Facelift for the blog

I decided the blog needed a little sprucing up for the holidays. I found this background and thought it was cute. It took me 4 days to figure out how to set up the page and find the right template but it's done!

Katie and I are officially done with the flamingoes...for now anyway. Boy, it has been quite the endeavor. So, what we do is leave them in a friend or family's yard in the evening with the binder leaning against the front door. The following night we pick them up, along with the binder and hopefully a nice little donation to Katie's g.s. troop to go toward their 30-day camping trip this summer. We seemed to be striking out this week, our final week. We get the flock from one home (nobody we know) and the binder isn't outside!! Mind you, we are supposed to be sneaky and not be caught! But we had to knock at the door and ASK for the binder back. The girl didn't seem to know quite what to do so just handed it to us and we left. No donation. We took them over to a friend of mine and left them there for the night. When we returned the next night, no binder!! So we had to knock once again...grrrr. Her husband came to the door, didn't know where the binder was, and his wife was not home either. While we're waiting for him to call her, I see the binder underneath a pile of papers and told him to not worry about it. She and her girls were flying to Florida the next day and I'm sure it's the last thing on her mind! She later emailed me and apologized for everything and said she'd be happy to send the troop a donation. Yay! So, on we go to the next house to leave the flock. We get parked, start putting the birds in the ground, and a neighbor across the street starts to harrass us! I couldn't believe it! He walks over to us and says he hates that people pull pranks like this and it ticks him right off! I'm trying to get a word in and explain that this is NOT a prank and actually a g.s. fund raiser but he's not listening. By then, the birds are in the ground, the people that live there open the door to see what is going on, and I go talk to them. Talk about busted! The daughter and dad were very nice and said they would leave it a surprise for the mom for later. When we returned the next day to move the birds, we picked them up and loaded them in the car so fast, grabbed the binder, and were on our merry way before anybody knew we had been there. Whew! These last 2 nights we had much better luck, even though there were people in the window, we succeeded slealthily and are happy to say we finished our 17th flapdoodle tonight. The biggest pain about this (maybe the only pain as it's actually kind of fun) is the drive to San Jose 5 days in a row. Some days we already have a trip to San Jose for one class or another, then to have to go back to town after dark STINKS. So for that reason alone, we are happy to be done. Other girls are still flapdoodling as there are 9 girls going on the trip and all need to participate. We started in October and so far the girls have earned right around $2000 toward a $24,000 trip! Cookie season is just around the corner so that will help them a great deal. Wish us luck!