I'm kind of a big deal

I've been trying to convince Tim's California family for the past 18 years that I'm kind of a big deal around here. Please help a sister with as much "ooo-ing and ahh-ing" over my blog as you can muster.

Sleepover at Grandpa's

All of the boys got to have a sleepover at grandpa's house last night.

Here is the first email that I got from my dad at 10:30a.m.

"Yo--
Last time I heard them was 2 AM not a sound since.... Chores all done got the mail watered the garden done some sewing and breakfast all ready but no takers IS THIS NORMAL OR SHOULD THERE BE MOVEMENT ? we are burning day light......."

And this follow-up mail from him at noon.

"Yo--
They are moving Lydon has only been up 1 min and already texting
Home style chuck wagon breakfast at home... Bacon- Eggs- Hash browns- Toast with peanut butter and jelly- Sunny D- Sprite and some one puts ketchup on there eggs why?
Now it's out side for Grandkids Olympics"

Bacon? I love bacon? Why didn't he ever cook bacon for breakfast when I was living there?

Lucky boys! When does it get to be my turn to sleepover at grandpa's?

We blew the boots off the Boody Barometer!

That's right! We blew the bottom out of that barometer. Our goal was $2,000. But we turned in over $2,100. Aaron and a boy from the neighborhood went door to door the night before and the day of relay and brought in another $343. Tiffany's relay night fund raiser earned over $200. And none of that includes our silent auction items that we know brought in at least $350. In total we scored over $3,000!!

Do we have some awesome friends, family and neighbors or what!

What a night!

Camp Counselor: Yo Bob

Camp Security provided by Poncherello (aka Poncho)

Lazy good for nothing dog. All he did was lay around and look cute. We should have charged a quarter for each one of the lovins he got through out the night. We would have raked in the money!

Our silent auction items were brought to you by Uncle Jill. Jill and her auction crew hooked us up with two gas cans donated by Dave Rich, Farm Bureau Insurance and the Morgan Fire Department. Sara was able to score us a Bushwaker camelback bag from her dad (pictured in the lower left). Uncle Boyd and Carrigan Motors donated an oval shaped sidebar thingy that attaches to a truck and cost alot of money (Yo Bob explained that they are the things you step up on to get into the truck--I'm such a girl)

Uncle Jill and the Devil's Slide Credit Union donated a $25 Visa card and this super cute cake.

And Dolly/my little Babushka/Bint Stinter/Casuree put together this darling breast cancer Mary Kaye basket. Casuree: Your Aunt Boody would have laid down a fortune to buy that basket from you. I think you made her proud!

Teacher Tiffany was in charge of the camp activity/fund raiser. She did not disappoint. She came up with a necklace and bead contraption to keep track of the number of laps you walked during the relay. You got a purple bead on your necklace for each lap you made and with the fourth lap you got a white bead to signify one mile (four trips around the Morgan track equals one mile.) The necklace idea was a total hit!

There was one hitch to the plan....the necklaces got all tangled up during transport. I think Nate looks like he's wondering what the "H" he's got himself into.

The Boody Bunch showing how to properly use your necklace.

The first event of the evening: The survivor's lap

Uncle Lyle was a good sport and represented the Neuteboom/Santee/Carrigan/Netz/Lafitte/Roberts/Lane/Rasmussen family as our survivor. I hope it wasn't too painful for him. On the plus side, he did get a nice t-shirt out of the deal. And I hope he understands that he now has the permanent assignment to walk the survivor's lap for us from here on out.

I am beginning to think that every one of our family get-togethers ends up with at least one wardrobe malfunction. Poor Casuree--I accidentally gave her a t-shirt that was a size child-small (meant for Brennan) and I gave Brennan a size adult-small (meant for Casuree). And the sad part about this story is that Casuree wore that child-small shirt for a least a couple of hours before I figured out my fashion faux-pas. Bless her heart. Why does she continue to put up with me?

Hair update: Tim's hair is growing back quire nicely, thank you very much! The only scar that he has from his wife-induced-hair-cut-adventure is a mental scar but with the proper medication and counseling we should be able to work through it.

It a was a hot muggy night, there was too many bugs and it rained a little. But there was a lot of people, a lot of food, a lot going on and the night flew by. I was able to stay awake all night and only hid out in the tent a couple of times when it rained.Here I am using a Diet Coke to wash down the record number of insects I swallowed, inhaled or otherwise consumed that night. GROSS! We got to celebrate Buster's birthday. For some reason I don't remember getting a piece of this cake. I remember eating a lot of bugs but don't remember eating a piece of cake. What the heck!??!The best part of the night was the luminary ceremony (with the exception of the patriotic music that was played during the fireworks show)

Dad's bag

My bag
Shawn's bag.

