To Retake or Not to Retake

That is the question. Again. To Luke's credit I am sure he was only doing what the photog was telling him to do, but where is he looking?? and once again, I see no teeth. And when you are almost 7 and still have all your teeth, I need to see them. So I am pretty sure this one is going back...

One Down, One To Go

Well, I survived the Fall Festival!  And I think I can honestly say that I delivered on my promise of it being 4% more festive.  Was it the cool weather I specially ordered?  Was it the awesome music? Was it my poorly constructed mummy costume? Was it the awesome two year old dressed as Nacho Libre? Yes, yes, yes and YES.  I didn't have time to take too many pictures during the madness, but here are a few....

Thanks Mom for running the cake walk!

My streak for making a Halloween costume out of some sort of fabric or dress given to me by DeAnne is now at three years in a row.  This was the fabric that used to hang around her sliding glass doors at her house.  It did not look like a mummy then, by the way.  But when they moved I ended up with it and found it in my fabric bucket, and voila!  It was mummy time :)  Thanks, DeAnne!

My very handsome and dynamic duo :)

This activity was WAY more popular than I imagined. Spider walk, who knew?

Dream realized for Luke!

Gee, she looks so happy about all the work I did, doesn't she?

My dad ran one of our ring toss games. You can see him back there are the mad doctor.

Eyeballs in spaghetti. Always a classic.

Susie mixing it up with the ol' Spider under the cup switch-a-roo game.

Bless the missionaries for all their help :)

Hopefully everyone was as happy as this guy.

And now I move on to working on the Primary Program!  Finding a mariachi band that plays on Sunday is much harder than I thought.

Status Post

A little known fact about my dad is that for the past three, maybe four, years he has been sending my children postcards in the mail every single week.  One a piece, every week.  Seriously, he never misses. (And the other grandchildren get them as well.) We have a giant basket in the living room where we keep them all:

One day I will put these all in a book. And since my dad has told all his friends to collect postcards for him, I think he now has enough to send them both one each week until they are married. Which they wouldn't mind one bit.  Here are a few of my favorites:

 A personal favorite of mine....

Luke Quickies

Earlier the kids were kind of wrestling each other here in the living room.  I was, of course, on the computer with my back to them, so I was not really supervising in any way.  That's the way I roll. They were laughing and struggling and then all of a sudden I hear Luke get upset and yell, "Awh Cindy!!!  You sat on my cronius!!!!" Which is hilarious, because Cindy wasn't anywhere near his cronius.


And then just now after getting ready to leave momentarily to go to a meeting at the church, I came out of my room and was walking down the hall.  Luke came walking behind me and I heard him go "Ah! Oh, that is mom."  I turned around and he said, "Your hair is straight and I thought you were someone else."  Let winter begin!!!

Remix

Just when I think I can't have any new experiences DJing a dance, one comes along where the only thing that works is 60s music.  And Latin music doesn't. Sometimes I just can't figure out those single adults! But at least they are the most complimentary non-dancing crowd ever.  Cindy went with me on Friday night and I decided to really start some serious OJT.  And I can safely say now that if I were ever doing a dance and suddenly got sick or broke all my fingers and couldn't push any more buttons, Cindy could actually take over and work the laptop program.

I think she's ready to go pro

In other news, I think I am going to have to get my finger x-rayed this week at work.  Last Monday I opened my cupboard and the glass blender fell off the top shelf and landed directly on my pointer finger that was resting on the counter.  So the moral of the story is never get a job as a transcriptionist because immediately after this happens you will be attacked by wood couches and glass blenders will fall from the sky.  Or, if you speak meme...

Friday is our fall festival at church, which means that Luke will finally get to wear his costume out of the house.  He has been changing into it after school every day for two weeks and he is so excited to finally let everyone see.  This year I am even having Jacob be the other half of Luke's costume.  Don't get too excited, it's only a t-shirt, but still, he agreed to wear it, so I am happy. Normally I myself don't try too hard with any sort of costume for this event, but as I am kind of in charge of it this year, I decided to do something half way decent.  Pictures to come shortly.  The only hint I will give you is that it is not this:

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Or is it????

So That's What He's Saying

I have been sitting at my computer for the past hour immersing myself in tons and tons of music. I am prepping for my single adult dance tonight and I always like to come in a with a few new ideas or songs everyone may have forgotten about.  Anyhow, I was on youtube listening to a fan made montage of 80s dance songs and each one had the name of the song and artist at the bottom of the screen. And then my mind was BLOWN.  Apparently I have heard the chorus to the song "Caribbean Queen" by Billy Ocean many, many times over the years.  But I NEVER knew he was saying "Caribbean Queen."  I thought he was saying "Marry Me, Jean" or "Carry My Spleen" or "Berries and Cream" or something, but never in a million trillion years did I think Caribbean Queen. Maybe only a DJ can appreciate this but, come on, you didn't know that, did you?

