his official birthday. We also attended a juggling show, football practice, scout meeting and Kids Klub. The coming week holds much of the same except that we may add in a trip to the zoo and have no juggling show to attend.

I look forward to getting the computer back to normal in the near future and posting (with photos) more of our comings and goings.