Please do not buy this book

About 7 months ago a friend's niece died while in the care of Jeanette Lawrence. The child was only 2. She was left unattended for a period of more than a few minutes and the results were fatal. I believe the DA is still trying to make his case in court so I do not know the details except that the child died and it could have been prevented. The little girl was only one of several that was in her care that day. After the incident, it was determined that the woman should not have had as many children in her care as was that day. Now it turns out that Jeanette Lawrence has published a book... Your Child's Daycare: Everything You Need to Know From Start to Finish. It is even being sold by amazon.com. Please do NOT buy this book... encourage others to NOT buy this book. Amazon.com will not remove the book from their list because it would be considered censorship.

Halloween 2009

The kids did some neighborhood trick or treating and then we went to the church for "Trunk or Treat"... then more neighborhood trick or treating. Kodi had her first Halloween overnighter at a friend's house. Of course I did take her and a friend trick or treating with the little ones before the party... she can't grow up too fast! Anyway, here's costumes for this year. We didn't have the money to buy new costumes so we worked with what we already had in the house.

Deklan is a Ninja. I actually bought the Ninja costume for a dime after last Halloween. It should have been big enough (it's a 7), but he had a big growth spurt over the summer so it was a little short and snug... he didn't care, he wanted to be a Red Ninja. When he got cold I gave him my sweatshirt to wear, which he swam in... he said he was the "Ghost of the Red Ninja" and thought it was great. Funny.


Hayleigh was a cheerleader... with a little tweak of the makeup, hair, and gloves. Surpisingly, this was actually Kodi's cheer outfit from when she took cheer in kindergarten.



Kodi was Abby Sciuto from NCIS, complete with spider web tattoo. (Actually, I drew it on with a makeup pencil.) My favorite show is NCIS with the CSI branch closely following (except Miami... I can live without that one, but still watch it). Abby is our favorite character on the show. She looked great and everyone recognized her right away.

We also had a special guest for Halloween... He lives on my porch.


Since I'm terrified of spiders, he doesn't get messed with.

Great Weekend

We had a wonderful weekend. We took our Girl Scout troop to Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City. It was Bythia (the leader), her husband Roger, my husband Chuck, myself, and then there were eight girls from our troop plus both our younger girls and Deklan. The total was 15. We all rode in one large van, but it really wasn't too bad.

The lodge has a large indoor water park. There is a "magi quest" for the kids. Basically you get a wand and a map and wander around the four floors of the lodge looking for different interactive items. When you point the wand at the item it talks to you... "you've found 50 gold pieces" from a trunk, "don't point that thing at me" from a fairy in a bird cage, etc. They even had trick or treating for the kids.

It was fun for the girls. Of course there was also an arcade, a couple of stores, and a candy shop (great fudge!). On the way home we stopped at Palmer's candy store. The girls really enjoyed themselves and it was a mini vacation for my family since my husband got to go.


Chuck poses for the camera.Kodi's turn. Next is Hayleigh. Don't forget little D!
Deklan poses in front of the big clock.
Here's the inside of the water park. It was really big - 3 water slides, a lazy river, a swimming pool; a kid's area with a shallow pool, two baby water slides; a large play area that had lots of water sprayers and two more small water slides.

There is a bucket at the top of this that dumps 1,000 gallons of water every 5 minutes.
I think Roger was about ready to go at this point.
This is my hubby - sweet swim trunks huh? LOL
Deklan... the life jackets were free and easily accessible to anyone who wanted to use them.
Kodi is about to do something - look at that evil face.




Of course Kodi couldn't keep from texting for very long. Here we're done with swimming for the moment, but she can't even change clothes before checking her text messages.


There was a tree house in the middle of the lodge restaurant. Don't touch the bears.



They were having a creative pumpkin contest. Here are my three favorites.



The elk were on the wall above the doors. The wolves were above the fireplace.
The clock and little house-looking thing was the back side of the elevators.
The bear sits outside of the candy shop / Starbuck's in the lodge.
Of course there has to be the McDonald's stop for lunch before leaving KC to come home. Palmer's candy shop was our last stop. We got to hype them up on sugar all the way home (approx 3 hours) and then give them to their parents! :)