A Tonsager Tribute: August 2012

This summer I wanted to go to the Chip. Not only because I hadn't ever been and have lived 15-20 miles away for the past decade, but also because on of my favorites, Zac Brown Band was playing!!!

Bear Butte, an old volcano near Sturgis

KIDDER!!!!!

Brady B

ex-students parking cars for the big bucks

Boumans & Tonsagers

Don't mind the garbage in the foreground.
Kidder & I represent! Kidder left me & went back home to Holdrege!

Amazing vendors

Frog Legs & Alligator Bites!!! Bucket-list Check!

Zac Brown Band!!!!!!

Classic!!!

Headlight Snake

We went with another teacher couple from our district and seen lots of ex students and co-workers hard at work parking cars and doing other jobs to earn the big bucks during rally week. I had almost done a t-shirt booth with my Canyon Hills coworkers once but it turned out they had double booked and didn't need me. There went our shot at a spiral playground slide.....not sure if it would have fit now anyway. We still talk about taking on a job or two that week as some of the jobs are worth the pay and free passes, others not so much.

Andy had his end of season golf tournament....

He did pretty good for his first time out and the middles loved riding in the cart and following him watching.

We did our annual Back to School BBQ for the teachers and neighbors. A great turn out, yummy food and good time as always. We smoked some pork then pulled it for BBQ sandwiches.

Someone had fun last night

hangover breakfast before we tackle that mess

No one had any breaking and entering or killed any pepper plants in the garden this year.

The boys also had their 2nd annual Back-to-School sleep over. Those are always fun. At least I hope they have as much fun during them as I do planning them.

We based this one on Mario Cart Wii. All the boys are currently into Wii and usually fight over who's turn it is which means a couple of people are always left out. Mario Cart is a game that 4 people can play which minimalizes this a little bit. I told Andy ahead of time that there would be limited Wii time and that that was one of the only games they could play and they needed to ask before they switch it.

After an hour of Wii play I had the kids move on to Mario Cart Wii LIVE!!!!!

No, I did not see this on Pinterest, nor did I Google it. When planning a sleepover for a bunch of rambunctious boys, you can't exactly set out nail polish, hair supplies and boy band cds and feel good movies, you need activities that allow them to wrestle, run, scream and compete followed by scary movies and a half ton of food every half hour between. I personally can only take so much of the yell, run, jump, wrestle before go nuts and my house is trashed. So I theme it up, plan it out and prep it up. Creativity has always been a strong suite for me. After deciding that this would be the best 4 person game we had and possibly only one that might hold their interest for more than 5 minutes, I tried to think what could go with it and how we could make it an energy burner. This idea came to mind. It held their interest for almost an hour but the down time between tying and how many boys we had allowed a little more delay and disinterest than I had hoped. As preschool, kindergarten and second graders in their first week of school, they did awesome with it and all the neighbors were highly intrigued.

notice each kid has their own color corresponding to their balloons

After that we went inside and made our own pizzas. Then they were allowed another hour of Wii while I cleaned up supper and prepared our next activity.

You have probably all seen this floating around Pinterest or Facebook.....

Well it sounded like an awesome idea to do with a bunch of boys then teach them how to play German Spotlight (pretty much hide and seek in the dark but you want to make it back to base while the seeker is out) with their glowing concoctions. I never did get a chance to try it out ahead of time. Oooops, because it was a total BUST! Didn't work at all! With their measurements or adjusting them either direction. It was just one of those evil spamy posts out there. Total bummer. So I put a glow stick in each of their bottles and sent them out to try it out anyway. It lasted all of 5 minutes before they were all scared and came back in.

Next up..... flavored popcorn and a movie.....

...for the popcorn I had pinned a post with different recipes of popcorn seasoning. The boys each picked the kind they wanted and we did brown bag microwave popcorn so they each had their own serving. This works really well. All you do is place 1/8 to 1/4 cup kernels in the bottom of a brown lunch bag and microwave it for 3 minutes or until there are 2 seconds between each pop. then you season it. The only problem we had was that we like ours covered in butter and pouring melted butter on top kind of made the bags greasy. BUT the popcorn was yummy.

The next morning we made the boys' requested favorites....omelets in a bag. Thank you Grandma Gayle for introducing us to those years back at a family reunion. You simply place a couple eggs, a dash of milk, cheese and your favorite stuffers into a FREEZER ziplock bag and squish it up, then place the bag into boiling water for 15ish minutes until firm, then take it out, open it up and flop it onto a plate.

Then they had an hour or two to play outside and Wii again, maybe some legos, before parents came to get them. It went well. No one got sick this year and no one freaked out in the middle of the night.

We had our neighbor and friend, AJ's army bday the next afternoon. His mom normally sets up sprinklers and slip and slides in the yard for his birthday. That was one of the first neighborhood functions we went to, before our house was even finished. Then last year she had us go to Spearfish Waterpark and this year she went all out on the planning and activities. It was a good time.