Archive for June, 2008

This week has been a little slower than last week, with VBS out of the way. But, I did have 3 softball games (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday), all at 8:30 PM, and of course, choir on Wednesday. The games went well; we almost won two of them. We even played two extra innings Tuesday night because the score was tied. It was a great game, even if we did end up losing. Personally, I would have been happy with the tie! Choir was exciting because I found out Monday that I am singing a solo in church Sunday. We practiced the song Wednesday night, and it went well, I think. I guess I'm as ready as I'll ever be!

This was also a week of dentists. I had my regular teeth-cleaning on Tuesday, and they said my teeth look great (always good to hear!) I took the kids to a pediatric dentist for the very first time on Thursday. They both did great, even though Eliza was a little bit nervous at first, but after sitting in my lap for a few minutes she laid down and let the dentist look at her teeth. Neither James nor Eliza had any cavities, and the dentist said the spacing of their teeth looks good, too. He cleaned and fluoride-treated Eliza's teeth, but he didn't clean James' teeth this time. Because James has a heart murmur, the dentist wanted to talk to our pediatrician about whether he needs antibiotics before his teeth are cleaned. Jay, who also has a heart murmur, takes antibiotics before he goes to the dentist. I completely forgot about the whole heart murmur thing until I was filling out the paperwork at the dentist office. He did take x-rays of James' teeth to look for cavities, which James thought was pretty cool.

James and Eliza have been playing pretty good together the last few weeks. This morning they were "looking for mermaids" in the house, pretending they were in the sea. Eliza got really upset, however, when James told her that he had found all the mermaids in a certain room. ("I wanted to find some mermaids!") They can be so serious with their pretending! They have also been going through spells of competitiveness, where each one always has to be first in whatever we're doing, especially getting in the car. This makes car trips start out so much fun! Well, at least I think James has started growing again. I was concerned for a while that Eliza (who is very tall) was going to catch up with James in height, but today I looked at them standing next to each other and noticed James is once again a good bit taller than she is. I still can't believe Eliza will be 3 in just a few weeks!

Yesterday, we went to Memphis for my Granny's 80th birthday party. It was held in the fellowship hall at my Granny's church, and there were probably around 40 people there. We surprised her with a "camping" theme, which my mom and dad and most of my brothers and sisters helped set up. They decorated all the tables with red-checked tablecloths, then spread around some small plastic bugs and critters and flip-flop key-chains. Adrienne and I found some cool-looking tall shot glasses and put pin-wheels in them for the center of each table. They set up a tent and a camping table, and some lawn chairs surrounding a tissue-paper "fire". My contribution was the firewood. I was at my Grandaddy and Meemaw's house when my mom asked me if I knew where we could get some wood, and Grandaddy said he would cut down a tree in his backyard! So he cut it down (it was probably over 15 feet tall) and we helped him saw it into firewood-sized pieces. We took lots of pictures!

The party was great, and the only thing that was a little awkward was that my Aunt Dianna was about an hour late with the pizza and cake. It was fitting, though, as Dianna is notorious for being late, and my dad, who had prepared some things to say, just explained to the crowd that he had been waiting on her all his life. He talked about some things that happened in 1928, the year Granny was born, and about some of their early experiences with camping, which they did every year in late summer. My family (including Granny) carried on the tradition of camping every year until a few years ago. We still make it out occasionally, but it has not been every year, because as my brothers and sisters get older, there is often some craziness going on! (And my family is not the best at planning ahead, either!) This year instead of camping, we are taking a big trip to Florida. I can't wait! We will still camp when we can, to carry on the tradition, and because it does somehow bring a family closer together when you can get away from all the technology and the busyness of everyday life. Some of my fondest memories from childhood are from camping trips: riding my bike around a campground, sitting around a campfire with my family, going on cave tours, swimming in a lake. Now I want to go camping! Maybe we can do a weekend trip sometime soon…

