Adventures in Teaching Primary

At church, I teach a primary class of kids 7 and 8 years old. Sometimes things go as planned, but often they don't. Last Sunday, I was teaching them about shepherds and sheep - as in Jesus is the Good Shepherd, and how he said that a good shepherd would leave the ninety and nine and go after the one that was lost. The manual offered a rendering of a sheep, and suggested making one for each member of the class and to write their name on it, both for those that come regularly and those that do not, to illustrate the concept of each of us being one of Jesus' fold.

First of all, check out this sheep. If you fell asleep while counting sheep and then woke up in the middle of the night and found this staring at you, would you be going back to sleep that night?

I think not.

I finished my prepared material a little early and I kind of had in my back pocket one of the suggested enrichment activities where the children could write a note to the absent class members telling them that they were missed at primary. And since I had a little sheep of paper with each person's name, I figured it would be easy enough to just use that to write the note on.

I second-guessed myself almost immediately, because is that rude, to deliver a note to someone with a sheep on it, implying that they have gone astray because they missed one Sunday?

But the activity was already underway. At least I know that I explained it well enough that one of my kids "got it":

Some kids didn't quite have the right tone:

And then there was this one:

So yeah, I decided not to deliver these. But they provided some good entertainment. 

How Do They Stay in Business?

I don't have a lot of money for clothes shopping, but I do like to keep my duds somewhat fresh. I recently tossed a polo shirt I'd been wearing for 8 years. It was time. Usually I turn to Kohl's for help with my clothing needs. I recently bought three new polo shirts. They were on sale for $10 each and then I had a 20% off coupon. So $8 each.

Whenever I'm in Kohl's, I always head for the clearance rack where they have stuff marked down 70-80%. That's my price point.

The clearance rack is tough because you have to not only find something that you would wear but also something that fits. It's not always easy as I'm a pretty traditional male size so there aren't a lot of 36x30 pants available at clearance prices. The discounted merch includes a lot of stuff from the Big n' Tall section like 48x32 pants and XXL shirts. I've been looking for some dress pants in clearance for awhile and have been struggling. If I do find some, they are almost always pleated, which I kind of hate. . .

However, I scored big this past Saturday. I was just going to get a clearance item or two so that I could use my $10 Kohl's cash, even if it was just a pair of shorts or a t-shirt. But on this beautiful morning, they had all the clearance items marked down an additional 20%. And they had a pair of washable wool gray dress pants on the clearance rack for $21. I also found a patriotic T, which I kind of need for 4th of July festivities, on clearance for $4, and a pair of shorts for $8. With the additional 20% off and my $10 Kohl's cash, I was planning to pay $16-$18 for my items - a little more than I had planned, sure, but I finally got my pants!

Imagine my surprise when the cashier rang my up and gave me my total - $5.88. Apparently there was a $10 additional bonus cash reward and then a 15% off promotion. Not bad at all. I guess Kohl's has plenty of people who pay the full price for stuff (I never do), otherwise how do they afford it?

Happy Memorial Day

No steaks - but this did just fine

 For Memorial Day, we engaged purely in selfish desires and used the extra day off to gorge ourselves on food and beverage. Just kidding - although some facebook memes out there would have you believe that is what everyone does. We actually did go to visit the cemetery earlier in the day but did not bring the camera so I have no pictures to share of that excursion. Our cookout plans were sort of last minute. We had some mystery meat burgers and a pack of hand-me-down burgers in the freezer, so we threw those on our high-tech grill along with some angus beef dogs and grilled them up.

The recipe made so much - I'm doing 1/2 next time

I haven't really had much time for trying stuff out on the dutch oven, so I pulled it out and tried a new desert. This one is called peachy dump cake - the ingredients are canned peaches, white cake mix, 7-up, and hot tamales candies.

I think it's good to gather with family and friends and have a celebratory meal in honor of those who died to serve and protect our nation, even if we don't necessarily have a chance to thank a veteran. How many people are groups of people are honored with their own national holiday? Not many.

