Dreary Day

It's foggy and yucky out! Need sun! And then it is supposed to be cold again? I thought it was spring...

We had a fun time at Sherrie's Saturday night. Good to see Jason again. Too bad he had to drive home, Moline airport is not good to him. Hopefully the next time I want to fly I have better luck.

Good to hear that Vanessa is getting phone calls from Caleb. It sounds like they are both doing well. Now if he just receives the packages we've mailed.

We learned about Volunteer Services at Evening Circle Monday night. Elda gave a great presentation and they are trying to get money to pay for the van they ordered. The wheelchair lift in the van is about half the cost of the van.

Off to the library this morning, tomorrow a hair cut and then work at the funeral luncheon. Saturday night is our last card club night for the season.

Walking outside

Yesterday I took my longest walk of the year outside. It was so nice out. A coat was good but didn't have to wear a hood or anything on my head. Matt came last night with the semi to get a load of corn and they stood outside (it was even dark by then)and visited a long time. I don't know if Matt came to get corn or cookies. He came to the door and said "where is my bag of cookies?" so I got rid of the bag I had just put in freezer. Good thing I made two double batches of cookies yesterday morning! He even said his wife said he should get my recipe. Little does he know it is an old one from a Better Crocker cookbook that I've had since we got married.

Monday was a different day at school. They were doing testing except for Pre-K, K and 1st grade. I spent at least an hour cutting laminated objects for Pre-K, had kindergarten kids read to me, and had 1st graders count: by 1's to 100, and by 2's to 20, first starting with 2 and then with 3. Starting with 3 and using odd numbers is a hard concept. I corrected papers for 2nd grade and spent time helping the secretary with report cards. Report cards aren't ABCD&F anymore--and I didn't spend much time trying to figure how they were graded. I had to put plain white stickers on a part of the report card that was printed incorrectly and that took awhile. I could hear music and then found out a brass quartet was playing in the gym. I went in to listen and the four "old men" as the janitor told me, were playing and explaining their instruments. Very interesting and I enjoyed it very much.

Today I go to the library. Last week we weeded the video section, removing almost all of the adult VHS movies and some of the kids'. We don't have a lot of DVD's but will be getting more. Vicki found that there are only a few who take out VHS movies. I then arranged the video section, putting the children's movies on one side and the adults on the other. I'll see if it remained that way today!

Have a box for Caleb to mail this morning. Prayers for him and his unit please!

NC wins 1st game at State

It rained and rained. From the time we left Wells Fargo Arena and all the way home. After watching our boys win big over Cascade we drove to a mall in Des Moines and shopped for an hour, ate supper and came home in the rain. I was thankful not to be driving in the rain in the dark. I got home about 8:30 after a fun day. A big North Cedar crowd was at the game, there was no school and I heard there would be no school on Thursday either. There were 2 busses of kids and 2 charter buses of adults. Go Knights!

Sunday was a full day. Choir sang at church so I had to be there at 9:00. After church we had search committee meeting until 1:30. Came home and got Bill and went back to town to play cards with Harlan and Florence. That was fun. They live in such a neat place and she has things so pretty. This was after card club on Saturday night when we didn't get home until 1:00. Monday was a busy day at school. I (not a math person) helped a 3rd grader with subtracting double digits because on the paper I corrected she had them all wrong. Hopefully she remembers what we practiced and will do better next time. Am off to the library this morning (in the rain I might add!).

North Cedar goes to state

North Cedar's boys basketball team plays at state tournament next Tuesday afternoon. I get to go too! A couple friends are going and asked me to go with. Should be fun and the team has a good chance of winning. Today Mt. Vernon girls team plays at state and hopefully I will get to listen to the game on the radio while taking mother to her chiro appointment in Walcott.

Yesterday after being at school a few hours (we had a late start because of the ice coated roads etc) I went to DeWitt to get my wedding ring back. I took it to the jewelry store on Valentine's Day because a stone had fallen out--the ring being brand new. No charge--I would have been very disappointed if there had been!

Prayers for Caleb please.

Making Quilt tops

I have been obsessed lately with sewing quilt squares. For years I did only paper pieced quilt squares, after watching some tutorials on different web sites I have found I can do some simple squares without paper piecing. In fact, I started and finished one small baby size quilt top yesterday. Of course that means nothing else is getting done around here! I did take down my snowmen and put up some Easter things. I guess that is why it snowed again.

We had Evening Circle last night. For the past few years we have made cherry pie tarts (in honor of President's Day) for our nursing home and older church members. Last night we made 24 cherry pies. Some of us work in the kitchen, the others make the tags we put on the bags the pies go in. They will be delivered today. A few of our members are really good crust makers--then there are those like me who think pie crust comes from the store!

When Circle was over we had to go out and scrape the ice from the windshields of our cars. The highway wasn't cleared either--thank goodness I only met one car because I couldn't tell where exactly the road was. Hopefully today will be better.

February thaw

Most of the snow is gone, except for the biggest drifts. Now the yard looks absolutely ugly! Yard is muddy, roads aren't too bad.

Worked at Erwin Strackbein's funeral luncheon yesterday before and after working at the library. We had 11 kids come to story hour plus 2 babies. It was "T" is for turtle day. They made turtles, last week I painted the underside of paper soup bowls green and yesterday they mottled the "shell" with brown and black paint and added construction paper legs, head and tail. Most kids love to paint except those who don't like dirty hands! We fed nearly 75 people at the luncheon, they were eating when I got back to church so I washed dishes, just cups, glasses and silverware as we use paper plates now that we don't have a dishwasher. My hands sure got clean!

We need everyone's prayers and good wishes for Caleb as he leaves for Afghanastan next week. Larry, Ellen & Caitlin are flying out to spend some time with him before he leaves. Vanessa is there with him now. Wish him well and keep him in your prayers.

Sunday afternoon was spent with Donna Schroeder & Georgie (Kroemer) Greiner working on how to make a booklet for our 50th class reunion and what to put in it. Georgie is doing the proofing for me as I type the pages. We finished the evening by going to Happy Joe's for pizza. Georgie & Nick still have sheep and Nick was lambing so it was a short evening. Good to see them again.