Posted by DaddyFranklin at October 21st, 2008
Tonight was the last game of the flag football season for Timothy. We got to see him score his first touchdown. As you’ll be able to tell from the video, we were quite pumped.
Here are a few pictures from the last day as well:
Posted by DaddyFranklin at October 4th, 2008
Today, after mowing I put together the canopy that we bought with our new lawn furniture. Lori helped me finish it off after she finished putting together the boys’ new dresser (the dark one).
Posted by DaddyFranklin at October 4th, 2008
This weekend looks to be a very relaxing one. We spent last Saturday in bed with a nasty stomach bug so last weekend was a bust. My main goal of the day is to get my giant yard mowed. Is there any chance it is my last mow of the season?
One could only hope.
By the way, I am posting this from my iPod touch. I’m still trying to get the hang of it. I mean I know how to do just about anything I want with it. The real question is whether any of the functionalities it provides can replace the way I used to do it. I spend so much time at a computer I wonder if I really need to be able to post blogs, check email, review calendars, fiddle with facebook, and chat all from the iPod. If there was anything besides music I might prefer to use this thing for, it would be the games, but I’m just not a huge gamer. I am trying…
View all posts by DaddyFranklinPosted by DaddyFranklin at July 31st, 2008
Very cute compilation. I remember torturing all three of my kids and seeing similar reactions:
Video:
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Posted by DaddyFranklin at July 24th, 2008
I love my daughter. I really do. But why does she have to be such a strong influence on my boys. Why, oh, why? Why is it that they so envy her and her friend for getting to dress up in all of Lori’s old ballet outfits?
Before half of you comment on how it didn’t scar me to be tortured as a child by my own sister, mother and grandmother, let me tell you that it is no consolation. It is just painful to watch them both stroll in here dressed up as… Even the words are hard to type. They look like a miniature cabaret act. But even more painful is to watch the look on their faces when they are told not to do it or to take it off. Even attempting to convince them to dress up as a fireman or a superhero solicits a response as though I had kicked them in the behind.
And no, you don’t get pictures. I just had to pout a little. You can all poke fun now.
View all posts by DaddyFranklinPosted by DaddyFranklin at July 24th, 2008
We haven’t taken a vacation, per se, this summer. So far we have just had a holiday and a couple of family visits. We just got back from an extended stay with Lori’s parents in Granbury. We almost did everything we had planned for the weekend.
Last Friday we made the trip down just after the kids finished their swimming lessons. By the way, everyone passed their lessons. Technically, Zachary didn’t pass but that’s because he’s not old enough to promote to the next level. He’s still just as competent of a "swimmer" as anyone else in his class. That doesn’t mean he can swim but it does mean that he’s confident in the water and that he’s able to get around fairly well while wearing a flotation device.
We left Lubbock around 2 and made it to Granbury around 7:30. On Saturday, we headed to Keller to see Lori’s brother and, in particular, his 2 month old little girl. She’s very cute. Of course, the older brother is also a fun little guy and our kids had a good time playing with his toys, watching his videos and listening to him screech. He’s a very gifted screecher, if there is such a thing. Lori’s brother lives near a large Cabela store and we all went there just to look around and I was significantly impressed. There were several "exhibits" of stuffed (as in taxidermy) animals. They ranged from an African elephant to dozens of deer and elk. A big swath of that store is more like a museum than a sporting goods store. I also saw one of the biggest catfish I have ever seen in their aquarium. By the way, the kids enjoyed it too.
Next day, we went to church with Joel and Clare and got to hear their new pastor. I enjoyed the sermon and with the lack of sleep I got the night before, any lessor preacher would have put me to sleep. He preached on God’s immutability, that He is the same God in the Old and New Testament despite an apparent change in character.
Monday, we had a hot dog cookout at "Sandy Beach" in Pecan Plantation. The name is certainly a misnomer. I think the beach there is at least a couple thousand years away from sandy. Right now it should be called pebble beach, or even gravel beach. I also now know the benefits of swim shoes over sandals. Wearing sandals through a beach of gravel is painful to say the least. Taking them off and wading through a section of the Brazos river where the river bottom is all rock and no sand, that proved to be even more painful. It was nice to just sit down and float in the warm water of the Brazos, and even though the kids only played for a little while, I think they enjoyed it as well. After the dip in the river, we ate our hot dogs and played on the playground.
Tuesday was another swim day but this time it was more my speed. We visited the Country Club at Pecan Plantation and swam in their pool. It was a very nice pool because a good half of the large pool was no more than three feet deep. This gave the kids a lot of play room. Of course they had to spend plenty of time jumping off the diving board. The boys wear their life jackets and have no problem at all. Zachary developed the habit of counting before jumping but instead of "one, two, three, jump", he would go with "one, two, three, six, seven, eight, nine, uh, uh, one, two, uh, three…." All the while, with the line backing up at the diving board, we’re yelling "JUMP JUMP JUMP". Finally he would and then just float in the way for a little while longer. So, Lori and I still had to take turns pushing or pulling him out of the way each time he jumped. Timothy’s life jacket saved him a lot of pain. He attempted to dive a few times, after watching Emily learn how at her swim lessons. He’d stick those hands together and just fall off. Belly flop!! Fortunately, the life jacket kept him from feeling anything so he enjoyed it. I like to watch Zachary attempt the dive too. Emily’s got a great dive, putting hands together, diving forward, away from the wall or board instead of trying to go straight down. Zachary starts the same way, almost. Instead of putting his hands together, he just makes an "X" with them over his head. I don’t know why. Then he jumps feet first.