(This is the song if you can't recall it at the moment):




By the way, we will not be hearing that tonight.


 But we will be hearing this!!



133 million hits can't be wrong.

In Honor

Of National Grouch Day, I will now show you the pumpkin I carved last night:

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The Only Reason I Go To The Beach

Is obviously so that I can take pictures of my family punching seagulls.  If that's wrong, I don't want to be right.  So here are the top five seagull punches from my trip to the beach on Saturday afternoon....


5.    Cindy's double punch.

4.  Mom's long-distance intimidater.

3.  Dad's direct shot of doom!

2.   Cindy's sunset special.

1.  Luke's lazer (WHICH was taken with my new smartphone camera in the blinding sun and no viewfinder, so pretty much the photographer wins this contest.  Oh wait, that would be me!)

And just in case you can't find a seagull to punch....

TOP TEN ALTERNATIVES TO A SEAGULL PUNCH 

10.  Pelican stupify
9.  Flounder fisticuff
8.  Eel thrust
7.  Starfish tweek
6.  Manatee roundhouse
5.  Octopus lunge
4.  Sandpiper wallop
3.  Crab spank
2. Tortoise slap
1. The Ol' Manta Sixer

Park Place

Yesterday evening while I was at a park and waiting for my mom to meet me there to go walking, an older man came to walk his dog.  He started talking to me and pretty much ended up telling me his life story.  It came out that I was Mormon and that he, while living all over the world, had missionaries in every country knock on his door.  He was a pleasant man and I talked to him for about 20 minutes.  As my mom and I were getting up to go start our walk, I shook his hand and told him it was nice to meet him.  He said, "Nice to meet you too.  And you're a very pretty Mormon."  (Which is either a compliment to me or a dig at Mormons, not sure which...)  And then he said, "Tell your husband he is a very lucky man and if he doesn't think so, show him this and tell him you don't need him" and then he got out his wallet and handed me a $1,000,000 bill.  And that is the strangest night I have ever had at the park.

BAKE SALE!

Hi, this is Cindy.  I am having a bake sale to raise money for my school field trip to Disney World in the spring.  I love to bake stuff.  I like to bake cookies and brownies and cupcakes and anything else my mom will let me make.  To raise the money, I am selling Halloween treats for $5.00.  These are the two choices:







Choice 1:

6 Halloween M&M brownies, DELIVERED to anyone in Lakeland or Bartow, wrapped up in cellophane with a tag and message from you.  They will look like this:

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OR

Choice 2:

6 Halloween colored and decorated cupcakes, DELIVERED to anyone in Lakeland or Bartow, wrapped up in cellophane with a tag and message from you.  They will look something like this:  (But hopefully some purple too.)

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If you don't want them delivered anywhere, that is fine too. You can order them for yourself or your family.  But I can also take them to a friend, a grandma, the missionaries, a neighbor, a teacher, someone you visit teach, or to anyone else you wish who lives around here in Lakeland!  I will be delivering them the week of Halloween, hopefully Tuesday, October 28th.  You can pay me cash when you see me at church or school, or you can mail me a check.  You can email my mom at jacobandjessicasweeney@yahoo.com or message her on Facebook. 

Thank You for helping me.   Love, Cindy 

And thank you Uncle Sean for making me my Cynthia Sweet shop logo.  It is great!

Danger Zone

Just thought I would take a moment to tell you about my run three nights ago. I was almost finished when I ran by a house with its garage door open and a giant dog ran out at me so fast that I thought he had been shot out of a cannon.  He missed directly sweeping my legs by mere inches and I screamed and did the most amazing jump/caught-in-a-spiderweb ninja combination the world has ever seen.  The owner, who did come out to yell at the dog, must have been highly amused.  I just kept running and tried to get my heart rate back down to a reasonable 190 bpm.  THEN, as I rounded the corner to head up the hill, I was almost run over by a girl pulling out of her driveway while talking on the phone.  Hey, I'm running here! But for only that one night.  Because I'm pretty sure I won't be running that life-threatening route again any time soon.

It's actually a present for all of us

The kids and Jacob and I have been working on making a little something for Nathan's 30th birthday....




We love you, Uncle Nathan!  Wishing you the best year yet :)

Check This Out

Okay, I know what you are thinking, I disappear for five days and this is all I have to show for it? Patience, Igao.  Tomorrow I will have something totally Sweeneriffic!  In the meantime, enjoy this picture of a pancake with a star burned into it- a star that I DID NOT create in any way of myself. I poured the batter as usual, forget about it for about 20 seconds longer than normal, and when I flipped it over- BAM.  A star. The children were not as impressed as I was.  Clearly, they are weird.