Spring Crafts!

The bakery where Olivia has been taking her baking classes, Savor the Moment, holds other fun little events for kids of various ages. One they just did was to make a bunch of Spring-related crafts to celebrate the changing season.

The kids made things like flower pots that they actually planted flowers and herbs in to grow at home, 

 pencils, chicks, rabbits and little canvases that they could create their own artwork with.

 They had so much fun and did suck a great job on making their crafts personal to themselves.

 Ezra actually brought his to EMMA classes and gave it to his geography teacher. It was SO SWEET!

Rebecca's Slip and Fall

The weather was a bit sketchy last week, so I thought it would be smart to drive Rebecca to work rather than risk an accident. The next morning, there was a touch of ice here and there, but noting major. I went and picked her up at work and brought her home. On the way, we laughed together at a story she told me about a doctor that wore funny boots rather than doing anything about the ice in his driveway. What happened next was certainly a prime example of irony...

While only 15 feet from the door and mere inches from the car, Rebecca stepped out onto an icy patch in the driveway (which I may or may not have inadvertently parked her on since I was driving, but you weren't there and you can't prove a thing!) and promptly slipped and fell, hitting her arm on the way down. 

I was getting out on the driver's side of the car and turned around and she was just GONE! Then I heard a whimper. When I went around, she was sitting on the ground cradling her left arm in obvious agony. I helped her inside and got her upstairs and into bed. I thought almost immediately that we needed to go get the wrist x-rayed, but she thought just icing it would help, so that's what we did. 

It wasn't much more than an hour before we realized that I was right to begin with and she need to go to an urgent care to be checked out. Sure enough...

She had broken the head of her radius.

 The folks at the urgent care mummied her up and referred us to an orthopedist who looked at it the next day. Dr. Gramig at Greensboro Orthopaedics took a look at the x-rays and said she really needed to have surgery to ensure proper healing. Rebecca's hands are critical to her job, so we agreed that she should have the surgery the very next day. 

 When she was done, this is what it looked like inside. 

 A bit Terminator-ish... a permanent titanium plate and screws holding it all together. Life will be interesting for the next 12 weeks... for the time being, she can't do much of anything. I have to help her tie her shoes, shower, dress... 

Oh, and if you are ever in need of a Hulk-sized arm shower protector, CVS has you covered. they label it as "Adult", but I don't know that they can really say that "one size fits all"....

Trail Life Pinewood Derby and AHG Luncheon

A big part of their respective years are the fundraisers that AHG and Trail Life hold. These fundraisers help reduce the costs for registration and events like cookouts and camping trips. For Trail Life, they hold a big Pinewood Derby race and invite other troops to join us for a full day of racing, food and fun. 

Our troop owns a rally nice, metal track with electronic timing that's accurate own to 1/10,000th of a second! There's no debating who wins, no matter how close it looks.  

We had never done one of these before, so it was a new adventure for us. The boys designed their cars and then we sanded and painted them, adding some weight to make them as heavy as the rules allow.

Gabe's is on the left and is supposed to be a shark and Ezra's is on the right.

After some fine tuning and a few tests, it was time to see how they matched up with the rest of the guys. We had about 130 cars entered into the race from 4 regional troops. 

Unfortunately, there's still a lot for us to learn when it comes to making the cars faster, but we have a whole year to figure it out! From a fundraising perspective, the event was a big success.

For the American Heritage Girls fundraiser, they hold a big luncheon at our host church. They served meals and sold baked goods. The girls decorated placemats for the tables and helped cook and serve the food.

 Olivia helped prepare salads and then worked a food serving station for a couple of hours.

Emma helped run the bake sale, though she was rather sad when she found out she couldn't eat any of it. 

As with the boys, the AHG fundraiser was a huge success all around, so it was a job well done!