I had stopped volunteering for Art Vistas at least 2 years ago when the school hired an art teacher to teach most of the classes.  This year I signed up as a helper.  I missed the first class while I was in Colorado in Sept, and the second class was last week.  Since I left being an art docent volunteer, they had put together an art classroom; it looked so nice to have all the supply in this classroom compared to how I used to have to gather all the needed supplies and to bring and set up the kids’ classroom or the cafeteria.  This art teacher was nice and calm; the format of the class basically was still the same as how we were told to teach the classes previously.  Being there reminded me how much I enjoyed these art classes.

   It was great spending time with Connor along with meeting his classmates and helping them too.  The class this time was about pointillism and the kids were to dip and dap paint to make a painting.  The class was given quite a bit of time and the entire class lasted 1.5 hours.  The kids made nice artwork, and I enjoyed being there.

    Another cool thing was when we talked about this over dinner at night, the boys said they still remembered when I used to teach those classes.  Logan also added that his classmates thought I did a great job too; this was the first I heard this from him and of course I was quite happy about it.

    Last Saturday at 8pm, the power went out as scheduled and we did not have power for the next 48 hours.  It was really windy on Sunday; at least this power outage seemed to be justified.  Due to the length of this, we ended up losing everything in the fridge and freezer, so on Monday Stuart and I emptied everything inside.  Fortunately our water tank is large enough that we continued to have hot shower during this time.  We were happy also that the boys’ schools continued business as usual.  Over the weekend, we ate out and carried in for our meal.  The tougher part was for Buddy as he was still on bland food due to tummy issue, so I had to use the stove method to make each of his meal.  When the power finally returned on Monday night at 8:30pm, we were all so happy that we sang and danced around while Buddy just stared at us.

    Even though only Connor goes to Graystone now, Logan was interested to go to the school event Pumpkin Bust on Friday last week.  Connor was excited for this event and gathered all his Pumpkin Bust shirts throughout the years.  I rushed home from work and both boys were ready to go.  It turned out that Cole wanted to go as well and had made plan with Logan, so as soon as we walked to school, Logan met up with Cole.  Connor had told me that he would be hanging out with his friends and he would find me when it was time to go home.  Throughout the evening, Logan and Cole would come say hi to me sometimes, and they played some of the carnival games and happy to gather candies.  I walked around spying the kids and chitchatted with some parents on the way.  DeeDee also found me and we caught up for awhile too.  Later, I found Connor and Neil waiting at the Hair Scare booth and Connor wanted his hair sprayed pink,  Other times I found Logan and Connor along with their friends playing at the playground together.  Later in the evening, Stuart and Buddy walked to the park adjacent to the school to meet up with us; Buddy got some attention from other kids.  Right near the end of the event, we finally wrapped up the night to walk home for a late dinner.

    Last week was Pharmacy Week.  The bosses had some treats for the pharmacy staff most days of the week, and we gathered for some pictures too.

     This year Stuart and I did not really spend that much time together for our anniversary as he had to work.  I also ended up taking Buddy to the vet after my work too.  The reason for the visit was that Buddy has not been feeling well since his first training class.  He was having sneezing and coughing, as well as diarrhea again.  It was on going for 6 days when I took him to the vet; by then his sneeze and cough had resolved, but the diarrhea improved and got worse again.  The vet office was being cautious and did not want me to take Buddy inside the clinic; so we had to wait outside for the vet to come see us.  Buddy was very active and jumpy during the exam; the good news was that Buddy was not dehydrated and everything checked out ok.  So we were given some advice and a prescription for probiotic to take home.  That evening all four of us did go out for a quick dinner, then Stuart had to go attend the second training class that evening on his own without Buddy.

     Connor has a grand idea for Halloween this year.  He does not care to go Trick n Treat, and instead he likes to stay home to give out candies.  He wants to decorate the house and wants to be scary with his costume.  One of his ideas for the house was to add a fog machine which we thought was interesting and thus here we now have one.