Prayer

Parker is attending preschool sponsered by a Presbyterian church in Tyrone. One of my fears of sending my child to another denomination's church would be the memorized prayers that sometimes those in other churches use. I can remember visiting one of my friends from church, when I was younger and her brother would say "grace."

So imagine my surprise when I ask Parker to say the blessing and he begins reciting

God is Good, God is Great.
Let us thank him for our food.
By his hands we are fed,
Let us thank him for our daily bread.

And to top it off, Preston now recites God is Good, God is Great right along with Parker.

The surprise has even been better when we visited my folks and my siblings look at me, and I say that is how the Presbyterian's bless the food.

So maybe I haven't done the best at setting the example for the order of prayer in our home. We try to bless our food, sometimes the boys close their eyes and other times they are munching away. One time while Parker was blessing the food, Preston was chowing down and Parker had to take a break in the middle of his short prayer for a drink. You gotta love kids.


We are taught that prayers should come from the heart and to stay away from a "memorized prayer." One that my parents used was

Dear Heavenly Father
Thank you for this day.
Bless this food for our good.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

To a kid this is kind of the same deal. The same words recited before eating, however in this case we are addressing Heavenly Father and closing in Jesus's name.

We have tried not to get real excited about the God is Good prayer. When Parker blesses the food, we offer 2 blessings on the food.

This picture is from the 2nd day of school, we were running late for a first day of school picture. On a side note, Parker loves school. He has a great teacher and it is a great group of kids there. I have made new friends with the mom's there.

Is there a Constable in the neighborhood?

What started out as a joke has become the real thing.

During the May election there was a spot for Constable on the ballot. I wrote Jim's name in and then went home to say "Hey honey, you better go up and vote and write yourself in for constable."

This led to a series of questions to those in authority, to getting signatures and then being appointed by the judge to be the temporary constable until January. Jim would need to win the election in Nov to keep his constable status.

Well Jim took classes and went shopping. He became trained and bought an official uniform even down to the boots. People thought girls were picky about their clothes, in an effort to save money I was quickly informed that a certain look was needed to be achieved, so he could not skimp any corners. He also bought weapons.

Come election day in Nov I stood outside the polls for 4 hours in the cold weather asking every passerby "My husband is running for Constable and would sure appreciate your vote." I then handed them a slip of paper that said "Write in James Rayburn for Constable." He won the majority with 49 votes. You might be wondering what the boys were doing while all this campaigning was going on, they were playing with their trucks on the other side of the parking lot.

So Jim went out to do his first assignment. He knocks or more like pounds on the door. The guy says whose there and Jim replies "Constable Rayburn" They guy replies back "cash or check." Obviously he had been visited before and knew the drill.

He has only had a handful of assignments and all the folks have been nice. He hasn't needed his gun thank goodness.

Halloween 2009

I have new things I want to blog about, but feel the need to go in chronological order. So here is Halloween. The Goodwill carries new costumes and when Parker saw the fireman outfit this is what he wanted. They did not have Preston's size. Preston and I went shopping another time and Preston kept talking about the fireman, so we utilized Parker's rain coat. We had the hat from a recent birthday party and they both have fireman boots for the barn and rainy days. So there you go.
This is Parker taking a picture of Preston and I. I started on this costume the year Parker dressed up as a lion, 2 years ago, but didn't get it finished. Last year I tried to get to done, but ran out of time. So 2 years later Dorothy was finished.
This was the group shot before we headed out to our first house. It was unseasonably warm so I was fine in my short sleeves. Preston was tired and I ended up carrying the firefighter most of the way. We walk to a few houses on our road and then a little road behind our house. We drive to some of our friends from the Fire Dept.

As Parker was going from house to house he said something like "this is my favorite holiday" "I love trick or treating."

Someone called me Goldilocks. That made me smile.

I have to include Parker's preschool party too.

We dropped the kids of at the upstairs and the moms went downstairs to decorate for the party. There were some fun decorations that we put up. Preston loved being part of this. I tried to get him to stand by the great pumpkin, but no luck.

Notice the mural on the wall? It was so cute. The black box had flashing lights inside and the kids had so much fun crawling through it.


I think the idea is to crop the extra stuff around the photo, so it looks like you are posing with the characters. I didn't have time to crop it.

The group had some good costumes:) lion, ghost, fireman, princess, bee, butterfly, mermaid and my favorite the giant m& ms.

The string on the donut game. Notice Parker was done first as he is exiting the picture.Preston on the other hand loved this game and cleaned up all the left overs.

An inside of look at a Firehall meal

Many of you already know that my husband is a volunteer firefighter. Because the company is volunteer, we get to volunteer some time in helping with fund raising efforts. One way that the fire hall raises money is by serving meals. I actually enjoy helping out the kitchen. Last night the Fire Police had their oyster supper. I thought I would give you an inside peek at what goes on behind the scenes.

