Tales of a Shoebox Princess

Without much comment from me (we shall see about that), prom pictures! First of all, I will comment. Paul told us where pictures were going to be but only the name of the place. It turns out it was a church connected to an old folks home. And we didn't have permission (I overheard one of the moms complaining to one of the workers about it--she said permission was given, but the worker said it was not given). There were so many kids there, though that it would have taken a riot squad to herd all the prom goers and parents out of the place. Paul's group wasn't the only group there. There must have been at least 75 couples and all of their parents and lots of the grandparents. The church space was huge, like convention center huge. Paul and Taylor Looking suave Paul's group The White Tuxes   Paul and some girls being silly Waiting for their names to be read off in the Grand March at the school Paul and Taylor are the blurry couple on t...

Paul is going to Prom today. He asked a girl from school. True to form, he didn't tell either of his parents. How did I find out? Facebook, of course. A picture of a blonde girl showed up on my news feed and it was tagged with Paul's name. "That doesn't look like Paul." I thought to myself. The girl was holding a Post-it note with "Prom? from Paul" written on it. The girl was smiling and doing thumbs-up. The next time I saw Paul, I asked him what it was all about. He said, "Yeah, I asked Taylor to prom. She's in Italy right now on the band trip, so I had Emily stick the post-it in her suitcase. When she found the note, Emily took a picture and posted it on facebook."  I know nothing about Taylor beyond what she looks like, courtesy of the picture, what her first and last name are, and that she's on the track team. And that she's a senior. This is the least involved with Prom that I've ever been. I don't know if tha...

I made 5 batches of homemade playdough yesterday. I haven't made it in a long time. Paul made some last week for a school project--he had to made a model of a brain. It looked pretty wrinkly. I wonder if it shriveled as it dried? I didn't take a picture of it. He doesn't like having his picture taken when he's not running. At least by me anyway (I've seen countless weird pictures of him on his fb page so apparently he doesn't mind it when his friends take pictures of him). Back to the playdough I  made. I even added food coloring. I made pink, yellow, blue, green, and purple. I made it for an activity in seminary. The teenagers each picked one or two scripture mastery verses and had to sculpt them out of playdough. Then the class had to guess which verse it was. I haven't seen little kids enjoy playdough like these "big" kids did. I think they would have rolled in it if I had made enough of it. With the exception of one kid, they all took the...

I had several very solid reasons to go to another track meet last night: 1. Paul was running in it, of course 2. He ate pizza the night before and he is sure that whenever he eats pizza the night before a meet, he does well. 3. The weather promised to be nice to me, unlike the previous meets where I was confined to the inside of a fleece-lined waterproof jacket. 4. The meet was at the high school I attended lo, those many years ago. 5. Mom promised sandwiches Unfortunately, I also had solid reasons to be somewhere else: 1. Matt had a band concert 2. Sadly NOT at my high school alma mater 3. It was the last jazz band and regular band concert of the year 4. I had no one else to drive him there 5. and he had trombone lessons before the concert. So Jim and my mom went. Lucky them!  (I will not complain) Paul ran very well. Here he is at the start of the 1600 m race  Paul loves the blue track at Minnetonka. He was in first place for most of the race, but th...

A parka-style shrug. Designed to keep only your shoulders and the top third of your back warm.  Waterproofing by request.

I Am SOOOO cold. My bones are made of ice, I tell you. I'm considering hopping into the freezer to WARM UP. I sat for 3 1/2 hours in 45 degree, rainy weather in the bleacher section to watch Paul run three races (however, I got there late and missed the first one). I brought an old bath mat to sit on because I knew the benches would be wet, I brought my umbrella, and I wore thermals and wool socks. I'm still cold. I sat. I was too cold to do anything except blow on my hands and hold the umbrella. Surprisingly, time went pretty fast while I was waiting for Paul's next race. Or maybe I was too cold to perceive the passage of time. After his second race, I went back to my van and sat in the running vehicle, with the heat blasted so my toes would unfreeze. Then I waited for the last race. I got out of the van to watch the second race and immediately my body core temp dropped close to absolute zero. Paul ran in his flimsy, thin, sleeveless track uniform. J...

Did you know it is track season? In fact, it has been track season for several weeks. In honor of track season, I will post two pictures of Paul running on a track. Paul doesn't usually run relays, but he gave it a try last week. He ran the second leg of the 4 x 800 (he had to run two laps) Here he is running the 3200m It was a very windy and cold meet--temperature was in the low 40s. I wore a fleece lined jacket and a scarf, in addition to my regular uniform of jeans, socks, shirt, shoes and sunglasses. Compare that with what Paul is wearing above. He was freezing. He's wearing the gloves because if he didn't, his fingers would lose blood circulation and turn a really gross shade of waxy light yellow. It's happened often and it always weirds us out. He couldn't wear gloves during the relay because he had to actually hold onto the baton. Gloves=drop the baton.