Okay, so I'm pretty exhausted this week (and it's only Wednesday!), but Vacation Bible School has been going great! I have 5 kids in my crew: 2 first graders, 1 second grader, and 2 fifth graders. They have been wonderful, and I am lovin' them! I only have one boy (a fifth grader), but he has been good, even if he doesn't want to do the motions for the songs…I can understand that. It is very different from last year, when I had 5 fifth grade boys…now that was a challenge! The girls in my crew are so sweet! I even have a Korean girl, who seems a little shy but she is beginning to open up. Our theme this year is "Power Lab", which involves a lot of cool science and wacky crafts. I have to say, I was a little skeptical about the whole "science" theme, because the kids are out of school and usually don't even want to think about such things, but it has actually been a neat set-up, and the kids have really enjoyed it! My own kids have been enjoying it, too.

On top of Vacation Bible School, I had softball games Monday and Tuesday nights, choir on Wednesday (as usual), and the church has a "Movie and a Dog" (a hot-dog) night planned for Thursday. We may have to skip it, though, because we are wore out! And we have a birthday party to go to Friday night for a girl that was in James' preschool class. Saturday we are going over to Memphis to celebrate my Granny's 80th birthday. It has been birthday after birthday around here! My sister Lydia turned 19 on Monday. And Eliza's birthday will be here before we know it! I guess when you have a lot of people in your family (as we do), you always are celebrating something. That's okay, I like celebrations! Right now, though, I think I'll celebrate bedtime!

I was glancing around on Facebook today, and at least 5 people wrote in their "status" that they were tired or exhausted. I was pretty exhausted this weekend, but, hey, a high school reunion only comes around every 10 years, right? I would be almost well-rested this week if it weren't for James, who thinks he needs to get up in the middle of the night every night. Since Jay is in Dallas for a training class this week, I have been letting James crawl into bed with me, rather than getting up and taking him back to his bed (he absolutely refuses to go back by himself.) It has been nice sleeping-in until Eliza comes and gets me up, since we don't have anywhere we have to be in the mornings. Eliza is wearing me out during the day, though, especially since both of us have been a little bit sick with a cold, and she has been refusing a nap, which means she is tired and cranky most of the time. I thought I was mostly over my cold, but today I have started having coughing spells. Eliza mostly just has a little bit of congestion, but I think she must also feel a little bad, because she hasn't been her happy self. James started having a runny nose today, so I guess he's getting it, too. That's enough to wear out a sick Mama when her husband is out-of-town!

Jay gets home Friday night, and hopefully we will have a restful weekend with him, since Sunday is Father's Day! Vacation Bible School starts Monday, and I will be helping with that. I am not really exhausted…yet. Ask me again next week!

My 10-year high school reunion was this weekend, and I think it went really well. I was involved (only slightly) with the planning, so I am glad it turned out to be a good event. I was able to catch up with some old friends, see lots of people I barely remember, and eat good food. Friday night was our party at a local restaurant called Juanita's, complete with a dj from our own class. I think there were about 70 people there! It was fun getting all dressed up (in a dress I borrowed from my 16-year old sister…thanks, Alayne!), and seeing all these people I haven't seen in 10 years. Most of them haven't changed that much, actually. I guess I still look mostly the same! It made me think back to where the time went. Of course, college was in there somewhere; oh, yeah, and getting married; having a couple of kids (that takes 9 months each!); a year of Jay going back and forth to New York (that one seemed like a decade in itself). At Jay's 10-year reunion, I was four days away from giving birth to James. I guess I can believe it's been 10 years. But in some ways it feels like just yesterday I was graduating from high school, valedictorian of my class, headed to Mississippi State to become a veterinarian, leaving behind my family which included my baby brother, who was two at the time. Wow, that was probably one of the hardest things I've ever done. But dorm life treated me well, and then I met Jay, so it was definitely worth it. Even if I didn't finish vet school! A lot has happened in 10 years!

