Pumpkin Craziness

The holiday craziness has officially begun. For the last few weeks, I have been wearing all my hats at once: Wife, Mom, Teacher, Dance Coach, etc. with probably more than a little "Crazy Woman who needs more caffeine" thrown in there. Consequently, I haven't posted pics in forever on here so I will try to catch up.......These pics are from two Fridays ago.... a day which dawned dark and rainy with the kind of rain that only Florida can bring. I always thought I knew rain, having grown up in the Northwest. Moving here showed me that what I knew about was drizzle. When it rains in Florida, it pours buckets and throws in some rather frightning displays of thunder and lightning for good measure. It is as if Mother Nature feels the need to compensate for all the sunny days by dumping a good 6 months worth of rain in one day. It is truly a spectacular display if you are sitting inside with a good cup of something warm, a good book and some candles. However, if you have to actually venture out in the storm, it pretty much bites the big one.

A Florida storm is enough to put a damper on anyone's day but when you have a day full of outdoor events planned, it quickly catapults an inconvenient day into utter chaos. Friday was a day full of planned outdoor events - a PreK Pumpkin Patch Field Trip for Sam, Jump Rope for Heart Day for the whole school, and Fall Festival for the whole school from 3:00 - 6:00 pm. By late Thursday evening, Jump Rope for Heart had been cancelled, leavign about 800 kids very disappointed and every teacher in the building scrambling for last minute lesson plans on a day that we had planned to not be teaching but chaperoning events. On Friday morning we arrived to hear the news that Fall Festival would not be cancelled but moved indoors, creating massive chaos since we had no "indoor" plan because after all, this is FLORIDA, land of perpetual sunshine where October temps are usually in the high 70's. Dunk tanks and bouncy slides were cancelled in between classes, last minute plans and maps were run to classrooms and announced periodically over the PA system, adding to the general chaos as we tried to teach kids unhappy about being in classrooms instead of on the PE field. I assumed that Sam's field trip was cancelled as well but then got last minute notification that the church was moving the Pumpkin Patch games indoors and the kids were in fact boarding the buses. Duane had also assumed the trip was cancelled and had decided to sleep in on his day off so I had to make a frantic call to him to get dressed and head out to the Pumpkin Patch before Sam became hysterical because her Daddy was supposed to be her "Chipper own" (Chaperone). Utter craziness.

By the end of the day, we seemed to have a plan in place for Fall Festival, which was good since it was set to start at 3:30pm. My dance team girls had 3 booths running and luckily a few of the parents showed up to erect our booths and bouncy castle while I taught. Once the kids were released, I made a mad dash down the hall with my dance team girls carrying Sam and Kaitie. We located our booth and immediately had a line of customers wanting their hair colored (colored hair spray). I spent the next 3 hours manning a bouncy castle, hair color and tattoo (temporary of course) booth, Pom Pom and spirit item booth and 16 hyper middle school girls. The hair color was by far the most popular booth and Duane and the girls got a big kick out of paying my dance team girls to color my hair neon orange, much to my great embarassment. All in all, it was a crazy day but we made a ton of money which we will need to fund our Nationals trip to Orlando this spring.

Next up: Fall Festival for 6th RTB, holiday picture appointment for the girls, prep for the Pep Rally, Jump Rope for Heart makeup day, 6th RTB Annual Haunted Hay Ride, Trick or Treating...........................................

I may need something stronger than coffee soon......