1) Hannah is in band - up to her eyeballs. She was in marching band and had 7AM rehearsals at least three days a week. The marching band season ended October18th, but jazz band started right after that, so Hannah still has 7AM practices three days a week (but at least now they're indoors). Along with marching, jazz, concert and honor bands, Hannah was in the pit band for the high school's musical Damn Yankees. The final performance for that was last night, so that's over, and honor band is sometime next week, so things will slow down for her a little after Thanksgiving. But since she's so involved in band, I custom painted her trombone case. She loved it, and a couple of the upperclassmen told her they liked it, too. It looks like this:
2) Halloween was a fun night. We put a light out on the scarecrows and they garnered a few laughs. And not only did our girls dress up, we also dressed up our dog, Judah:
3) The contractor we hired finally started on our porch. Since we took these pictures, Mike and his assistant have put on the rails, balusters and edge soffit. Carl installed the outlet boxes and recessed lights. That's a story - one of the lighting vendors came into the office one afternoon, and my co-worker Ryan suggested I show him the drawings of my porch and get his advice on what kind of lights to get. Not only did he give me advice, he gave me the lights! Ten recessed can lights, gratis. They were leftover surplus inventory, but I'm not one to look a gift light in the socket. I had to buy the baffles (the liner-thingy inside the can) but they were less than $50 total, so all things considered I really got a great deal. If you can imagine the rails and balusters in place, the porch looks like this:
4) Last night was our church youth group's Spaghetti Dinner/Dessert Auction/Talent Show fundraiser. I made a chocolate eclair cake with mint filling (which turned out really good - thanks, Sis!) and I also performed a comedy routine. It was called "Storytime with Granny". It started with four girls (Mary was one of them) running up to me on stage, begging me (Granny) to tell them a "kissy-smoochy princess" story. I obliged (obviously) and told them the tale of Rindercella. This routine was originally done on the old TV variety show Hee Haw by Archie Campbell, who played the barber. It went really well. Carl taped it, and I had people coming up to me, telling me they were amazed at how I was able to tell the story and not get mixed up, and also how funny it was. If you don't know the routine I'm talking about, the first paragraph goes like this:
"Once upon a time in a coreign fountry there lived a geautiful birl named Rindercella. Rindercella lived with her mugly other and two sad bisters. Also in this same coriegn fountry lived a very prandsome hince."
I'm glad I made people laugh. Lately it seems like everyone is so uptight and serious about everything that they don't know how to lighten up. I think I was able to help them with that.
5) When Mary turned 11, the doctor told her she could have an insulin pump to replace her daily multiple injections. We ordered the pump, and it finally showed up last week. This week and next she, Carl and I have a series of classes to go to so we can learn how to correctly use the pump, which by the way is pink. Last night Mary won a pink vinyl cell phone case which is the perfect size to hold her pump, so she's pretty happy. We're looking forward to these classes, and hopefully everything goes well so that we can use the pump when we go to South Dakota for Thanksgiving. I hope the weather is decent for this trip, because I'm looking forward to going shopping in downtown Chamberlain the day after Thanksgiving. Chamberlain is a small town, and going into their shopping district is like going back in time about 40 years. I remember going shopping in downtown Davenport with my grandmother at Christmastime, and I'm hoping to have a similar experience to the one I had as a child. Most people will be going to the malls in Mitchell or Sioux Falls, so I don't think there will be much of a crowd. Plus, in the evening, the city holds a chili supper, and we're looking forward to that, too. And of course we get to spend time with Carl's family, something we don't get to do near enough.
Busy, busier, busiest. But hey, we haven't gone insane yet (not totally anyway) and we have alot to look forward to and alot to be thankful for. And...the storal of the mory is this. If you go to a bancy fall and want to have a prandsome hince loll in fove with you, don't forget to slop your dripper!
