Fifty seven cents

Johnathon's science fair project was selected with several other projects from Sesser to compete at the regional level today at SIU. He was going to be gone from approximately 7am this morning until 7pm tonight so we sent $40 with him. Money for meals, snacks, bowling, etc....

At around 1 Johnathon called dad and asked if he could buy a video game, they were at the mall and according to him he had enough money. Well, dad told him no which I doubt made him very happy. I mean he's such a deprived child and has hardly any video games (lol!).

While he received a "GOLD" placing on his project today it wasn't selected to compete at the state level in Champaign. Congrats and Good Luck to the few Sesser students who were selected to compete at state!

When Johnathon came home I asked if he spent all his money today. He took something out of his pocket laid it on the table and said "No, I brought home change". He ate an entire plate of lasagna with half a container of cottage cheese and then had one of the cherry turnovers that I made followed by an apple - he acted as though he was starving to death. I thought maybe he hadn't bought much to eat.

When I was getting ready to head to bed I happened to look at the "change" on the table. Now mind you, he is a twelve year old boy and if you give him $40 for a day away from home.......he comes back with 57 cents which I'm assuming wasn't spent to say he brought home change, that or there wasn't anything he could find to buy for only 57 cents!

Boys will be boys!

Oh and on the comment sheet from the judges, the only negative comment they made was on one of the charts that I did........so of course the reason he's not going to state is obviously all MY fault.

Wedding flowers

This is what I've been up to the past couple of nights and most the this afternoon.
You can see the rest HERE! I'm delivering them to the bride tomorrow afternoon.

Waiting on my parents to get home with Chinese takeout and the two movies I asked them to buy for me while they were at Walmart 1) New Moon (I know most of you probably already have it but I've been sick for two weeks and could have cared less about a move) and 2) The Blind Side. Can't wait to eat some sushi, egg rolls and maybe a little glass of red wine and watch some movies. Pretty lame for a Saturday night, but hey it is what it is.

Free Range No More!

Well as most of you know my father has chickens. For some time now we've talked about increasing the height of the fence on the coop. The chickens fly out, wondered around the yard (pooping all over the place) and yesterday morning ate the freshly planted lettuce seeds out of the garden. This last act was the end of the line - you don't mess with Pappa Deaner's garden and since it was a warm day, well we tackled the CHICKEN COOP!

In addition to the chickens making a mess of everything outside their coop, dad's only been getting 1-2 eggs a day from all those chickens. I kept suggesting that the chickens were laying elsewhere.....well, we found out one spot yesterday - under the blackberry bush! All kinds of eggs under that thorny, monstrous sized blackberry bush in the back yard. Of course we can't eat the eggs now, but how in the world do we get them out of there so they don't stink to high heaven when the weather warms up a bit? ugggghh

In the beginning......the pen was surround by a once white picket fence. Unfortunately this fence wasn't exactly tall enough to keep the chickens cooped up (as you can see a few escaped ladies).

A few essential tools required for any 'fix it' job.

The building of the door frame.....

Johnathon helping Pappa Deaner set the post, hard work for Johnathon as you can tell!

Johnathon learned how to set a fence post and he so loved helping. He did a great job on the fence posts. Pappa Deaner and I liked not having set them all ourselves. Plus he made a good gofer, well we'll work on the gofer part - has a hard time 'finding' the items he was going for so then I'd have to go show him what we were talking about that was usually right in front of him and exactly where we'd said it was. He'll learn, there are a few more "home improvement" projects scheduled for this spring that he'll get to help with.

In process.....where we were when we took our lunch break
The new door is hung, now we can get into the pen (not sure why anyone would want to be in there, but should you so desire you can get in there easily now).

The new fence/pen is DONE!! And the best part is that this morning there were NOOOOOO chickens in the yard or garden or flower beds or field. All chickens were accounted for inside the coop. WoooooHooooo
....and where we/dad pulled up the old fence that had sunk into the ground and unearthed many a ground worm I learned that chickens LOVE worms. They were quite happy with the freshly tilled dirt and had a heyday with all those worms. The little black and white chicken has hawk eyes, spotting a worm from across the pen and running to retrieve it - somewhat comical to watch.

