Friday Wrap-up

Around the House(Keeping):

I took the bull by the horns and brought the winter coat and comforter in to the dry cleaner -- because the coupons expired the last day of May. Even though we're supposed to have highs only in the 60s again for the next few days.

I mowed and trimmed the yard. That's about all I get done outside these days, because a) it's not like I have nothing else to do and b) it keeps growing like crazy due to the rain. I tried to get out there and do this week's mowing before the rain of the day hit; only got sprinkled on a bit toward the end. We recently finished The First Four Years in the Laura Ingalls Wilder series for a read-aloud; I was contemplating, as I was mowing, whether I should just let it grow and see if someone will buy hay -- like they used the hay from the school section near their claim.

Quick shop for basics at Walgreen's; Girl Scouts registered for next year so they get the early bird patch; basic weekly cleaning of the bathrooms; working on next week's menu plan; rebate check deposited at the bank.

Family:

Attended a poetry reading in first grade. An end-of-the-year celebration type thing. The class sang songs and each student read a poem (they read it; they didn't have to memorize - since they're first graders, this was part of working on reading for the year) and showed a picture they'd done to illustrate the theme of the poem. My daughter had the longest poem, "100 is a Lot." The poem had 100 words (or, really, 104 with the title, she told me, "but really 107," because she also said "read by N_"). The teacher had also put together a scrapbook for each student for the year, with photos from classroom celebrations and field trips, samples of their writing about those events, a copy of the class photo, and a personal note to each student. A really nice thing to do.

I also put the last Daisy petals on a Girl Scout vest, as well as the patches earned during this year's cookie sales. (I figured she only has a couple of times left to wear this, as she's almost done being a Daisy and will be moving on to be a Brownie.) I did this in the half hour before we left for tonight's activity: Chuck E. Cheese with six, six- and seven-year-old Girl Scouts.

This was what the girls wanted to do with some of the cookie money they earned for the troop. And we needed to do it soon, before two families -- the troop's top cookie seller and my co-leader's family -- move out of state over the summer. So, we put a coupon to work and fed the girls two large pizzas (a few slices of the sausage left; none of the cheese), soft drinks and, later, ice cream treats. The ice cream treats were our solution as to what to do when we ran out of tokens (from the 200 we started with!) for running around playing games and such. It actually worked out really well with timing for when we had told parents to pick them up, and the girls had a lot of fun running around, playing, eating, dancing with Chuck E. Cheese, and being silly.