Thursday Recap, Happy Mail and Sponsor Thank Yous!

What a day it has been! I left at 8 am and got home at 8:30 pm.
An abbreviation of my day includes:- drove Kyle to band practice on acct. of cold and windchill
- Finished getting Abby to school, did some PR work for the "cards for soldiers" event
- worked for 8+ hours, passed my exam!! (YEAH)
- Parent/teacher conference for our son - we had to fill out papers for middle school (yikes!! reality is - my little boy is not so little anymore!)
- Art Night/Spaghetti dinner at the school, great to see neighbors and friends from our former church
- Bible study with my girlfriends
- Home again to say good night to the kids!

I worked late, which made us late for PTC, which put us behind getting in line for the spaghetti dinner, which made me late for bible study - but at least the gals did not abandon ship (or coffeehouse), and waited for me to get there. It has been one of those non-stop days.

I am so relieved to have taken my exam at work. It took a chunk out of my day leaving LOTS on my Friday to do list. I am doing some more PR work tonight on the cards event - but here I am blogging right now. (LOL) A great thing about networking - my friend Donna read about the "cards for soldiers" event and had some pre-made thank you card fronts on hand intended for soliders - and passed them to me. I wasn't sure how I was going to find time before Mar. 24th to make up some pre-mades for those wishing to write a thank you and not make a card - that concern resolved! Thank you Lord and thank you Donna!

I have to give a shout out to other awesome sponsors for "Cards for Soldiers". Besides Donna, fellow scrapper Candy P. donated a packet of papers and cardstock to make cards - it arrived today - thank you Candy! As did my friend Kati R., whom I worked with at the store. Kati's hubby is a military man, and Kati is also helping me on the day of the event to assist folks with making cards.

Fiskars came through will a cart FULL of product - from papers, both flocked and glittered, to punches, trimmers and adhesive. The unexpected donation of tools is going to make my task easier, as now I am not going to worry so much about pre-cutting everything. The kids will have a super time using the punches. Fiskars also donated some caddies, perfect to put the writing utensils, glue bottles and such in. I hope to host this event at least twice a year and having the tools will be helpful. After meeting with Donna this evening, the tools can also be used for a huge city wide volunteer effort that our church is doing in May. MUCH appreciation goes to Stephenie Hamen for pulling all the products together for me. It was wonderful to have lunch with her this week and catch up on how she and her family are settling into the area.

Cosmo Cricket sent a number of crafting kits, and the Scrapbook Superstore in Madison also donated consumables for the card-making event.

Thank you to ALL of our sponsors! We should have plenty of materials for this card-making event and more. I hope to use any left-over products to create items for silent auctions and other community fund-raisers.

I learned in the "spaghetti line" this evening that Abby begins a "gifted and talented" class on Tuesday, for Math, I assume. This was news fed to me by the kindergarten teacher, Mrs. C, that works with the advanced readers, as I went through the line. (She was scooping sauce.) (LOL) I know the kindergarten teachers were concerned that our school has no program for gifted children in 2nd grade or under. I appreciate Mrs. C going to bat for our kids, and getting something going. Now I don't have to worry about Abby being underchallenged and bored in school during mathtime.

When I wrapped up my busy-ness of a 13 hr day, I did discover a couple of great packages that had come in the mail. One was Candy's donation - yeah! The other was a pizza like box... can't even begin to express how excited I get over anything shaped like a pizza box. Some time ago I had won a blog prize from Bo Bunny. Well, it arrived today - and my heart be still - the box contained my most favorite of all the BoB releases- LOVE SHACK! I so heart the bright, sizzling, tropical colors. I cannot wait to find time to play with it...although if future weeks are like this one - I have not scrapped one iota since Sunday night!

Thank goodness I am heading to Plover, Wi on April 18 for the Fiskars crop! Rather than layouts I hope to work on one-two of the many mini albums I envision. It will require much less packing of supplies if I go the mini album route.

I wanted to announce a fanstastic give away today...but instead really wanted to give a shout out to the event sponsors. Be assured you will want to watch for my RAK - hint: a much sought after tool.

Happy scrapping! Take joy in the most wonderous of God's creations - YOU!