Well last week was packed with activities! So much so I did not get around to my blog! I started off last week staying home on Monday with SCott. He finished his semester and had the day off. Poor kid spent his day with me at the doctor's office. I decided I should try and get in to see someone since my knee has still been swollen. I was amazed that I could get a same day appointment with an orthopedic doctor at a walk in clinic. They gave me a brace and an xray just to see what else was going on. My knee looks very pretty(the bones anyway). Now I am scheduled for an MRI-that is not a walk in appointment. I bribed Scott into going with me to the doctor with a trip to 5 guys burgers afterwards. They just opened the restaurant near the doctor office. He loves the fresh peanuts to eat while waiting for your burgers. I see Eric Seitz has just discovered this burger place in Indy.

After my doctor appointment, I talked Scott into stopping off at Sams Club to return an item and got stuck talking to a previous fellow therapist I used to work with at St Agnes hospital about 10 yrs ago. She recognized me and she wouldn't let me go. Scott and I still had some shopping to do and I had to get in the really long gas line afterwards. I had more errands to run, but it was getting late and I had to get dinner to Allison since she had her second art class that night. I also felt bad for Scott having to spend his day off just with me so I arranged for a play date with his friend SAmmy in the evening. Meanwhile, Allison was at her art class. She tried charcoal drawing that week and loved it. She did a great job too!

On Tuesday morning I had signed up to help with a Career day at Scott's school. Unfortunately, they had a medical theme but could not get enough parent speakers to come in so they switched the program. I don't need anymore volunteer hours, but work pays for 4 hours of volunteer time a month so since I was already scheduled off, I decided to go in. The school had 3 men from the National Guard that talked about drugs and bullying. Afterwards they put on "beer goggles" for the kids to get an idea of what it feels like to drink too much. The goggles mess up their vision and then coordination. Then they had the kids try to shoot baskets, throw a football and walk a straight line. You can imagine the kids did not do well. It took about an hour to walk all the classes through each of the activities. We spent the whole morning in the assembly and then the teachers took over and I went to work. That night, Scott had his scout meeting. I ended up taking him to scouts since Tom was asked at the last minute to teach a class at Hopkins business school. He was not planning on the task but Northrop laid off about 500 employees last Monday, and the woman that was teaching the class originally was let go! So Tom thought it was a good idea to take her place!

We are slowly figuring out this Scout Troops program and finishing up the bridging requirements to go from Webelos to Scout(mostly lots of paperwork).

By Thursday, Scott and I had developed a good little cold including an ear infection for Scott. Not only did Scott get an ear infection, but the dog did too! Fortunately I had ear drops for Cookie left over from her last ear infection, but Tom had to take off work on Thursday and take Scott into the doctor office. He was only given ear drops, not antibiotics which annoyed me since if he had gotten any worse, we would have had to take him back to the doctor again. Doctors are not terribly excited about giving out antibiotics, but I am not excited about worrying if my son is going to lose his hearing because the ear infection got worse and then taking off more time at work for another appointment when I have to pay another copay and then wait at the pharmacy again for the meds. Fortunately, he seemed to clear up.

This was also the first week of Lent. Tom and I celebrated Fat Tuesday on Saturday night at the school gala. Scott's school had a fundraiser gala that had a different theme this year. Usually it is very dressy and has a silent auction. This year it was very casual with a basketball theme in honor of March Madness. We dressed in our favorite school colors-MSU of course. I even had my S earrings on. Our friends wanted to know if the S stood for Seitz. Sure I said. For entertainment, they had a basketball shoot out, silent auction and a game show host. The game show host put on lots of different tv games with the audience like FAmily Feud and Are you smarter than a 5th grader. Tom wanted me to play, but I had one too many martinis. They had lots of good and fun food like sliders and quesadillas, crab cakes and nachos. But my favorite were the pomagranit martinis! And for dessert brownie ice cream sundaes. Yum! Tom and I even got a silent auction gift but we are still questioning it since they advertised the package as a Date Night and it only came with one ticket to a dinner and show?! Not much of a date we'd say.

For Lent Tom and I are fasting with the Nutrisystem diet. Tom had a promotional at work and got 1 month free food for both of us to try. So far we figure eating the card board box it came in would be healthier, but it is actually not too bad. And seems to be working. Especially when you only take in about 1000 calories per day. It actually reminds me of the Weight Watchers program in that it pushes the veggies and now fruit. Scott is in heaven too since we usually don't have quite so many fruits and veggies in the house to choose from. He is my fruit and veggie boy!
While we were off to the gala, Allison was in charge of the whole crew of kids. I had talked our old neighbors into coming and Scott was happy to have his play date with SAmmy while Allison chatted with their daughter Sophia and watched Dominic, the 3 yr old. She was already wore out as was I from a very busy Saturday afternoon.

My girl scouts had been busy preparing to run a Junior Girl Scout badge on Food, Fun and Fitness. They had 55 girls attend and I had just enough girl scouts running the badge-5 total. I also had my co leader attend as our nurse, and one other mom who is also a leader helped me out as well with registration and organization. Allison was busy running a relay race, Becky had the warm up and cool down, Kelly was running two activities which included checking the fit of your shoes and coming up with a list of fun activities to include in your day to add exercise without even trying(like bike riding). We also had a poster with ideas on how to end world hunger and a food collection. My van is still full of two large plastic containers of food that I need to drop off to the food bank. We also ran two other stations on the new food pyramid and reading food labels with Emily and Sarika. Allison had Friday off since she is at her midterms and she spent most of the day making up bags of popcorn for our snack. (She loves my old college air popper). We also made up bags of snack mix with pretzels, chocolate cheerios and goldfish crackers. The girls were completing this project as part of their gold award requirement and it was a great fundraiser. All the moms stayed for the badge and loved it. The girls worked really hard for 2 hours straight and did a fabulous job(I knew they would). And no it was not at our house. I had signed up to use the local girl scout campsite since they have a large building with all the (free) available supplies like tables, chairs and even a kitchen.

And the weekend did not slow down after that. Allison got her work permit and was called in for her first day on the job at the roller rink! She had her hands full Sunday afternoon with lots of little kids, mostly falling down. She even had to get an ice pack for a little one that hit his head. Things weren't quite as busy there this time of the year though. The weather has been so beautiful that most people have been spending time outside. That makes it good for Allison to get used to her job and work on rollerblading backwards! I think of it as babysitting on blades!
So we did not have much free time last weekend. And we even lost an hour of sleep when we had to spring ahead! I do like having more daylight when we get home from work and school. It makes it a lot nicer to take Cookie on walks without using a flashlight!

We are also glued to the tv on news of the massive earthquake in Japan and Tsunami. Glad to know Mike Bozyk and the rest of our family and friends in California are safe. Along with Northrop people in CA and in Japan. How amazing and horrific all at the same time. I can just imagine how Dave B. must have felt when he heard the news of a nearly 9.0 quake in Japan after having lived and worked there for several years.

I am adding photos of the girls hard at work at their Jr GS badge stations. Kathleen