The food preparation is started quite a bit in advance. Yesterday morning the men starting breading oysters at 8:30 am. All food was ready to go, with the exception of the oysters that they were frying when I arrived at 5:30. Tables and chairs were set up along with place settings. Tickets were sold in advance to know how many to plan for. The menu consisted of fried oysters, ham, scalloped potatoes and corn. Many times if you serve they also want you to bring a cake. I got off the hook on this one this time around. They also have cups of ice cream that they serve with the cake.

The job of a server is be assigned a table. You make sure they have plenty to drink and make sure their food bowls stay full. (they usually serve the meals family style) However last night we did a buffet. We had 2 lines. I did not want to be in charge of the oysters. This is what folks are coming to eat and they can get a little possessive about the amount that you give them. Especially when the fryer in the kitchen can't keep up with the demand. My station was scalloped potatoes. It was a safe place.

The meals are always all you can eat. Now I suppose most folks who attend these functions are hefty eaters. They look like hefty eaters. They probably aren't aware of the food serving sizes that the food pyramid suggests, like more vegetables than starches or that serving a meat is the size of a deck of cards. Did I mention there were rolls on the tables too? And when they came back for seconds it was for the fried oysters.

After everyone is finished eating it is time to clean up. If the meal is served family style the guests eat on real plates. They did use paper plates and cups last night, but we still had the silverware, water pitchers, punch pitchers, coffee pitchers and all the trays from the buffet to wash up. You go through and clear the tables. Each table is set with cream, sugar, butter, pickles, rolls, salt and pepper and applesauce. You take everything back to the kitchen and put away the condiments and stack the dirty dishes. There is a very large sink for washing the dishes. I have seen some of the fasted dishwashers at the fire hall. One washer and 3 driers drying and putting away until everything is cleaned up.

Often they will send the helpers home with some food for helping. It is good food even if they do serve to many carbs and not enough veggies. I munched on some yummy rolls with butter and pickles. My boys had ham, applesauce and cake. Yes we brought the boys along. We want them to get involved in a early age with volunteering and also realizing that you have to work for some things. They tend to stay close to me or Jim while we are hustling and bustling.

Then well all the dishes are done and the food divided up you go home and crash because you are so tired from being on your feet all night.

Is this what it is like to wait tables?

My part time job

In 2005, before I was a Mom I worked at Keystone Payroll. It was a good job for me. The pay was good, I had a good boss, I liked my co-workers that I worked with and I enjoyed my work most of the time. I resigned my position to become a stay at home mom. Well I still keep in touch and I go in during their busy times. I am already trained and it is ok to "lay me off" after the busy period.

Jim (the name of my old boss) called me with an opportunity to work during the month of October. As it turned out the local competitor Updegraff & Updegraff run by a father and son team needed some help. The younger Updegraff was sick in the hospital and it was not looking good. They only have an administrative assistant, so there is no back up plan for a vacations or if someone gets sick. However people still need to get paid and employers still need to pay their taxes. Employers must file their taxes on a quarterly basis, January, April, July and October. These were always busy times for me before. The normal work needed to be completed plus submitting reports to the IRS, State, State Unemployment and local agencies.

While I was working we found Wendy. Wendy went to South Hills Business School and studied accounting. Keystone hired to Wendy to help out during the busy times. I would often save some of the easier stuff for Wendy to do. Now I am doing Wendy's job. I wonder what happened to her. She was a good helper. I get the benefit of using a different part of my mind for a few hours a week without the stress of the deadlines. Because someone else has to worry about getting it done on time. I am just the helper.

This time around I am actually filling out the reports. I was so excited after my first day of work. In the past I have just counted forms or stuffed envelopes. I love working with numbers and I actually like filling out forms. I know many of you are probably thinking I am nuts for liking paper work or taxes, but this is what makes the world go round. Each of us likes something different.

Plus in talking to other moms I have discovered there is something satisfying in doing something that can be "checked off" the list and it is done. It doesn't start over again like dishes or laundry which I am always doing. It won't get dirty shortly after it has been cleaned.

I am sure you are wondering when am I doing this work and what I am doing with the boys. Well I found a 12 year girl who was available to babysit. Her name is Joanna and she watches the boys after she gets home from school and Jim picks them up on his way home from work. I work a few evenings during the week.

It is kind of crazy taking on a part time job on top of my full time mom job. The laundry and dishes are still waiting for me after using my brain for a few hours. The boys are a little more clingy because I have less time to spend with them and it has interrupted their schedule. I try to take my time to spend with them and this leaves even less time to do those household chores. I am glad it is only for one month.

In the mean time it has been fun to wear some nicer clothes, converse with my co-worker Linda and use a different part of my brain, plus my list of companies that I can check off when I have completed their forms.

In November I can go back to focusing more on my family and house until January, when they will call me again to help them out.