Suburbia has been quiet lately. I apologize.

It's been rather insane here. I'm sure it's been the same at your house, too. Getting back from vacation, I felt sure I'd ready to dive into coupon land and blogging with gusto. But a couple of activities has been stealing the wind from my sails:

Webelos
I volunteered to be the Webelos den leader for my son's den. Their current leader was moving and no one stepped in. I have zero experience with Cub Scouts and have been heavily relying on my friend Anne, Webelo leader extraordinaire, for the tips and tricks of all of this. The prospect of setting up den meetings and activities to attain badges, pins, pins that are called badged, belt loops which are also called badges but aren't, Arrows of Light and Super Scout commendations have bowled me over. Planning the invasion of Normandy was a piece of cake compared to this. I have three different handbooks, each over 200 pages long, to read. I've been trained online (twice). I can lead a troop, err, den, of 8 little boys. How did I get to be a grown up? According to Anne, who DOES NOT CAMP, I have to take this den camping in October. When it is cold. To a campsite without heat (but with running toilets). Did you all catch my last camping experience?


VBS: Very Barely Sane
Well, technically, Vacation Bible School. That's the second huge time consumer I volunteered to run this summer. It snuck up on me, really. And then it hit like a snowball.  I bought the Egypt: Joseph's Journey from Prison to Palace kit from Group Publishing. I thought it would be pretty easy to. It was VERY cool. Look at this preview. See how happy everyone is?

Then I realized I hadn't bought their EASY VBS. I no longer wanted to link hands and sing dressed like Cleopatra. It turns out the kit I bought made the filming of the Ten Commandments like a 6th birthday party. This kit required ACTORS. SETS. CAMELS (I am not joking!). I've been running all over creation begging and borrowing crafts and sets and miscellaneous supplies for our church's VBS. I've wrangled volunteers (which is pretty hard for me as I'm not a super people person). I think my skill set in all this is that I am RESOURCEFUL. I found churches and people who had extra stuff to donate. I am making do with little money. My VBS starts in less than 3 weeks and we have THREE people registered to attend.

Windows
Without going into the gory details, suffice it to say you could sent a kid to Notre Dame for FOUR years for what I am paying. Kind took the steam out of free pasta sauce. Then again, that's all I might be eating for a long time.

So forgive me dear readers! I forgot to tell you about the Edy's ice cream for 50 cents a container (I bought 6). I'm drowning my sorrows in Sundae Cone Crunch.  I deserve it!