Backyard meal

Serving up the dessert

A cutaway of the peachy delight

Super Spread!

A huge bowl of nacho cheese Doritos

Orange Fanta lined up and ready to go

Orange and blue M&M's

Pot roast was prepared in honor of Terrance Knighton

Not orange, but cookie bars!

Orange chicken in the Pro Pot!

None of this tasted as good as it looked once the game started.

Fall Project 2013 - Stain the Porch

This is actually two fall projects. The first one was the fall of 2012, and done about 96% by my father-in-law. We had this rickety old back porch that was a borderline safety hazard. We were fortunate that no one was seriously injured or even injured at all. And without the offer of the expertise and time of my father-in-law we would still have this rickety old porch.  As you see below, the new porch was a major upgrade! However, because this was done in the fall there was no time to put on a proper stain before the winter snows came.

I put it off for most of the summer and soon found myself in the fall of 2013 with a still-unstained porch. Finally, with time running out before the snows came again, I buckled down and blocked out a Saturday to do it. Even though my spouse and I picked out the stain together, when she first saw it on the porch she said, "Oh." So it didn't come out exactly like we envisioned but we're both pretty happy with the porch upgrade.

Quality construction. Three stringers - the old one had two.

I did dig the post holes - don't say I didn't do nothing!

Our old railing was not that secure.

With the stain - looks lovely.

Better Homes and Gardens eat your heart out!

Summer Projects 2013 - Paint the House (Rear)

Some of our siding was warped when we bought the house

Last summer, my father-in-law replaced the warped siding

Which left us with sort of a patchwork look color-wise

It wasn't the most pleasant to look at over the past year

So we painted the entire rear of the house so it looked good

The paint was a little darker than what we have on the sides

But no one is going to notice except for a couple of neighbors

Summer Projects 2013 - The Mailbox

Our old mailbox post - many years of faithful service

We've had mailbox issues ever since we bought our house. First off, the house came with a nice red Nebraska Cornhuskers mailbox. So that had to go right away. The post still had issues though. As you can see, it was pretty old, probably the original one that came with the house in 1975. Sometimes the mailbox would get a little wobbly, and we'd get a warning from the post office, so we'd do a quick fix to keep it in place. We share a post with our neighbor, and they experienced similar issues. I think at one point, their mailbox was just on the ground for an extended period.

New mailbox post - fashioned from materials we already had

 
So this last summer, I believe on the day we returned home from our summer camping trip, our neighbor was fixing to replace it because the post office had issued her an ultimatum that they would not deliver any more mail until she fixed it by X date. So she had bought some materials. My super great wife went out and told her that we would help her. At some point we decided that we already had the materials needed, leftovers from various fence and porch projects of the past year. So we went to work on it immediately. We based the design on the previous post and it went quickly.

Finished product - ready to give another 40 years

We only ran into one sticking point when we found our drill wasn't quite powerful enough to secure the two posts together, so we had to go across the street and enlist the help of another neighbor who has a ton of tools.
 
But we got it up in one evening. We even had some leftover Quickrete so we mixed some up and made it extra secure. The neighbors were super impressed with my wife's construction and design skills although they didn't comment on mine at all. Maybe because I don't have any. Anyways, we are glad to finally get that project done!

Ingredients for a Cousins Christmas Eve

A 21st century version of Outburst.

Freshly baked buns.

Just add meat.

Grape salad.

Just add pecans.

A boy and a train.

Oh, yeah, and these are ready to go in the oven.

And much, much more!

Thanksgiving '13

No one does a relish tray like my family.

Bread and meat, what more do you need?

Fruit salad, of course.

I made this corn casserole. Isn't it glorious?

Roaster of gravy.

Thank you, Mr. Bird. You lived a good life.

The full spread.

I have to say, I liked the square plate. The portions are so linear.

Elaine's Pie Crust: A Lesson in Pictures

I'm skipping the part about mixing the dough because it's boring.

Also, I wasn't there for the dough mixing part.

I'm not going to bother with writing a bunch of text.

Just do what she's doing.

I think this fork part is important.

Perfection!