Those Little Turkeys

I've mentioned a million times that I'm all for reusing.  A couple weeks back I decided to reuse my turkeys from last year.  I hadn't laminated them, but had put them away (sans balloons) in my trusty file for future use.

(I finally found a use for that crazy big IKEA bag I've had laying around forever.)

In putting these cuties together, tape is your best friend.

I taped the front body to the balloon, then taped the feet to the balloon (with taped pennies on the bottom), then popped the tied part of the balloon...

...through a hole I had poked (with the tip of a pencil) on the back.  I added a little tape to the bottom front of the tail feathers (just above where the tie goes through the hole) to secure them a little better.

Another tip:  I love those easy-peel labels.

I use them on any visual that I want to reuse in the future (um, that would be all of them) that you need to put an activity or song on.  That way you can easily change the song or directions by just writing out another label and sticking it over the old one.

So... this past Sunday was our Ward Conference.  I usually get nervous and stressed when the Stake visits, even though I have been a counselor in a Stake Primary Presidency before.  I determined that for this Ward Conference I wasn't going to do anything "special" just because the Stake would be there.  I try every week to make Singing Time a great experience for the children, so I figured that THAT was good enough.  I knew we needed to review My Heavenly Father Loves Me (the song the kids had voted for) for our Sacrament Meeting special musical number this upcoming week, and then I threw in a couple other Thanksgiving/Seasonal songs to break things up.

I didn't know:

The Stake was doing the Sharing Time, and had requested to go FIRST (we usually have it after Singing Time), in addition to a counselor in the Stake Presidency speaking to the children AND the assigned talks, scriptures, Articles of Faith, etc. the kids had planned on.  I had 5 minutes.  At the end.  OUCH.

Because of the requested schedule change, our Primary President forgot a Reverence Song, so when the counselor in the Stake Presidency got up to talk (Jr. Primary), he seemed a little stumped, then asked who was over the music (me) and requested we sing a song.  (I kind of felt like he thought it was my fault we didn't do an opening song.  I was just trying to follow what our sweet mildly-flustered Primary President had announced, without adding to her flustration...)

In Sr. Primary we had a different counselor in our Stake Presidency in to talk to the kids, and he asked them what the Primary theme for the month was.  Their response:  THANKSGIVING!!  Nope.  CHOOSE THE RIGHT!!  Nope.  He seemed a little... concerned?... dumbfounded?... surprised?... that the children didn't know it was missionary work.  (In their defense, we'd only had one week of the theme in Sharing Time, and we've been working on our special musical number - yes, Thanksgiving themed - in Singing Time.)

Because of the Stake-requested schedule change, I missed my Singing Time in Nursery, and the kids in our Primary were on the wild loud unruly wiggly side, thanks to a VERY LONG extended period of sitting still and listening.

I'm feeling a bit like it was a hot mess epic fail bit of a flail, but life goes on.  Those kinds of weeks happen.  Good thing perfection is not a requirement!

Happy Thanksgiving/Missionary Singing!!