Jay and I stayed at the party long enough to eat fajitas, watch awards being given out (I got two- "Shyest" and "Most Likely to Remember the Alma Mater"...crazy, huh?), and watch the photo slide show, which I had the honor of putting together. (Okay, it was a lot of hard work, but I thought we should have something to show everyone to bring back some memories, and apparently, I was the only one crazy enough to take on such a task.) Hopefully the show wasn't too bad; at least the majority of the crowd seemed to enjoy it. They also made me sing the Alma Mater into the microphone, since I knew all the words. But since Jay and I aren't drinkers, and we aren't really interested in making a spectacle of ourselves by trying to dance to the upbeat music (at least not in front of anyone other than family!), we headed home shortly after that. We were exhausted from a rough week, anyway. The kids spent the night with my family, so we actually got to sleep in and almost get caught up on our rest.

We had our class family picnic on Saturday afternoon, and it was neat to see the families of my classmates. It was especially fun showing off my own family! God has blessed us so much! It was really hot, though, and there was not much shade. Several of us gathered under this little tree, trying to stay out of the sun! Both James and Eliza have a touch of sunburn, and they played hard. We were all exhausted by the time we got home. It was a good reunion, but I'm glad it's over. And glad it will be another several years until the next one!

James' last day of preschool was Friday, and so today begins his first official summer vacation! And then kindergarten! But I don't want to think about that. Right now, I am trying to think of things to do for the summer. I think we will do the library's summer reading program again. We did it year-before-last (last year was too crazy with New York and all), and I want to start going to the library again. We haven't been there since they expanded it, and I am excited to see what they have done. So there's one thing. Jay wants to look into swimming lessons at the pool in the city park. I never was much of a swimmer, but I guess my kids could benefit from that. Wild River Country (the water park in North Little Rock) is more my speed, and we will hopefully get to go once or twice. Most of my family members got season passes to Wild River Country, but the kids are a little too young to fully enjoy it, so we opted out this year. Maybe next year…

Jay bought a new car! After finally hearing from the insurance company that the truck was totaled, Jay drove over to a Honda dealer in Sherwood, AR (just northeast of North Little Rock) on Friday and bought a red CR-V, kind of a smaller version of my Pilot. It is very nice, and we are excited to have something we can fit the whole family into! We took it to church yesterday just because we could! It gets better gas mileage than my Pilot, so we might end up taking it on long trips, so long as we can fit all our stuff in there. I am just glad the agony of the decision is over!

Saturday we got out and enjoyed the warm weather while Jay toiled away at the yard work that we have been neglecting. Well, we were out of town last weekend and Jay has been busy with work and buying a new car, so it kind of got pushed to the back burner. (And I've never mowed in my life. How pathetic is that?) The kids played in the sprinkler, well, okay, James played in the sprinkler while Eliza sat whimpering on the back porch if we tried to make her get in it. The water was very cold…I didn't want in it either. But when I drug our little blue plastic swimming pool out, she was in there in no time. I guess she just didn't like getting sprayed; she is more of a dipper. I was a little reluctant to get it out because it was really dirty (our ferns live in it in the garage during the winter) so I had to scrub it, and it has cracks in it (from Eliza jumping on it when it was upside down last year). I had taped up the worst crack, and it held water pretty good, actually. They had a great time, and their new swim suits looked great! There are pictures, of course!

Yesterday we invited my family over for lunch after church. They are keeping a couple of kids from church whose parents had to go out of town (a five-year-old girl, who is good friends with James, and a one-year-old boy.) The kids enjoyed playing together. A storm came up while they were there, and it knocked our power out around 3:30. My family left to go home, but the power stayed off for almost 6 hours! We went to eat dinner at McDonald's, and it was funny to see everyone in our neighborhood out in their yards, since it was dark in the houses, and they had nothing better to do! At least it was not too hot outside, and the house stayed pretty cool. It was kind of an exciting weekend!