Month: May 2011

Ruby turned SEVEN today!!

We went to the Atlanta ZOO this morning after opening up some gifts.  It was a great day for being at the zoo.  It wasn’t crowded and it wasn’t hot or raining.  We came home and had some cake (lemon cake provided by PawPaw, one of Ruby’s favorites!), Ruby took a shower and I took her to a DROP OFF Tea Party.  She always put the emphasis on the DROP OFF (versus mom staying with you) part, so I thought I would do the same.  I used my hour and a half to check out a cute boutique in our downtown area and then go pick up part of Josh’s Father’s Day gift.  Ruby said she had a blast at her friend’s birthday party….Kayla and Ruby have been in the same Sunday School since they were babies!  And they share the same birthday, so they are likely to be forever friends.  They are so cute together.  And sweet Kayla told her mom to be sure that they all sang to Ruby and Ruby got her own special brownie with a candle, too!!!  That was so very thoughtful of Kayla…Ruby felt mighty special.

More zoo pictures to come…it’s been a great day!

Mack and Molly are having this conversation while they are brushing their teeth:

Mack:  You love your friends and your enemies????

Molly:  Yes.

Mack:  That is weird.  Just weird!

I am going to have to keep a close eye on this girl.  I was in Ruby’s room yesterday morning reminding her to put up her clothes that I had washed, dried and folded and nicely put in a basket for her.  When I walked over to the other side of her bed, I leaned down to pick up a pair of pajamas that were on the floor and halfway sticking out from under her bed.  When I got down there, I realized there were several pair of pajamas under her bed.  I kept pulling stuff out and found a school uniform, three pairs of pants, five or six pair of pajamas, and many, many shirts!!!!!!  It was enough to make an EXTRA LARGE load of clothes, I kid you not.  I was amazed and really shocked that she would try to pull this off.  When I asked for an explanation, all she said was, “Because I didn’t want to fold them up.”  She just didn’t want to put her pajamas back into the drawer they belong in…and I guess walking to the dirty clothes hamper in her closet was just too much work, too.

Sneaky girl!

Well, we are two days in to our break from school, and we have been busy!  We’ve been to our library and got to check out a ton of books for the kids.  Ruby and Molly are such great readers.  Ruby is definitely strongest in that area, compared to other areas…like math…a-hem…don’t know where she would get that from.  So Ruby is doing a lot of reading.  Molly enjoys numbers, so she and I have been practicing some addition facts.  She reads well, too, but not nearly with as much feeling and inflection as Ruby…yet.  The trick is going to be being consistent with each of them in the areas that need attention.  See, that’s when they start whining and complaining, and I am tempted to just say, “Forget it!!”

Mack and I are still trying to figure out the difference between A, B, C, and D.  You will surely hear from me if we start making progress in this area.

It is H-O-T here today.  We went to a park this morning, then we went to Rita’s and got the car washed.  We are home now, and this is what is going on in the backyard:

They seem to be having fun with the water.  Mrs. Dorminy bought that yellow bucket and the blue thing you attach to the hose a few years ago.  It has been the greatest toy ever!  They love sticking the yellow bucket on there, filling up the bucket and dumping it on one another or filling up those bigger tubs.  If you see something like this when you are out, GET IT for the kid in your life.  I can’t find any…I was going to get them as gifts.  Let me know if anyone sees any!!

And lastly, here is a snapshot of Ruby, Molly, me and Josh in Kindergarten.  So cute!

It was all about Molly last Thursday on Graduation Day.  She was beside herself with excitement!

Sweet little Kindergarten Graduate

Mrs. Honaker gave out an award to each child and talked a little bit about them.  Molly got the “Prayer Warrior” award, which was so sweet because Mrs. Honaker told us that Molly prayed each day she was at school for Gran and when she went to Heaven, Molly started praying for PawPaw.  That Molly is a sweet little girl.

By the time it was over, everyone was done with the whole “graduation ceremony” thing.

Mack made faces at me while we waited for everything to start.

I’m not really sure what I will do without Mrs. Honaker as one of our teachers next year. Ruby had her and then Molly, and she is the sweetest thing ever.  Her assistant, Mrs. Walley, is also amazingly kind.  We will miss them!

