A Lot of This & That

First, I guess I was a little too prophetic in my rainbow posting about the calm between the storms the other day. Later that night after I had already put the kids to bed, we had a tornado warning and spent some time camping out in the basement. This tornado warning wasn’t as scary for the kids as the one we had a couple weeks ago probably because they were so groggy. In fact, Danielle didn’t remember it at all the next morning and she even walked down to the basement on her own. Obviously a tornado didn’t touch down and we lived. Phew.

We had a busy last half of the week. The kids attended Vacation Bible School this week. One of the common VBS programs this year is The Power Lab, which is what our kids attended. It was a nice change, I thought. It had a science theme, and all the crafts, games, and snacks were experiment related. Tyler loves that kind of thing, so it really was a lot of fun for him. Danielle really enjoyed it, too. Our friends had their 3rd baby last week, so we transported their girls every day, too. I think that was part of the fun for Danielle.

The VBS program was immediately after Tyler’s tball game on Thursday. (That’s why he looks a little tired and sweaty.) Last year he goofed off the entire time the kids were singing. This year he actually tried to sing the words. What I thought was funny, though, was that he stood perfectly still during the song (rather than doing the motions) but started wiggling around and moving all over the place as soon as the song was finished. The younger kids are at a disadvantage because they can’t read the words on the screen, but that didn’t stop Danielle from trying to keep up with the motions. I thought the difference between Tyler & Danielle in this video was funny.


Also on Thursday we kept our friends’ kids and all attended a program at the library. As we were walking in, Danielle commented on all the pretty flowers someone had planted around the building. Tyler said, “Someone must have used Roll ‘N Grow!” I thought that was pretty funny.

The Wildlife Center did a presentation for the kids. The lady who did the presentation was probably very good at her job, but she was not so good at entertaining children. She used big words and had little expression in her voice. Although the kids were a little restless at times, they did have fun. They got to touch a couple different species of cockroaches and see some crawfish, a flying squirrel, and a screech owl. Screech owls don’t get very big and are actually very cute in a bird-like way. The owl coughed up a pellet in the middle of the presentation, which interested the kids more than anything else the lady had planned to discuss. When Ron called to talk to the kids that night (he was gone part of the week), Danielle excitedly told him about the screech owl. She talked nonstop and told him that it even made “little whos because it was a little owl”. Actually the lady said the owl was making “quiet vocalizations”, but Danielle’s description was much cuter.

Yesterday afternoon we delivered the flowers the kids grew to the cemetery and spent the afternoon with Grandma & Grandpa C.

Today was Tyler’s last tball game. He had a lot of fun this season. Ron took a red-eye flight back from L.A. and arrived home at 6am this morning because he didn’t want to miss Tyler’s last game. I know Tyler doesn’t understand all Ron had to go through to do that, but he was glad his dad was there to cheer him on. I was a little insensitive (not on purpose) and reminded Tyler that this was his last tball game ever because next year he’ll play coach pitch baseball if he plays. He said, “That makes me so sad I think I’m going to cry.” And when I looked back at him, he had a tear rolling down each cheek. Boy did I feel like a heel. He recovered nicely, though, and had a great last game. He hit a pitch each time he was up to bat and had a lot of fun joking around with the coaches.

This afternoon he registered to play flag football, which starts in August. Maybe we'll have a month without any Saturday sports.



Finally, the kids are working on special shirts to wear on July 4th. Once again I’d like to appear creative, but this idea is from the latest Family Fun magazine. Danielle started hers yesterday, so she’s a day ahead of Tyler. He will splatter paint his stars tomorrow. Once the paint is dry, we’ll take the stencils off. I think the shirts are going to look really cool. I’ll be sure to post pictures of our finished products.