Wednesday, we left to go home. Joel is lending me their 5′x8′ flat bed trailer to help move some of the boxes in the next couple of weeks to our new house in Plainview. It was an ordeal getting it hooked up to the Trailblazer, but after two different trips to Home Depot on Tuesday evening and one to AutoZone on Wednesday morning, we were all ready to go.
Overall, the weekend was a great success and a lot of fun!!
Posted by DaddyFranklin at July 23rd, 2008
NOTE: This post is not by Lori. I (Scott) am moving in.
I have decided to shut down my blog called Zone Defense and move all my posts to this blog, making it the central location for all things related to our little crew of five Franklins.
From now on my posts are going to be here and only here. I posted a notice over at Zone Defense. I am assuming, hopefully not too much, that if you are interested in what Lori has to blog about our family, you’ll be able to put up with what I blog about this family as well.
I have already moved my posts from Zone Defense so if you happen to read through the old stuff here, you’ll find all my junk mixed in.
We’ll be making a few collaborative adjustments to this blog to reflect this change (like adding author pictures, etc.) so bear with us during the adjustment phase.
By the way, if you happened to be following Lori on Facebook or Twitter, you may have accidentally been inundated with post notices. For that I am sorry. I take full responsibility for the mishap.
View all posts by DaddyFranklinPosted by DaddyFranklin at June 9th, 2008
We had big plans for this past weekend Most of them went off without a hitch. On Friday we attended an Amarillo Dillas game as part of an Alumni get-together for Wayland. Three players on the Dillas are Wayland alums themselves. There was a barbecue dinner before the game got started. We arrived a hair late but still enjoyed a lot of good brisket, sausage and potato salad. The only downside to the meal was the wind blowing upwards of 20 mph.
When the game was about to start we moved from the picnic tables over to where our seats were. We all decided (our kids had already latched on to the Petty’s so this had to be a joint decision) to move up to the “nosebleed’ section and enjoy the game in the shade. We would have cooked to a crisp in our original seats. Fortunately it was not a sold out crowd so we had our pick. Plus, I’ve never heard of the “seat police” coming to move someone from the worse seats to the better seats.
We left around the fifth inning because we had a long trip ahead of us. Little did we know just how long. We had planned to visit my parents in Canadian for the weekend. After picking up all the pets from my grandparents house in Amarillo which we had dropped off before the game, we made our way toward Canadian. Just about 8 or 9 miles shy of Pampa, disaster struck. The front right tire on the Trailblazer had a blowout. It didn’t shred itself but it went flat suddenly. The first of the bad news was that it was well after dark, almost 11:00 pm. The second item of bad news was that we never obtained our owners manual for the Trailblazer so we were left to figure out how to get the spare down from under the cab, where to find the jack, and how to properly use the jack. Finding it was easy, lowering the tire took a while, and piecing together the various bars to make a crank for the jack was a long time coming. But it all happened leading up to the real bad news. The spare was flat.
At first, I thought it was only low and maybe I could drive it the next 9 miles into Pampa and fill it up. This was a bad idea. I managed to ruin the tire after a couple of miles. At this point, I was at a loss. I called up Dad and asked for some help. I managed to catch him well after his bedtime so good ideas on my plight were not easy to come by. Suspecting that the spare might still hold some air, he agreed to bring me a tank and an air compressor to see if we might be able to make it into Pampa and perhaps all the way to Canadian. After an hour’s drive from Canadian, we quickly learned that the tire would not hold air.
I finally reached the last resort. I called the wrecker service and they sent out a tow truck. He tried to air up the spare tire as well but to no avail. It had quite a large hold in the back, I am supposing from my driving on it. He hauled the Trailblazer into Pampa, while all seven of us (Mom, Dad and my crew) followed in the Impala. Now, the Impala is a spacious sedan but 7 plus three pets is probably beyond its specs. The tow truck left the Trailblazer at Walmart at about 2:30 am and I wrote him a check for $115. We finally made it back to Canadian around 3:30 am.
First thing next morning, I made sure the Wal-mart Automotive Department would be open all day. Dad and I headed to Pampa, where I had them put two new tires on the front of the Trailblazer and move the extra tire to the spare. This ran me about $285. Add in the gas, and that made for a pricey weekend to see the folks. The rest of the weekend was great, we took it easy, celebrated Mom’s birthday with some cake, and watched a few superhero flicks. Kids had a great time as well and I just about caught up on the missed sleep by the time the weekend was over.
Lesson learned: When checking the pressure in your tires, don’t forget to check the spare!!!
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