I thought I’d bring a little humor to the blog this evening. Those of you that know our family know that Zachary is a big source of humor.
One thing about Zachary is that he does not hide his emotions. He displays them clearly on his face. One that I don’t think he intended to be funny is his "mad" face, though it has turned in to quite a game to try to imitate it. He’ll do anything for a laugh, so it doesn’t bother him that we’ve made a joke out of it (something that would disturb his brother A LOT).
What about you? Can you make Zachary’s "mad" face?
And, just cause it made me laugh, here’s the face he made when I asked him to make his mad face so I could take a picture.
Since Emily’s first Christmas, we’ve been carrying on a tradition in our family in which we purchase one new Christmas ornament for each of our kids each year. I’ve certainly lost track of who got what and when, but thankfully we’ve labeled each ornament and kept them in good shape over the years. However, the ultimate result of this tradition is a very sentimental but horrendously hodge podge Christmas tree.
This year we tried something new. We bought a separate 3’ tree for each kid. They’ve now accumulated enough ornaments of their own plus a few oldies-but-goodies from Christmas-past and they can decorate their own trees. Plus, with the dormers on our second floor, where the boys have their room, we can put them in windows and add to our external illumination.
(See them up on the second floor)
The final benefit and probably the main goal was that we were able to decorate our tree with a more uniform style.
I’m not entirely sure how it happened but I’ve found myself chairing two different University committees at Wayland as well as chairing the Budget Study Committee at First Baptist Church. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for committees. I’m perfectly happy to serve on one, maybe two, without much complaining at all. But all this is really starting to wear me down.
I’d prefer not to complain too much, especially in a forum where many folks could come and read. However, I’ve got to say it out loud to remind myself that there is such a thing as “too many irons in the fire”.
Being raised in a small town, going to school in a small district, I was able to get away with doing just about every activity available in the school plus a few things in the community and church. I remember being told by numerous people that I could choose to be mediocre at a lot of things or great at a few things. I didn’t accept that and I made every attempt to do everything, from band to golf to academics to UIL competitions in math, speech, debate, science, journalism, etc. You name it, I’m pretty sure I tried it. (Ok, there was no ag or 4-H, but I didn’t own any boots or country music, so I get a pass on that one).
That philosophy set a precedent that has finally started to plague me as an adult. The mindset that developed tells me that if I see a project that either I’m interested in or someone asks me to participate in or lead, I only ask one question, “Am I able to do it?” If I can envision the work and mentally develop a strategy to accomplish the goals, I tend to say yes.
People tell me I need to learn to say no. Truth is, I say no plenty of times, but I say no when I believe I’m not the right person for the job. That is to say, I’m not capable to doing the job as it should be done.
In addition to weighing my capabilities as a function of only my strengths, I need to weigh them as also a function of my time and priorities. I’m notoriously bad at estimating the amount of time needed to accomplish my tasks, but I am also notoriously consistent. I always estimate a much shorter time than is actually needed.
Fortunately for me, one of the committees is nearing the completion of its duties. And while, all of this may sound like I’m really down on myself, things are actually looking up. Three days ago, I didn’t know what was causing the severe funk I was in. Being able to identify it and focus in on my real priorities, I’m able to relax into the loving arms of an all-knowing, all-loving God whose plans for me never fail.
No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it. I Corinthians 10:30 (THE MESSAGE)
This past Saturday was the annual Royal Ambassador’s (RA) Pinewood Derby races in Lubbock. Timothy competed with the car he worked on with his Grandaddy. Last year, with minimal effort we managed to win 1 race and lose the next two. Thanks to the ingenuity of Lori’s Dad and Timothy’s well executed racing style, we won 5 in row putting us into the sweet sixteen and then the final four. Though they didn’t award a 4th place, we’ve decided that’s where we must have finished.
The rest of the FBC Plainview team performed very well with a couple from our church finishing 2nd and 3rd in the Lad’s division and another one finishing second in the Crusader’s. I also learned that there is an adult division, so I may have to let Joel build his own and I’ll race it for him.
A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I had a blog dedicated to personal posts about my family. Though I vaguely recall the reasoning for discontinuing its use, I think I’ve come full circle. I miss going back and reading about the fun times we’ve had as a family and reminiscing about past vacations, birthday parties, sporting events, etc.
So this new blog is a return to those days. I know I could make an effort to retrieve all my old Dad-Posts from the late “Zone Defense” blog, but I think I’ll just start fresh here and see where that takes me.