The whole night was special for all of us.  I love their school and how I get to spend so much time with them, but they still get to go to class a couple of days a week.  We are very blessed to be able to be a part of this school.  I am also very happy that we have Summer break now.  While we will still be working on reading, writing and math….we will also take lots of fun breaks to the pool and the park and Rita’s, of course!  🙂

Ruby had a party on the last day at a local park.  The kids had a blast playing together one last time before Summer break.

Ruby is such a good girl.  We are working on self-control and cleaning up our own messes, but she has lots of strengths.  She is a great big sister and tends to keep everyone in order–whether they like it or not.  She is a fabulous speller and reads all. the. time.  Allthetime.  Books are left all around the house all of the time.  She plays so well with other kids, especially if we are at the park.  She likes to meet new kids.  She is great on the monkey bars!  She is also an early riser, which kind of gets on my nerves, but I think it is a quality that will do her well if she hangs on to it through the teen years/college years.

Ruby and some of her sweet girl friends.

This is Luke.  They were in Kindergarten together also.  When I asked them to stop for a picture, he picked up a bat and struck this pose.  Boys are so funny.

And this is Ruby’s 1st grade class.  Only one boy was missing.  They seemed to be a great group of kids.  Ruby has had fun with them this year.

So tomorrow is our first official day of break.  We had a party Friday night, birthday party Saturday and church/birthday party/church today, and I am exhausted.  I do have some plans for the Summer that I hope to cover on the blog….the zoo, a baseball game, the pool, trips to see family, many library visits, some math fun (is that possible????), spelling games and more!  But first, a long night’s sleep is in order.

From the title you may think we went to a kid’s birthday party…we didn’t!  Every few months the church hosts a “Young Adult Night Out” where you can drop your kids off for $10 from 5:30 until 9:30pm.  You cannot beat that. Our kids love playing with their friends, and we love some time away.

Tonight we went to YOUR PIE, a local pizza place where you get an individual pizza and put whatever toppings you want on it.  Very laid back place that was fun to meet up at.  (“at which it was fun to meet.”….that’s grammatically correct, I know.)  Afterwards, the couples from class met back at our house for cupcakes from CLOUD 9 and some other yummy desserts.  We had an absolute blast getting to know one another.  Everybody brought a picture of themselves 8 years or younger, and we played “Guess Who is Who.”  We even gave out prizes, which makes it all the more fun!  I was guessed correctly on everyone’s sheet…I’m guessing the big curly fro was a dead-give-away.  Josh was guessed correctly, too, and he also won “The Cutest Kid” award.  He basically looks like Mack with a red wig on his head.  The couples in our class are so much fun!  They are hilarious, witty, kind, crazy, some (though few) tend to be proper while others are rednecks through and through.  Some have been married nearly 20 years and others only 3 years.  Some have no kids, some have 5!!  Everyone is just so different, and I love spending time with them.  We laughed a lot tonight.  And we shared some things we’re learning from the Lord, which is always an encouragement to me.  Love these people.  Wish I had taken a picture of them so you can see our group, but I was too busy enjoying them and the cupcake.

Ok, back to the important stuff…the cupcakes.  They were so pretty and everyone seemed to have fun trying to figure out which one they really wanted.  Ruby was just hoping that this Birthday Cake cupcake was still here when she got home:

I enjoyed the Raspberry Chocolate cupcake:

Mack and Josh liked this Reese’s Peanut Butter cupcake:

There were so many to choose from!!!  Molly wanted a strawberry one, but they were all gone.  She picked the Cloud 9 signature cupcake, and when I told her Mr. Rocky also had that one, she was glad to have it!

Maybe tomorrow I will post the graduation and last day of school pictures!  We most definitely have some things to celebrate this weekend!

I am participating in Beth Moore’s Scripture Memory Team this year.  You choose a verse to memorize on the 1st and the 15th of each month.  You post it to her blog also.  It has been so good for me!  Since we are 10 verses in, I thought I would take a little challenge and type my verses without cheating.  My spiral that I use to help me memorize is in the car.

Here goes….

