Touch A Truck 2009

Jensen and I are very involved in MOMS Club and when we first joined, one of the moms told us about a neat event where they have all different kinds of trucks for the kids to see and touch. I thought Jensen would love that and wished we had one in Edmond to take him to. I was on the MOMS Club board last year and the president Jessica and I decided it wouldn't be that hard to plan an event like that ourselves. We asked the rest of the board if they would like to do it and we got mixed opinions and a lot of no's since it would take a lot of planning and work by the whole club. Jessica and I decided we could pull it off so I arranged to have it in the UCO parking lot and we started calling different trucks. We decided to take donations for the entry fee and donate it to the Food Bank "food for kids" program. It took a lot of hours of work but it was a HUGE success and everyone that came raved about it and couldn't wait for the next one. We had about 30 vehicles and at least 1,000 people show up. Best of all ,we raised about $1,400 for the food bank and made a lot of people aware of what a great program it is.

Fast forward to this year and everyone loved Touch A Truck 2008 so much that club members couldn't wait to help out. I wasn't on the board this year but was on the TAT committee in charge of the logistics of the day such as donation table, volunteers, parking the trucks etc. I also helped with calling trucks and distributing flyers. All the members really did a lot so Jessica and I didn't have nearly as much stress as last time.

Touch A Truck 2009 was an even bigger success this year! We had 70 trucks, at least 2,000 guests, and raised 6,285 for the "food for kids" program. I am very proud of this event and feel honored to have been a part of making it happen. Here are some pics from this year

May 16, 2009

Overhead picture of the trucks from the electric co. cherry picker truck

Medical helicopter flying in. That was very cool to see that and it creates a LOT of wind!
Jensen got to walk around to see the truck for Daddy for a while then Mimi and Carrie. He had a great time this year unlike last year. He didn't like it then because it was loud since the kids honk the horns in all the trucks
It's May but it was cloudy and chilly so Jensen wore Mimi's jacket. We were so relieved it didn't rain

This year, Borden's gave out free milk and popcicles. It was funny to see the messy faces of all the kids eating ice cream on a chilly day. Pepsi was also there giving out free drinks and giant cheese puffs. I think that was Jensen's favorite part

Me in my golf cart I used for the day. I felt kind of important and Jensen thought it was really cool Mommy had a golf cart
Jensen on the school bus. He played on there with his friend from playgroup Alex and we had a hard time getting them to get off

Pretzel Time

Jensen and I went with MOMS Club last week to Auntie Ann's pretzel place at the mall for a tour. They took us in the back and let the kids make pretzels. We have gone before but Jensen has always been too shy to participate but this time he really got into it so I was very proud! Best of all we got to eat them afterwards yummy!

Putting on gloves- I was very impressed Jensen talked to her and let her put them on him

Rolling out the dough in a long snake

Holding the ends up and twisting it into a pretzel shape

Pretzels ready to go in the oven

Jensen's pretzel with salt is ready

Yum so good especially with cheese dipping sauce!

At the end they gave all the kids a hardbound book about the story of the company, very nice

Woman Power!

Jeff had to work on Saturday since it was the day before Mother's Day and they are really busy during that time. I didn't want to waste the day so my mom came up and we tiled the dining room by ourselves. We layed over 35 tiles and we were done by about 2pm....we rock! All that is left to tile is the cut edge pieces, under the fridge and the laudry room so we are almost done. Hooray for progress!

Thank goodness for my handy Momma!

Its starting to look normal again

Jeep Drama

Last thursday I was driving my Jeep home from walmart and it just died right in the middle of a two lane road! People couldn't get around me and I obviously couldn't get out and push it. I called Jeff and he said he would get there asap and told me to call the police to help me get out of the road. I called and they were SO unhelpful! I talked to two different stations and all they wanted to do was call a tow truck and I didn't want that since who knows how long that would take and Jeff could probably fix whatever it was that made it die. By this time I am sobbing like a crazy fool telling him that no I did not want a tow truck. I was so upset!! Finally this good samaritan shows up and pushes my car to the side of the road. He asked if I wanted a ride somewhere and I said no I will call a friend that lives close. He told me he was going stay there until my friend came because I seemed really upset. I was like yeah I know I'm pregnant and hormonal!! He was really understanding and my friend Kathie is a saint for dropping everything and coming to my rescue. Luckily Jensen was at school that day. Jeff came home and we ended up having it towed to the house (which cost $102) and it looked like the fuel pump was out. The jeep was giving a code for some sensor thingy so Jeff tried that and it worked for a while but on Sat Jeff took it for a test drive and it died on him. He put in a different sensor and that has kept it running since then. We are still replacing the fuel pump though. It made me nervous last month when I rolled over 90,000 miles on good ol' Beep Beep the Jeep but the plan is to drive it to Indianapolis in 2 weeks so I hope there are no more surprises!

Poor Beep Beep getting loaded on the tow truck

Jeff worked on the Jeep on Sat evening and Jensen was more than happy to help him. I'm realizing more and more how lucky I am to have a handy husband because a lot of my friends have to take their cars to a shop to get fixed which is a lot more expensive They were so cute working together on man stuff

Two grease monkeys under the car
Helping Daddy with the jack

Jensen got some grease around his eye somehow and we thought he looked like Mike Tyson :)

Jensen taking a ride on the jack after they were done

What next!

We finally got a chance to work on the kitchen tile some more this weekend and for the first time in a long time, we had a whole weekend with nothing else going on. I was excited soccer was cancelled due to rain. Jeff mixed up a big bucket of mortar and when we went to lay the first few tiles we noticed they were 1/8 th inch bigger than the ones already on the floor so we opened a new box and it was the same. That doesn't sound like a lot but when you need straight grout lines, that's impossible to work with. I opened a few more and they were too big too plus they were darker in color!! We didn't understand how this could be since we bought all the boxes in one big pallet and they all had the same bar code. Jeff started saying we might end up having to tear up what we had done and start over!! I was about to lose my mind, seriously! I called Home Depot where, we bought the tile, and they were confused too but called us back twice after checking their stock. They said the found some that might be the same size so we decided to try that. So that was our whole Saturday gone. Sun morning we looked at all of our boxes and it turned out that only 7 or 8 boxes were the big ones and 13 were the same size as the ones on the floor, thank goodness! The bigger ones had a different date on them too so that may have been the problem. Well, the ones at our Home Depot didn't work but Jeff went to 3 others and found enough that match to hopefully complete the project. This all took until Sunday evening so we got a late start but we did get some tile down after all that mess. I was so mad because we could have gotten some much done but because of those stupid tiles we lost almost a whole weekend grrrr!

Here's the progress we made.The blue dots are the ones we can't step on for 24hrs. Try to keep a 3yr old from doing that!
I'm not sure what the lesson is here, maybe don't buy cheap tile? When you are trying to sell though, its pointless to spend more than you have to. Maybe check the dates on the boxes to make sure they are the same, who knows....I just keep repeating to my myself that everything happens for a reason and this is taking forever because our dream house just isn't ready yet. OY