A New Bike, An Old Puppy, and a $130 Pie

If we were playing that game where you take three things and figure out what they have in common, it would be impossible to deduce how these three things are alike. And really, they don't go together. Unless a crazy week of extreme highs and extreme lows counts.


From May 1 to May 18, Louisa's school had a reading contest. Like a lot of schools, they can only read Accelerated Reader (AR) books. After they finish the book they take a test to earn points. Each book is worth a certain amount of points. Eragon, for example, was worth 25 points, whereas Captain Underpants is worth only 4. The point leader for third grade has 360 points, but that is her total for 2nd and 3rd grade combined. Louisa has 284 total points, and that's just since December. For the contest there were two winners in the school. One boy and one girl. The prize is a bicycle. I don't need to tell you who the winner was for the girl's bike.

During the two weeks that the contest was running, Louisa got 85 points and her test average was a 94%. I went and picked up her bike yesterday and took the opportunity to boast about my little girl to the principal as he wheeled it out to my car.

On Monday we got a call from our onbase housing manager. He had our puppy! In the morning he had seen several ladies out for a walk. Low and behold they were walking a puppy that looked exactly like the one on all the posters we put up. The manager took the puppy to the animal shelter to have his microchip scanned and sure enough, it was Flash!

It took Flash a day to adjust to us again. He kind of moped around on Monday and didn't eat anything. Yesterday I went to buy him some canned puppy food, thinking he would be happy to eat that. When I came back from the store his food bowl was empty. That figures! Anyone need some canned puppy food?! He's doing good now. He's 100% back to normal, just like he never left. Still got fleas, though. The people who had him could have at least gotten rid of the fleas, if they weren't going to check and see if he belonged to anyone. I understand that if you see a collar-less puppy running around your yard, your first instinct is to take him in. But at the very least you should take him to the animal shelter to make sure he doesn't belong to anyone. Somewhere out there, there's a family that probably misses him. I'm just glad to have him home with us.

My husband's first sergeant came up with a great idea for a fund raiser. Have the wives (or whoever wants to because I guess I can't assume that it's only the wife that bakes in the house) bake a pie or a cake. Put the pies and cakes up for auction and the soldiers can bid on them. But here's the catch: attach to each pie and cake a special prize. An incentive, so to speak. The incentives were things like, first sergeant for a day, sgt major for a day, an extra 3-day weekend pass, an extra 4-day weekend pass (and those are what the soldiers wanted the *most*). There were so many of each incentive and those guys really wanted those weekend passes. I baked an apple pie (the one on the left side of the picture) but it turned out really bad and there was no way I could present that to guys that my husband works with. So I ran out to the store, bought more apples, and made another one (the pie on the right).

I knew things would get pricey, but I told husband not to spend more than $45 or $50 on anything. He didn't even have the chance. The cheapest a pastry sold for was $80. At the end there was one pie left sitting on the table, and everyone figured out that pie had the last 3-day weekend pass hidden under it. Yep, that pie was mine. It sold for $130 and was the most expensive pastry at the auction. All in all was raised a staggering $1000.02! The first sgt and his wife are very pleased and the money will be put to good use.

We've had a very up and down sort of week. I'm looking forward to the kids getting out of school on Friday and falling into a summertime routine. A long, hot, Louisiana summer...