.....and the chickens! There are yellow, brown (I know these are New Hamp Red's), black, black & white (2 different kinds) and the turkey that showed up one day. No kidding, my parents came home and this turkey was walking around the coop. Dad opened the door, he jumped in and made himself at home. It's not a wild turkey but we're not sure where he came from???
Well, I have a full day so I'd better get to it. Roast is in the oven and is smelling wonderful, need to peel some tators and get them boiling....take a shower....edit a few pictures....arrange some silk flowers for a May wedding....bridal consult at 2pm and finish a baby afghan. I really excited about my to do list, today is the first day in a week that I've felt like well, felt like even getting out of bed. Only made it to work ONE day this week due to a respiratory/sinus/ear infection that settled in last weekend and just wouldn't leave!

I think it's a trick....

Matthew called me tonight to let me know he "lost his tooth". His dad wanted to see how loose it was but told Matthew that he didn't think he was going to get able to pull it.

Of course when Matt relaxed thinking the tooth was going to stay in another day......his father pulled it.

He did say it didn't even really hurt.
His mother sent me a phone pic to prove it's gone.

I hope the tooth fairy doesn't forget to stop by Matt's room tonight!

Calling the Tooth Fairy

It hasn't exactly fallen out yet, nor will he pull it. The one in front hanging at an angle isn't going to be there much longer though........so tooth fairy best get ready and be sure to check under Matt's pillow for the next few nights!

Sesser-Valier 1st Grade is Undefeated!

I got to rise and shine early this Saturday morning to attend a basketball game/tourney for the Sesser-Valier Devils 1st Graders and I thought my bleacher days had ended for the season....well, here is the events of the morning.

If you like to see more pictures from the game (there's only about 300 of them) be sure to check out my photography website - just click here.

Matthew had stole the ball from Waltonville (he's #2 by the way)

Oops, he doesn't quite have that dribble thing down yet and ran past the ball.

Defense, Defense

The one smiling in the front is Matt's buddy Michael E. Not sure what Michael found so amusing but he smiled through most of the game.

What more is there to say?
He was running so hard he couldn't stop and ran into his own player :D


Rebound....
Go Matthew Go

If you remember the pictures of Johnathon playing basketball, well I guess the tongue thing is an inherited trait - notice below that Matt's is sticking out.
Stole the ball

Wild dribble and lost the ball....
Give it to me, give it to me
They are only first graders and can't dibble well therefore they let the kids literally carry the ball. The ref's were really only there to make sure they're going in the right direction. Yet Matthew managed to get multiple fouls called on him.....hmmmmm

Not sure what this move is called
Celebrating Michael E (one of his best buds) breakaway lay-up. Good Job Michael!

......and the awards - each child received a metal (Sesser won both games!!)
Your victorious 1st grade Devils!
Great Job today Matthew and congrats on your two wins!

Outstanding Display!

So a few weekends ago I spent literally the ENTIRE weekend on Johnathon's Science Fair Project. I didn't have the pleasure of doing one of these in school so I spent an hour researching what he didn't know about the project online. Then several hours researching what he was suppose to research to write the paper and so on and so on. After helping him write the project paper, we got to start the fun part late Sunday afternoon - the display board!

His project was the effect of fertilizer on bean plant growth - exciting stuff!

The prep work....Johnathon planting the bean seeds and measuring the plant growth.

Just in case you were wondering the final results of the experiment......granular slow-release fertilizer grew the best. Which by the way was his hypothesis (pure guess on his part), I would have guessed the liquid fertilizer after reading all the research since we only measured growth for 4 weeks.

The planting, growing, measuring of the beans wasn't really my cup of tea. But once that was done and I got involved, come on -that display board is just a really big scrapbook page! Wish I would have got involved sooner and his display board would have really rocked! This was the best I could do on short notice.

"The Display Board"

Love the header that I hand drew a bean plant on???? You know you love it!

I was a little disappointed that I didn't take into account that the header slipped down on the board and I drew the one bean plant behind the board fold - won't make that mistake again next year. You can't see the roots of the plant on the right and the roots were the best part of the plant drawing.

.....and the results of our hard work - Outstanding Display!!!

When Johnathon called me to tell me how he/we did, after saying congrats my first question was "is that the highest reward given". His answer was nope, so-and-so got Best of Show. My response was that next year we're going for Best of Show then....Johnathon's response - "that's okay, outstanding display was good enough". Way to set goals there Spiff!

He was given a trophy and $20!

If you're friends with me on Facebook you've already seen most of this.....sorry for the repeat, but I had to share the great news again!