Happy and Funny Snipits from the Last Week

My college alma mater is going to the ACC Football Championship game in Tampa, Florida. GO TIGERS! (Clemson Univeristy for those of you who may to be familiar).

My husband and I are lucky to have a close group of friends all going together. We are also lucky enough that one of these friends has family that lives in Tampa and her Dad has helped secure a "Suite" of seats in the stadium. We will all be spliting the cost of the tickets (there are 8 seats, 8 of us going) and the catering of food and drinks to the suite. These petite athletic boxes (as I like to call them) are enclosed and climate controlled. But since it's balmy Tampa, there is also the option of opening the window so we can enjoy the weather, the atmosphere and the sounds that go along with college football. We get to do this on December 5th.

Our wonderful team has never been to a conference championship game (our conference has only been big enough to split and have this championship game since 2005). Being conference champion used to be something that happened regularly, but we haven't been Champs in a long time (long string of coaches).

So...Tampa, here we come.

Next...out of the mouths of babes..."So Mom?" (coming from Legare), "what is a taint?"

Seriously...I got this question. I asked how he heard it used in a sentence, because he clearly asked what one was. No "It Ain't" contraction here. And I asked him to use it in a sentence.

He then said that it was on one of the "Harry Potter Puppet Pals" skits on youtube. And then he said, "You know, like Leprechaun Taints".

Hhhmmmm..... This caught me off guard. To say the least.

So after a bit of thinking, and telling him it was a word that could get you in trouble, I told him about the contraction. And then I told him how it described areas of your body. I then reiterated that it was a word that could get you into trouble. And I also let him know he should stop watching things on YouTube without my presence.

He understood the "words that can get you in trouble" concept well due to the trouble made the week after Halloween when the older boys in the neighborhood taught him the game about how you make a word by "taking the first two letters of FUn and the last two letters of duCK". He thought that game was great and took it to school to share it with others. Yay, us! We've been calling it the "Fun Duck Incident".

Let There Be Light. Please!

I have hung a new bathroom fixture in the hall bath. Why? Well...the old light fixture had burned out 2 of the new CFL bulbs in 3 months (both on the same side), and since they're supposed to last for years I was getting nervous that there was a short or something in the old fixture. So OUT it went. And when it came down, guess what I found? The whole socket was hanging on by a thread. Nick of time!

I tried to have the new fixture hung before everyone got home from school/work so it could surprise them when they turned on the light. Before the "hanging" project got started I had to mount a metal "plate" to the outlet box that was behind the sheet rock. Unfortunately for me, the directions left out one, key step of how to attach the light fixture to the "plate" that you just mounted on the outlet box.

(Various shapes and sizes of outlet boxes)

The problem was that the "fixture screws" (that I put through the plate before I mounted it to the wall) were too long. When I added the decorative "nut", that shows on the front of the fixture to hold it on to the wall, there was way too much room between the nut and the surface of the fixture. Like about 1/4 of an inch of screw was showing, NOT securing the fixture to the plate. So because I thought I put the wrong screws in, I found myself re-hanging the thing to put in shorter screws. Which meant I had to take off the fixture AND the plate.

I did this several times with several increasingly shrinking screws (maybe 5 mount jobs in all for this one fixture). I finally called the customer service number and they told me that I had skipped the step about how to adjust the "little nuts" on the "fixture screws". I looked back over the directions and this step WAS NOT THERE. Very frustrating.

Basically the fixture screws got threaded out of the back of the plate and their little nuts hold them tightly in place. Bad thing was that when I went to reattach everything to the wall, the screw heads stuck out of the back of the plate. which they were supposed to do. But since the outlet box wasn't exposed (because it had been sheet rocked over, remember) there was no empty space for the screw heads to back into. So, after detaching everything again, I took a screw driver and poked holes in the sheet rock so that the screw heads could back into the space inside the outlet box.

After all of this, it was very rewarding to show off the new fixture to the family. I didn't get it done in time for the children to be surprised by it, but they got to enjoy helping me finish and getting it ready for when Bryan got home.

And man...I had no idea that there could be so much light! It's almost blinding.

A Star is Born

Well, not quite born, but definitely incubating.
We went to The Miracle Worker callback last night. After arriving and having the group of girls called upstairs for a quick video to introduce themselves and their ages, the director came down and let us know that we were there because our girls were going to be in the production.

What?! IN the production?! Oh my gosh - in the production! Julia's dream is coming true. She is going to be a "Perkin's Institute Girl" in The Miracle Worker. This is going to be a great introduction to theater for her because the role will also have her aiding in the placement of set props during the performance, being a (digitally altered) voice in Annie Sullivan's head during her nightmare sequences, and we'll find out later if she will be an understudy for Helen Keller. The director has promised at least one performance for the understudy. OH MY GOSH! That's all I can keep thinking to myself.

I am so proud of her for wanting something, researching the possibilities and following through with me to help her get there. I hope that this experience will enrich her in good ways. We'll see if this bug sticks, or if this will be enough to cool her jets.