Watch Dogs and Laryngitis

Chris has joined an elite club, he's a proud member of the Watch Dog club and today was his first assignment on the job.  Dogs stand for "Dads of Great Students"  He was given a very specific schedule and rules.  The watch dog shirt can only ever be worn at the school.  His schedule started with "Muffins for Moms" and ended with Charlotte's recess.  He bounced around from hallway monitor, to checking locked doors, to attending specials with the kids and visiting their classrooms and cafeteria. 

He's been anticipating the day for awhile now.  The kids were so excited to go to school with him.
Today might have been the safest day to be at Green.  This guy wasn't going to let any of kind of ruckus go down.
Here he is cooperatively posing for his first day of school photo.

He got to go on morning announcements with the kids.  He had to give the kids advice.  He'd debated about whether to go down the hygeine route (shower, comb your hair, brush your teeth, wipe, etc.) or character route (try your hardest, be honest, golden rule, etc.) He joked with the kids that he was going to pull out a big scroll that un-rolled and start with "now where should I begin."  He settled with, be nice to everyone and smile and say hi in the halls, or something like that.
I kept wanting to get the run down of how the day was going but he took the rule of not playing on your cell phone very seriously.  The only response I could get out of him was when I asked if I could bring in lunch to which he replied "No, I'm having the western burger today."  His childhood dreams of eating hot lunch were once again fulfilled at age 35.  He could have had it three times since he had three kids.
He told me that the kids ask lots of questions, but the number  1 question is if they can have a sticker.  The watch dog is given 10 stickers and he's not allowed to give them out if a student asks.  Talk about pressure.

Sick continued - while Chris was away on duty I was at the Dr. again for my ongoing sickness this week. The diagnosis was laryngitis.  I sound horrible trying to make sounds, worse then that old lady on NPR.  I forget her name.  I finally got a prescrption for some steroids, yahoo!!!  I was also given strict orders not to talk or my vocal chords won't get better.  I felt like Ariel dropping off my medicine.  There was a lot of smiling and nodding but not much else.  I took my voice for granted.  I really like it and need it, I have so many things to say. Chris gave me a pen and paper but it's more frustrating.
It looks like charades might be the entertainment for our Friday night.

Rozzie's Day

Lucky me and anyone else who's got to associate with this girl for 9 years!!!!

As Mallory would say, she's on the awesome list. Anyone who knows our family knows that Rozlyn is the best behaved. She always makes us proud. She's smart, kind, a great friend, helpful, creative and just easy to be around.
It was an off year for a party so I had to get creative in making her day awesome and her feel special. We invited a few friends over for a surprise breakfast. I promise it was not a party, just a breakfast. The day started early because she had to be all ready to go at 7:00am. She couldn't sleep the night before because she was so excited!! While I was curling her hair, she had this horrible look on her face, she looked so sad. I asked her what was the matter and she very honestly told me that she was going to throw up. Ahhhhh! This happens to her every once in awhile but still, it was not in the plans, not on her birthday. She had friends coming over, she wanted to go to school and be on the announcements and wear her birthday headband. I had her go lay down while the rest of us did scriptures. Calm Chris assured me that all would be well and we'd just have breakfast with her friends without Roz if she was sick. 10 minutes later Rozlyn came down and was A OK. Charlotte's job was to get the friends outside and sneak them in to the kitchen table. When Rozlyn walked in it was a great surprise!! I made her assure me a million times during breakfast that she was good to go.

I got to eat lunch with these cute girls.

Sadly Mason's lunch doesn't overlap so he missed the 12noon party. Don't feel to bad for him though, he had plenty of donuts and sugar cereal for breakfast and was going to have cake and ice cream for dinner. Not a bad life.

A sweet Rozlyn story: because she's thoughtful and kind, last year for Mother's Day she surprised me with this book!!! (I think we'd looked at it together at a book store once and I must have said it was cute, she stored it in her memory.) When she saw it at her school's book fair she took all of her own money and bought it for me. None of my kids ever buy me anything so it was very thoughtful and secretive and fun!

The book just sat on the shelf until Rozlyn asked me to make her birthday cake from it. Scary. How could I say no, I had to use her book that she bought me with her very own money. She picked out the design she wanted and I gasped. Here is what we came up with. It only resembles the picture, like you could tell I tried.
                                     