I will most definitely be tying this blog to some of my most common online haunts, such as Facebook and Twitter, so if you found me there or are reading me through one of those sites, just realize you can visit the blog directly at “What Color is Tuesday?”.
As for the name of the blog, many of you will probably have heard me tell the story but if you haven’t, I’ll explain in the next post.
For the past few months, we have been in the process of trying to find a home to buy. We are really hoping to find a house with 4 bedrooms so that each of the kids will have their own room, and have found that there just aren’t many homes with 4 bedrooms here that don’t come with a really big price tag. The search goes on…
In the meantime, we are living in a Wayland faculty / staff house. As far as staff houses go, it is a pretty nice one. There are three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a spacious kitchen and dining room, a large living room, a sunroom, and an office. So, the boys share a room and we have been using the office as a play room.
Until today …
There was an incident on Thursday night / Friday morning that caused Timothy to end up in our bed really early. Too early. So early in fact that Scott and I revisted the idea that we had been throwing around to move one of the boys’ beds to the playroom. We’d had mixed feelings about this. We figured there were definitely advantages — 1) They may actually sleep at night and would not wake the other up if they need something, 2) Fewer fights about someone messing up someone elses bed (Timothy is really picky about the way his things are kept, Zachary …. isn’t)… — but we just weren’t sure if we wanted to make the move yet. Both boys had told us that they wanted their own room, but we weren’t convinced how happy they’d be to be apart. They have shared a room since Zachary was about 6 months old, so we’ve been concerned about how they would react…
Well, after thinking about it in the wee hours of Friday morning, we decided to go for it. Last night, we moved some things out of the playroom and moved Timothy’s bed, dresser, and a handful of toys in there.
Not being ones to do things the easy way, we decided to have Emily and Zachary switch rooms as well. Emily has a daybed, a 9 drawer chest, and a desk with a hutch (not to mentioned all her toys, art supplies, dress up clothes…she’s a bit of a packrat). Zachary has a twin bed, a 4 drawer dresser and two rubbermaid tubs full of toys that he and Timothy share. Because they were sharing a room, the boys had the 2nd largest bedroom. Emily’s was probably half the size of theirs.
After breakfast this morning, we got back to work. First, we got some more things moved to Timothy’s room and cleaned out the closet and cabinets in there. Then, Emily and I started moving things from her desk and closet into her new closet. Scott moved her desk and dresser into there and moved Zachary’s dresser and bed into the living room while we continued clearing out Emily’s things. We finally got everything moved in just before lunch.
The whole process was actually pretty pleasant, which isn’t generally the case when we are doing projects like this around the house. So far, we are very pleased with the results. All the furniture seems to fit like the rooms were made for them!
We’ll see how tonight goes and the days to come go before we can call this a success. I don’t know about everyone else, but I feel like I could sleep for a week after all that we’ve done!
Well, it’s been a couple months since my last post. Rather than trying to relive the holidays and get caught up, I am going to just start back up from here. The holidays were great, but I don’t think I could give a very accurate retelling at this point.
When we returned to Plainview, Emily decided she wanted to take gymnastics this year so she could learn to do a cartwheel. She took dance when we were here before, but had never done gymnastics. So, we enrolled her in gymnastics at a place called “Radical Cheer” that is located just down the street from here. Having never taken gymnastics before, she was placed into the beginners class. Most of the kids in her class are 4 & 5 years old. This does not bother her a bit. She is having a great time!!
There was a fundraiser for the competition teams last night. It was a barbecue dinner that included a silent auction, a cake auction, and the kids on the teams put themselves on the auction block to do light housework or babysitting (depending on their age). It was fun, but the highlight of the night for us was when the classes put on a demonstration of what they do in class.
Zachary’s birthday was last Sunday, December 7th. He has been looking forward to turning 4 for quite some time. For the last year, any time anyone would have a birthday in which they would turn anything over age 3, he would inform us that he was still three with disappointment. So, it was with great anticipation that he starting counting down the days on November 27 — 10 days before his birthday.
I asked him several times what the big deal was about turning 4, and he explained to me that several things would happen when he was 4:
* he would no longer be a baby – though I explained to him that he would always be MY baby, he was pretty insistent on this one. It really threw him when I told him that Scott was still Grandmama’s baby and that Grandmama was still Gran’s baby…
* he would no longer suck his thumb – we have been passively working on getting him to give up this habit. Having been through before with Emily, we knew better than to push too hard until he was ready. He had decided that he would be ready when he was 4. So, on the night of his birthday, we told him to try to only suck his thumb at bedtime. No point in going cold turkey on a 4 year old habit! Well, I have to tell you that he has done so well. He hasn’t sucked his thumb at all since last Monday night. Not even in bed!