Jan 1- “Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face continually.”  Psalm 105:4

Jan 15- “The Lord is my Light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?  The Lord is the defense of my life, whom shall I dread?” Psalm 27:1

Feb 1- “Praise the Lord!  How blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in His commands.  He will not fear evil tidings, his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.”  Psalm 112:1, 7

Feb 15 “When they had been brought safely through, then we found out the island was called Malta.” Acts 28:1 (Malta means “place of refuge”)

March 1- “The Lord protects you; the Lord is a shelter right by your side.  The sun will not strike you by day or the moon by night.” Psalm 121:5-6

March 15- “The Lord will protect you from all harm; He will protect your life.  The Lord will protect your coming and going from this time forth and forevermore.”  Psalm 121:7-8

April 1- “Now praise the Lord all you servants of the Lord who stand in the Lord’s house at night.  Lift up your hands in the holy place and praise the Lord.  May the Lord, Maker of heaven and earth, bless you from Zion.”  Psalm 134

April 15- “Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.”  Acts 3:19

May 1- “They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my support.  He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because He delighted in me.”  Psalm 18:18-19

May 15- “I will rejoice over them to do them good and will faithfully plant them in this land with all My heart and all My soul.” (said the Lord)  Jeremiah 32:41

And there you have it. (I did have to look up Psalm 134, but only for the exact reference…I thought it was 138, but it wasn’t. ) I was just talking to Mary today about how the verses tell a story.  As I look back on those verses I know just what was going on in our lives as a family and in my life personally at the time I began to memorize the verse and apply it to my life.  Such a magnificent thing, God’s Word.  I sure hope I hang on through the rest of the year.  It will be so worth it.

Well, it looks like Mack is continuing to have a fun time with his dad, PawPaw and Uncle.  I best keep these pictures to myself…I don’t think it will go over well with the girls that Mack got to see the potatoes they helped plant or that he got to swim!  Our girls day yesterday was fun, but it was just that….YESTERDAY.  Today we have done next to nothing.  I even slipped out of the King sized bed that Molly and Ruby have taken over the past two nights at some point last night and made my way to Mack’s bed.  I slept in there until 9:30am!!!!!!  Unbelievable.  I haven’t slept that late in years, and I am not exaggerating.  I told Molly and Ruby to not come and wake me up under most any circumstance.  I also left the powdered donuts within their reach and Ruby knows how to start a movie.  They were set…and so was I.  I even woke up, came downstairs to get coffee, waved to them and then went back to my room for an uninterrupted quiet time.  Heavenly.  This was a sign if ever there was one that THE GIRLS ARE GROWING UP.  Today I was thrilled about this fact.  I am sure it won’t always hit me this way…..

Ok, now the pictures I had mentioned:

PawPaw, Mack and potatoes!

I sure am missing that squeezable “baby” boy.

Looks like fun!  I wonder how many times he will have to tell the girls that he got to swimming and that they didn’t.

Josh said that they are having fun and that Mack hasn’t let up talking.  He even said that waking up super early didn’t hinder Mack one bit from blabbing the whole way to the pond.  Mack told me he caught 20 fish and even stepped in the pond in really muddy water because PawPaw told him he could.  I am sure he is having so much fun.  Josh said he went swimming this afternoon and could touch the bottom of the shallow water!!!  What in the world???  I knew he was taller, but I didn’t know he could touch the bottom of a pool.  Wow.

Mack just said, “WELL, SQUEEZE MY CHEEKS AND CALL ME A MONKEY’S UNCLE.”

I am unsure of exactly where he got this.  Weird.

We were upstairs a while ago packing some things for him.  He is going fishing with his dad and PawPaw tomorrow, and he is soooooo excited.  He desperately needs some ALL boy time.  Poor guy–just last night he wanted Molly to play in his room with him.  She said, “Ok, let’s play house.”  He just happily went along with that idea.  Josh suggested that they play trucks.  He seemed ok with that, but then Molly jumped back in and said, “House is for boys, too.  He is the Daddy.”  He just needs a break from the older sisters who seem to commandeer play time.

Anyway, back to the packing part of that story.  I said, “Oh, Mack.  I forgot your pajamas.  Go grab a couple pair of pajamas.”  He said, “But MOM, you were packing and you forgot, so it’s really your problem, not mine.”

After I looked at him like he had lost his ever-loving mind, I told him it would be HIS problem since HE is the one who wears HIS pajamas.

My problem?!!!??  I’ll tell you what my problem is……