She appreciated it and it tasted great, so win win! I also was very sick, very very sick, so super sick her whole birthday week. I felt like supermom trying to pull this birthday off when all I wanted to do was crawl in bed and sleep. Chris is an awesome dad and husband but mom is the one who makes the birthdays happen around here. Rozlyn was 100% worth the effort.

:)

I've got a great husband - a really great husband!!! Last Thursday was a very bad day. The kind of day where there were lots of tears. The not so lucky Chris is the one who always has to be the listening ear. The next morning started out ordinary: scriptures, showers, breakfast, kids scoot off to school. Just a few minutes after they'd left I got a knock at my door. Nobody comes over at 8:00 in the morning, so I had to tip toe to the peek hole to investigate. I saw a big bouquet of flowers and Chris's car in the driveway. I opened the door to the flowers and Chris who told me that he took the day off and was hanging out with me. Then came more tears, lots more, this time they were the happy ones.
There was hanging out, errands with a buddy, yummy lunch and some shoe purchases that followed. Is retirement really 30 years away. I'm kind of in a hurry to get this guy all to myself.
Friday night I left to the Arlington Time Out for Women with a few friends. I came home Saturday night to happy kids and a clean house.
Sunday morning he leaves for his church meetings while I'm still in bed. When I woke up I saw a dress hanging in the closet all pressed and ironed with my new matching shoes underneath all ready to go.
Chris makes my life :).

Easter

(my very springy Easter Mantle)

I love Easter!! A holiday that focus's on Jesus Christ without the commercialism of Christmas, a three day weekend without a booked up busy schedule. Win, win, win, win!!

Our first Easter party was at Mallory's school. I love that she goes to a Christian Preschool so that she gets to celebrate these fun holidays (unlike Public School). She's always looking for an excuse to wear a dress and I thought the Easter Party was the perfect opportunity. The kids were all giving me a hard time about her being over dressed. I told them it was Easter so it was perfect.

I'll admit we over did it. She looked like a little pink Alice in Wonderland while all her pals were in their cotton stretchy shorts and graphic tee's.
Next up was our Good Friday Camporama. We came home, de-smoked ourselves and dyed our Easter Eggs. The weather was beautiful so we got to have the dye outside, always a bonus!
Easter morning looked like like We got one quick pick of them all beautied up before the rain came down. I wonder how many more years I have of Charlotte allowing me to coordinate her outfits with her siblings? I hope not any time soon. I love coordination!
We celebrated our Easter with Chris's family tradition of hoagie subs, picnic style, lunch. We then had a little egg tapping competition, complete with a bracket. Egg tapping = two hard boiled eggs face off, they tap each other until one cracks, the whole egg wins and moves on in the competition. Here is Chris (Chris #2) having a show down with Charlotte (Humphrey). All the eggs were given names for the competition. Chris won the award for the least creative with Chris #1 and Chris #2.
The championship came down to Chris and Roz. Chris was the victor - un creative egg names and all!!! More coordination: These pictures were Easter part 2. One week later. You see these were their Easter outfits. Purchased in advance, on sale and all that good stuff. They were put aside until the special day. The week before I started preparing for Easter and couldn't find them anywhere. I tore this house apart looking. Every hiding spot, drawer, under the bed, attic, it was such a mystery. I finally decided that they got thrown away, sitting in a big bag and looking like garbage. It made me so sad. I thought about no Easter outfits this year but in the end decided to splurge and do it. It wasn't the kids fault and I love Easter outfits. So they got their new duds and looked darling. I went in my closet to put on a necklace. On the necklace hook, tucked away were the Easter clothes - I didn't know whether to be mad or glad. I probably was a little of both. With plans to return them the next day my awesome, awesome, husband told me to keep them and let them all have two new outfits. So here the kids were matching again.
Our church is about 30 seconds away from home. Mason was clothed when he left the building, this is him as he exited the van. It doesn't take long for that guy to get comfortable.

Camporama

Our Good Friday camping lives on. Erwin Park has seen the Grahams over many Good Friday's. This year we almost ventured somewhere new, a little fancier, a little further away, but with many more amenities, including electricity! I felt a little un loyal even looking at other possibilities but then I got so excited just to find out it was all booked up. It turns out most sights were. I guess people other then us really camp in Texas, who knew it was so popular.

So back to Erwin we went. Let the pictures tell the story.