* no more dragging his blanket everywhere – he has carried his “blank with fringe” with him everywhere he went for the past 4 years. He still plays with it around the house, but that’s it. No more getting dragged into the car and begging to take it with us wherever we’re going.
* play on the computer – Timo LOVES to play on the computer. Somehow, Zachary has gotten it in his head that he would suddenly know how to play on the computer when he turned 4. I was willing to show him how to play before then, but he really wasn’t interested. Well, this week, he came to me and asked if he could play on the computer. I opened the NOGGIN website for him, showed him which mouse button to click and he was off and running! All our educational games have gotten pretty scratched up through the years. I guess that’s something we should put on his Christmas wish list…
* go to school – I’ve been surprised that he hasn’t asked to go to school this week. Anytime he would tell me that he would be going to school when he was 4, I would remind him that he would after he’d been 4 for a few months. He’ll be going to pre-K in the fall.
There have been other things mentioned, but those are the top 5. Turning 4 was a BIG deal in his mind. So, we started planning the celebration in early November and the celebration really started at Thanksgiving. On the day after Thanksgiving, he had a mini-party at Gran & Ol’ Granddad’s house where he got to open his presents from Grandmama & Granddad and Gran & Ol’ Granddad. He was quite excited to get a Ben 10 Alien Creation Chamber and some “dollars” (that he later used to buy a Dora game for his Leapster). We all spent the rest of the weekend making aliens.
We came home from Amarillo on Saturday. The next few days were rather tame as far as celebrating his birthday were concerned. We put up Christmas decorations and continued the countdown to December 7th. Grandmother & Granddaddy arrived on Friday. Their visit was mainly to see the kids (and, I like to believe, to see us), they were also coming to see the new house since they had not been up since we’d moved back to Plainview. We’re hoping that we’ll be in yet another new before too long, but that’s for another post.
Friday evening was spent enjoying spending time with Grandmother and Granddaddy. We left the house once and drove ALL the way to Wayland to see the living nativity before dinner, but that was our only outting. Before bed, I baked a birthday cake to be iced the next day. As he smelled the baking cake, Zachary knew he would soon FINALLY be 4.
Our plan for Saturday was to go to Chuck E. Cheese in Lubbock. We always let the birthday child choose one special meal for their birthday, and that was Zachary’s choice. We had big plans for the 7th, so we went on Saturday. I decorated the cake to look like an Omnitrix (from Ben 10) so we could take it with us. We decided to let him open his gifts before we went. He likes to dress up like the characters in his shows. We had got him some clothes similar to what Ben wears in the show, and we thought it would be fun for him to dress up like Ben to go to Chuck E. Cheese. He was very excited to get his own Leapster (so he doesn’t have to beg Timothy to let him play his anymore), Diego checkers, cards, and “magic ink” coloring book, and his Ben clothes (a green windsuit). We arrived at Chuck E. Cheese around 2:00 and had a great time.
On Sunday, Zachary decided to wear his “Easter suit” to church. We have a “Birthday Champ” ribbon that he wore proudly. He had a great morning telling every one that it was his birthday. Because he’s 4, he now gets to go to worship with the family. We had a great time worshipping together. After church, we went to lunch and then headed home.
Now, for the evening, we had a decision to make. After getting the tickets for his REAL birthday gift, a ride on the Polar Express, we had found out that the Children’s Choir Christmas musical was that night. All the kids were scheduled to sing. The service started at 6 and we had to be at the Polar Express Train Station in Lubbock by 7:45. We probably could have done both, but our time would have been rushed. So, we explained to a tearful Emily (the boys couldn’t have cared less) that we’d be skipping the musical. We arrived at the train station at 7:45, picked up our tickets at will-call, and found our place in line to get on Train Car 1.
The train ride was wonderful! Zachary enjoyed letting everyone know that it was his birthday. The whole train car sang Happy Birthday to him twice! Everyone enjoyed singing, dancing, listing to the “Polar Express” story, having hot chocolate and cookies, and of course, getting to see Santa and his Elves.
These pictures are from Chuck E. Cheese and the Train Ride.
