Manic Monday

The view of camp through the bell.

I attended a retreat for the women of our church this weekend.  The retreat center where we stayed is up in Pennsylvania.   The facilities are beautiful.  The facility that they use for conference attendees is much like a hotel.  No maid service, but every room has two double beds, and a private bathroom.  The staff cooks meals - and good golly, those meals are fantastic - and provides a warm, open, large space for people to gather.  Even me, with allergies to soy, milk, and gluten had NO ISSUES with food!  They had a separate station for allergies, and we were able to get our food from the allergy free station and then roam over to the regular food station if there was something there that we wanted to pick up.  My favorite thing?  The salad bars were separate, so that no cheese fell off of anyone's spoon and into the other "clean" vegetables.  NO cross contamination!  I wish more places were that caring and careful!  It made my weekend worry free and so much more enjoyable!

Have you ever seen Avenue Q?  It's a puppet show for adults.  The program that we got said it was for "Graduates of Sesame Street".  There were parental advisory warnings about the content of the show all over the theater.  Content was intended for mature audiences only.  And boy howdy, was it ever for mature audiences only!  The production was put on at the Community College.  We enjoyed ourselves immensely.  And yes, the content was for mature audiences only, and not for the faint of heart.  If you are easily offended, do not go see it.    

The Princess going after a slice of Starbucks Pumpkin Bread.

Luna

 Luna really, really likes pumpkin bread from Starbucks.  Daughter stopped by Starbucks and picked up some pumpkin bread on the way home from class on Thursday.  Princess Luna spent a lot of time getting the pieces out of the bag that daughter left for her.  Our first cat loved to lick banana peels and eat grapes.  What crazy things do your cats like to eat? 

 I was attempting to text daughter the other day, and Luna was all over my phone.  I finally took a picture of her - she's rubbing her head against the edge of my phone, so all you really see are her eyes and the top of her nose.  She is one very crazy cat.  I love that crazy little kitten!  (She's over 5, so I guess she's really not a kitten anymore, even if she does act like it.)

Have you ever heard of Believe Big?  It's an organization that provides mugs to cancer patients.  You can decorate the mugs any way that you want, with one caveat - you can only have one word on the mug - Believe.  We made Believe mugs as one of our service projects this weekend.  This is NOT my mug.  It was provided by Believe Big for us to use as an example.  If you'd like to make one, you can check into your local pottery store.  Most offer some variation on Believe mugs.  You have to pay a nominal fee to cover the cost of the mug and the glazing, and then they fire it and deliver it.  Making them is a lot of fun!  You really get to let your creative energy flow when you make one of these!  

We also filled bags with goodies for the children who are living in our local Ronald McDonald House.  RMH will put these bags into the cubbies of the children who are staying on the property.  When they get back from receiving treatment, they find some kind of something in their cubby to help brighten their day.  Considering that these kids are going through hellishly scary medical treatments that make most adults weak in the knees and squishy in the stomach, it's really a nice gesture to have something like this waiting for them when they get back home.  I like to hope it makes them feel a little bit better.  

Monday comes all too fast after a great weekend, doesn't it?  This is a crazy busy week for me - meetings that happen only on the first of the month and kids coming home from college (HOORAY!!) and dentist appointments OH MY!  I'll be posting on Friday about some of the crazy things I do to help make dinner flow faster on these crazy nights.  Tricks I learned when I had three young kids, soccer practices, scout meetings, and baseball practices to get to. 

Enjoy your week!  Make it wonderful!