Still relatively clean

"This is the life"

Forest + Friends = Fun

There was a lot of running through the trees on these trails.

Quite possibly the dirtiest hand ever

Corn straight from the skewer

Happy kids eating "Tacos in a Sack" the new favorite camp food of the Graham Fam

More happiness from "Tacos in a Sack"

Best Buds

It's just a facade, although I think a little Stairway to Heaven was about to bust out

Red Rover

Biggest gong or frying pan ever!!!!

Eating one of Chris's pancakes is single-handedly worth all the packing and bugs and bees and bites and burns and scrapes and lack of sleep and smoke smells and laundry that follows camping.

A happy pancake eater and a sad juice spiller (check out her pants and the puddle).

Hopefully we'll get in one more spring campout before the Dallas heat takes over.

A New Chapter

Wow! Big things are happening at the Graham house. As Chris best put it, "There's a lot of sad babysitters throughout Allen, TX now that the Grahams are off the market."
Now that Charlotte is 11 we feel comfortable leaving her home with the kids for a few hours when we're close by.

We put her skills to the test last Friday night and headed to a ward High Priest Sweet 16 party. This is where all the High Priests and spouses meet together with dessert and watch some of the March Madness tournament games. Heaven and heaven. A plate full of dessert and a big screen T.V. full of basketball.
We left Charlotte with Chris's cell phone and texted her throughout the night. These were some of our awesome texts back and forth, and yes, she is awesome. I guess through all these years of awesome babysitters Charlotte picked up on the best ways to do it. We were so happy when we got home and found sleeping kids, a clean house, no babysitter to drive home or check to write.

We have a long going tradition of leaving notes for the kids on their magna doodle's after they're asleep for them to read in the morning. Charlotte did this completely on her own.


Hey yo!, I turned your aquifer (humidifier) on 4 you, - thank you Charlotte -, why you are so welcome

Hey yo' I turned your alarm off 4 u -thank you Charlotte - why your welcome!

A little visit from the shoe fairy, who looks to be more generous than the tooth fairy.

Love Her!!! -and I love that she loves babysitting!

11!

Charlotte's birthday always falls during spring break. That means no school, sleeping in and a week long party. This year her only request was an ice cream cake - she's an easy kid to make happy. Chris was home all day, we opened presents in the morning, went to Olive Garden for lunch and had a movie party at night.

I'm thankful for this girl in so many ways. Here are just 11 of them.

1. She very FUN!! Always up for an adventure - any adventure, my kind of girl.
2. She's a great peacemaker, she always helps with her little brothers and sisters to keep peace.
3. She's very musical, she's doing great at both at the piano and harp. Sometimes when I'm cleaning I'll ask her to play just to have beautiful background music in our house.
4. She's smart!! She's a straight A kid and is very responsible with her schoolwork.
5. She loves family time and being home.
6. She's grateful, she'll always thank me and leave me nice notes.
7. She's very sure of herself, she doesn't notice what others are doing around her or compare herself to others - a true gift!
8. She's very kind to others.
9. Her favorite thing to do is to snuggle up with a good book and read, I love that she loves books so much.
10. She is neither dramatic or emotional - yahoo!!!!!!!
11. She's very teachable - she loves to learn, looking things up on the internet, reading encyclopedias or non-fiction books, She's been our "why" girl from day 1.

I'm savoring these last years of elementary school and primary with her. There are so many big changes coming up so fast. We are going to enjoy 11 before that all happens.