There has been one interesting development of letting Zachary open his presents before his actual birthday. Any time someone asks him what he got for his birthday, he tells him that he didn’t get anything. He got a Leapster, Ben 10 clothes, Diego checkers, and an Alien Creator when he was 3, but he didn’t get anything when he was 4. Little turkey…
This Thanksgiving belonged to my family so we made the trip to Amarillo and spent the holiday with my parents and grandparents. A tradition was started a couple of years ago to take advantage of the feast at Golden Corral for Thanksgiving dinner, so we did that followed by an afternoon of snacking on goodies, including sausage balls, pecan pie squares, chex mix, etc. Of course, a few games of Yahtzee had to be played. We probably should have played a few more games for Emily’s sake but we spent most of the weekend watching football and movies, as well as eating and sleeping.
We weren’t all in the best of health. Some of that could be attributed to the over-indulgence in snacks, but we think Emily might have had a mild case of strep. By the time we got home on Saturday, she was feeling much better and her fever was gone. We expected to take her into the weekend clinic but she wanted to wait to see if she stayed better and we agreed. By Sunday, there was little evidence that she had been sick at all.
On Sunday, while playing hookie from church for no good reason (shame on us!), we cleaned the entire house, room by room, starting in the back and working our way forward. We did try something new this time, attacking each room as a whole, all five of us. Usually we split up and each take a room. This seemed to go faster in my opinion and you see progress a lot faster (snowball effect?).
Once the house was clean, we started decorating for Christmas. The tree is up, the knick-knacks are carefully placed (thanks to Lori). I was in charge of grocery shopping during the knick-knack phase and it’s a good thing. Everything is much more appropriately placed than I would have been able to accomplish.
When I got my jobs, I immediately began looking for a “school” for Zachary. I didn’t want to put him in a daycare, but in a school. In a perfect world, I would have found a place like where he was last year in Lubbock. There are really three “school” programs in town for three year olds. I’ve heard good things about all of them, but none of them really had hours that would be very convenient for us. I decided to call them anyway and see what we could work out as far as the schedule was concerned. I started by calling the place that Timothy attended when he was three. This place would be most ideal because their hours actually extend into the afternoon, albeit only two days a week. Plus we already know about the program since Timothy was there just a couple years ago. But, alas, they are full. We are on the waiting list. The other two schools are two or three mornings a week. I don’t remember all the details about them. It’s moot anyway, since they are full too.
So, we’ve been left to our own devices to be sure he is getting at least a little bit of education. We figure that with two trained educators can figure out a way to stimulate his brain. I’ll admit that the first few weeks of my jobs, he interacted with the television more than us. He watched lots of movies. That has improved a lot. He still goes to the pregnancy center with me about 8 hours a week and I spend a lot of time working from home, but we’ve built in some school time into our schedule as well. It’s not overly formal. Quite honestly, it’s just playing with him that way we should have been doing all along. We read, make things out of empty toilet paper rolls, talk about the different sounds that animals make, …. Basically just follow his lead. He’s loving it!
One thing we have been working on is learning to write his name. He can say the letters correctly, and does pretty well writing the first few letters. He has informed me that it’s very hard to write an R. This morning he made the creation shown on the picture above. Luckily, I’ve been through the writing backwards things with Emily and Timothy, so I know not to be too concerned that his Z and C are backwards. And, we’ll get the A in after the H in time. I thought this was pretty good for a 3 1/2 year old.
Note: To you Kindergarten teachers who may read this – we know that it is better practice not to teach a child their name in all caps. We’ve showed it to him both ways. We still have a year and half to get him to write it “correctly.”
One thing about Mr. Zachary is that he lives to be funny. He is constantly making jokes and just trying to make us laugh (and he generally succeeds). I could devote a whole post to the funny things he says, which I will do at another time. Let me leave you with one though.
I’m not entirely sure how it happened but I’ve found myself chairing two different University committees at Wayland as well as chairing the Budget Study Committee at First Baptist Church. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for committees. I’m perfectly happy to serve on one, maybe two, without much complaining at all. But all this is really starting to wear me down.
This Thanksgiving belonged to my family so we made the trip to Amarillo and spent the holiday with my parents and grandparents. A tradition was started a couple of years ago to take advantage of the feast at Golden Corral for Thanksgiving dinner, so we did that followed by an afternoon of snacking on goodies, including sausage balls, pecan pie squares, chex mix, etc. Of course, a few games of Yahtzee had to be played. We probably should have played a few more games for Emily’s sake but we spent most of the weekend watching football and movies, as well as eating and sleeping.