Shawn, Shawn, Shawn (sung to the tune of Marsha, Marsha, Marsha from the Brady Bunch). He's always gotta go one bigger and one better than me.Brennan's bag. In case you can't tell, this is a picture of a bowl of tomato soup and cheese which was Grandma Billie's signature lunch.Chaston's bag. This is a picture of grandma in her chair with Abby sitting on top of her chairAaron's bag

Lydon's bag

Jill's bag for momJill's other bag for mom Jill's bag for Grandpa JimJill's bag for Aunt JackieJill's bag for Aunt Mary LouAunt Lynne's bag for Grandma BillieMystery bag. If there is some other grandma Billie out there that had a Sassy in their life and this is your bag, I brought it home with me.
We made it through the night. The sun is just starting to come up and most of us were still there!

I would like to officially lodge a complaint about living in the same family as these two girls. Do you know how hard it is to put up with Uncle Jill and Tiffany when they can both can make it through a long night of walking (in the rain at times) looking like this? I kinda hate them (not really) (well, sorta) (maybe just a little)

Aaron got a special shout out during breakfast for walking 20 miles. I was able to walk 10 miles and ended up with blisters on both of my heals, a bruise on the bottom of my foot and blisters under each of my hammer toes (yes, I have hammer toes, what about it?).

You would think that this is the end of my Relay for Life adventure, but NOOOOOOoooo.....

I think this little lady and her demented sense of humor decided to thank me for my Relay participation by playing a little prank on me.

The boys and I dragged (and I mean DRAGGED) ourselves home from the relay at about 7:30am. I immediately did a scrub down to get all the sweaty, humidy, dead buggidy, yuck off of me so that I could throw on a night shirt and get me some shut-eye.

Warning: the following description of myself may not be suitable for all audience members. Please proceed with caution as I tell you how I look in the morning. BAD--I look way BAD in the morning. Most especially the morning after the relay. I had no make-up on. My hair had kinda glued itself into this unintentional mow-hawk on one side of my head and tangled up dead bug's nest on the other side (no kidding). I had on the rattiest of ratty night shirt because I really didn't care what I was wearing as long as I could crawl in bed and SLEEP! Unlike Uncle Jill and Tiffany, I do not possess the power to look purty 24/7. For me, it is a complicated process that involves hours (yes hours) of washing, rinsing, conditioning, rinsing, application of products, drying, curlers, spraying, curling ironing, more spraying, some ratting, and a good shellacking. And that doesn't even include the make-up production that it takes to hide my hideousness.

So, back to the story.....about 9:30am (an hour and a half after I had laid down to sleep)Pancho started whining so I got up to let him out. I threw on my glasses so that I could see where I was going and took Panco out the back door (so not only did I look bad as described above, I had on my glasses). While I stood there waiting for Pancho to do his "business" I could hear a very loud hissing sound. And, something smelled. Something smelled BAD! Once I determined that the stankiness wasn't coming from Pancho, I decided to walk around to the front yard to see if I could figure out what the hissing and stinking was. This is what I found.....Actually, I was greeted by my friendly neighborhood Questar man (yes, that Questar man) and his Questar posse, the Morgan County Fire Department, the Morgan County Sheriff's Office and way too many construction workers. The knucklehead construction boys who have been doing construction in my front yard hit the gas line. The hissing sound: the gas line. The awful smell: the gas line. All those guys: looking at the gas line. Me: freaking out that I was standing outside looking like I did.

The above picture doesn't do the situation any justice. I didn't get a picture of the fire trucks that were in my driveway. I didn't get a picture of the deputy vehicles that were on the street with their lights going. I didn't get a picture of Fire Chief Dave walking around my house with a gas meter. I didn't get a picture of Uncle Boyd looking at the broken gas line. I didn't get a picture of firefighter Giafalipinano walking up and down my drive way in what looked like a hazmat suit. I didn't get a picture of the construction boys trying to dig like crazy with shovels to get to the gas line so that it could get "pinched off" (Shawn's description, not mine) I didn't get any good pictures of the commotion that was going on because I was too worried about my emergency evacuation plan (that I don't have). I was too busy trying to figure out a way to barricade myself in my house because I'll be damned if I was going to be evacuated in front of all those people looking like I looked because I didn't have time to go through the above mentioned beautification process.

So, MOTHER, I got your message loud and clear! Always wear clean underpants cuz I'll never know when I'm going to be in an accident. Or when that Questar man, the fire department, the sheriff's department and a bunch of construction workers are going to show up at my door unannounced. I hope you got a good laugh out of this.

But mostly I hope we did you proud, mom.