March 21,2012

My day went something like this, from start to finish.
1. 9:00 - Drop off Mallory at school, get in the van to get home and then smell the odd smell and realize it wasn't really my van after all. Awkward.
2. 10:00 At Lowe's, picking up some home improvement items (hooray!) when I ask an employee a question and he responds, you really should send in your husband for me to explain this. Angry
3. Praying for rain all day so that soccer practice can be cancelled. Please, please, please!!!
4. 3:00 pick up Mason from school to his worsening cough. Run him to the Dr. with hopes of getting some meds so we can all (mostly me:-) get sleep tonight. He seems to sleep just fine.
5. I really needed a treat all day and our house had nothing to satisfy.
6. 5:00 - I look out the window to find the most amazing discovery. My sweet, new, garden was growing green things. Hooray! I was so happy at that moment. My only goal after all the labor I put into it was just for something to grow, anything. I immediately took pictures of the life and sent them to Chris. High Point7. 5:30 Load up the kiddos to pick up girls from Activity Days. The key won't go in, our car wasn't going anywhere. Mallory had somehow lodged a pencil in the ignition. Grrrrr. Low Point, maybe even breaking point8. Miss soccer practice because our car is stuck in the garage. Maybe a secret high - see #3
9. A cute husband who comes home early to make everything better. See #2 He is handier than I, I must admit.
9. Breakfast for dinner to make everything better. The syrup almost was a substitute for the treat I'd been craving all day.
10. The bigs clean up dinner while I put the littles to bed. Bless them.
11. 9:00pm The littlest little, aka Mallory, is still not asleep. Charlotte just came down and asked if there was a mute button on her. Why is she always the last one to sleep???
12. Book vacation to Destin, Fl - hello ocean & white sugary sand beach, I can hear you calling my name now! Like, right now! 12. Only a few hours to go until Chris comes back home from a meeting.
Que the music: ............ Mamma told me there'd be days like this........

Open House

Before the kids took off for their big spring break vacation, we went to the school for their Open House. Chris was super dad and came home early so he could be there. Open House is always a little bit scary when you see the kids art work and writing posted on the wall for everyone else to see.
These Marin Luther King look-alikes provided some good laughs. There were some dreams that were really sad and embarrassing like "I have a dream that my brother and sister will like me" "I have a dream that my parents will quit fighting" and some good dreams like "I have a dream that no child will ever be hungry." Mason's dream fell into it's own category, I'm not sure the name of it. His dream was that all the water fountains would be chocolate milk fountains. His dream was probably the most honest and sincere. His artwork was also awesome. The "Guess Who My Parent is Wall" was a little more embarrassing. You read some of these and just hope that when you turn it over it doesn't have your name on it. This was the case for Chris.All I know is that if there was a matching game where all the dads stood by the wall and people had to match them to the descriptions nobody would pick Chris. Mason described him more as a guy who works out on a drilling rig, getting sprayed with oil who has dirt permanently under his finger nails and spends his weekends getting in bar fights.
There is nobody in the world that Mason adores more than his dad.
What are we to do with this crazy guy???? (here he is dressed up as his alias, Mr. Brown, for the Dr. Seuss parade)

Another Sunday

This morning was daylight savings, and we had 9:00am church, and I have to get the kids and me ready by myself, and I had sharing time, and we did it!

I'm staring down future Sundays in my life and I can only see it being easier than today. I also realize how fortunate and blessed I am in my life that a morning like today makes my list of hard things.

FHE classics

Here and then, we'll have a Family Home Evening that will finds itself a spot on the best ever Graham Family FHE list.

Such was the case on Monday night when this guy was put in charge.He had the lesson and he chose modesty. It was his choice and yes it was random. After a somewhat normal lesson he finished with this bold statement. He was very serious and dramatic.
"and one more thing, you should NEVER, NEVER, wear a necklace with a money symbol on it. It makes the poor people feel very sad."
and now we all know. Random - where did he get that from. It might come as a surprise but neither Chris or I have any chains with money symbols on them.$$$$$
(we'd like to thank Dylan, Mason's best friend, for this awesome shot of his Halloween costume)
There then was a follow up activity that he created, we each drew a piece of lead from a mechanical pencil. If you got a short one you went to heaven, if you got a long one, well you weren't so lucky. So after drawing our pieces of lead, we opened our hand and he pointed his finger in our faces telling us all where we would go. Only Charlotte went to heaven, the rest of us weren't so lucky.

This lesson was immediately followed up with a brief lesson from Chris on appropriate times to say "You're going to hell." It didn't ever include yelling at someone while pointing your finger in their face when you said it.

It was the kind of night where after it was all said and done you have to ask yourself - did that just happen.

I fear(look forward to) many more of these awesome FHE nights.

Single Lonely ~ looking for a mate

The Cricut has long been an appreciated piece of equipment in this household. We have everything there was to cut on paper, until this week. The vinyl purchased long ago was broke open and here's what I produced.
Stage 1


















Stage 2


















Stage 3


















Mismatched socks have never made me so happy. Every time I go in the laundry room I get excited. With Mallory in school a few days a week, I'm feeling like the crafty side of me is on the verge of coming back out.