Those Damn Plastic Gloves

It's taken a week to get back on this blog because I've been so busy with all these activities this week.  There has been SO much talking to other room moms on the phone and trying to collaborate everything.  Between the two grades, I've been talking to about 10 moms and a number of them every day, even a couple of times a day.  One of the sticking points for both grades is that we are having the kids make popcorn gloves for their Fall parties this afternoon.  You have them put candy corn down into the fingers, then they fill the gloves with popcorn.  The result should look like a hand, complete with fingernails.  However, when I tested it with the gloves we had, the fingers were so wide that the candy corn always fell sideways.  I couldn't force the candy corn to stay upright even if I tried shoving popcorn around it.  So I was trying to find other gloves and other moms were trying to figure it out too.  After a whole week of searching, we ended up with the same gloves.  So we all decided it really doesn't matter if the candy corn falls sideways.  The kids don't care.  They'll just have fun making them and then eating them.  So those damn plastic gloves took a lot of unnecessary time and grief this week.  I was just afraid that all the other classes had the right gloves and that our class's would look lame compared to the others and the kids would be bummed.

Well, this busy week is almost over.  The fifth grade and third grade have both had their field trips.  Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend either of them.  I had a dentist's appointment during the fifth grade field trip and a meeting regarding refinancing our house during the third grade field trip.  The fifth graders also had their DARE graduation yesterday (DARE is explained in the previous blog).  I was able to help set that up and attend.  Also my husband was able to attend because he worked from home yesterday.  That was a lot of fun and it went smoothly and the kids really enjoyed it - the parents did, too.  Then last night we had a couple of the boys' aunts over because we were getting pizza delivered from our local police department.  Our school distrist has a pizza night at the end of DARE and red-ribbon week, where a police car or fire engine will deliver pizza to you with their sirens blaring.  We've never done it before but decided to this year and it was a blast!  The boys loved it!  The sirens and lights were going and making a lot of commotion.  Then the officers let the boys get into the car and look all around.  Some people in the neighborhood came out to see what was going on.  They were probably thinking "well, they seemed like a nice family - why are their kids in the police car?"  I joked with the boys that this would be their first and ONLY time they would be sitting in the back of a police car.

Now today both the 5th grades and 3rd grades are having their Fall parties so I need to run out to get a couple of last-minute things after I write this blog.  I'm a little nervous about the parties because we are doing 3 different activities for the 3rd graders and there are just so many 5th graders (approximately 100).  So it might be a bit difficult to keep everything organized and get the kids the different supplies they need before they start getting impatient.  There should be a lot of help for both parties, though.

One thing I've really enjoyed about this process is getting to know the other room moms better.  I've known many of them before, but some of them I didn't know real well.  Now working with them on these projects, I'm getting to know them much better - so that's really fun.

I'm sure I'll be tired this evening so tonight I'll try to relax a bit to get ready for Halloween tomorrow.  I'm so glad it's on a Saturday.  I'll be making a special breakfast of smiling mouths on top of pink, oozing goop (cut red apples in the shape of lips with yogurt-covered raisins as the teeth on top of strawberry yogurt) and bloody hands (toast cut into the shape of hands with red jam smeared on different areas).  Then I'll be making blood, brains and guts for dinner (meat sauce with spiral noodles).  I have no idea what lunch will be.

Well, have a fun, safe and goulish day and evening tomorrow.  Remember to set your clocks back - yay!  We get an extra hour to sleep in - good timing!