Bein’ Franklin

Posted by mommyfranklin at June 2nd, 2008

With temperatures reaching the 100s the last few days, I can safely say that summer is here. We’ve got a lot planned for this summer. Today, Emily signed up for the summer reading competition that she participated in last year at the Wolfforth library. She got first place for her grade last year. Hopefully she can hold on to her title and beat her own personal goal. The library has weekly storytime that I imagine we will attend when we can. It’s a good opportunity for Emily to log the books that she’s read and get new ones, plus the kids get do a little art project.

We decided to get a membership at the pool of a local homeowners association. We went swimming there for the first time yesterday. We knew Emily and Timothy would have a blast, but weren’t sure how Zachary would respond. He loves wading pools, but did not like swimming in the lake last week, so we weren’t sure if he’d like a big pool or not. It took a little coaxing at first, but he soon discovered that he loved going all the way under. We all had a great time. Emily went off the diving board a few times, Timothy went down the slide and jumped off the side in the 4 ft water, and Zachary went down the slide and walked around in the 3 ft area. We’ll be spending a lot of time at the pool for sure!

Emily has aspirations to be an author. She is always writing stories. She even entered the Reading Rainbow Young Writers and Illustrators contest this year and got 2nd place for the 2nd grade in the local competition. Since then, I’ve been trying to find ways to encourage her in this dream. When looking through the Summer Leisure Guide published by the City of Lubbock Parks and Recreation Department, I came across a creative writing class. The description stated that it was for ages 8 – 10. Emily won’t be 8 until August, so I called to see if she could take the class. They let her in and she started today. She meets each Monday in June. The guide has lots of great activities that we plan to attend.

All this plus some camping, attending a couple weeks of VBS, and making some trips to see family should make this a great summer.

Posted by mommyfranklin at May 29th, 2008

School ended for the boys and me yesterday. Scott has greatly anticipated this event. He’s been out of school for three weeks, and has been home alone a lot since then. He’s kept himself busy with the kids’ end of year things and playing catch up on some work things he needed to do, but he told me that he’s been a bit lonely. Now he has someone to hang out with again. Awww….

I am ready for summer. This year was a big change from my previous jobs in Parent’s Day Out. As the director, I never truly understood the work of the teacher. Now I do. If things go as planned, I will not be in a classroom fulltime next year. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed it immensely, but there are things I will not miss. In the last 9 months, I have given a hand in potty training 14 children (3 were already trained when they came to me), I have gently held kids down until they fell asleep at naptime (or at least until they looked like they were asleep), I have wiped countless noses and other body parts, kissed booboos, consoled kids who missed their mommy, dog, dad, grandma,…, pulled kids off of monkey bars, tables, shelves, and other children, put kids in time out only to find them doing the same thing the minute they get out of time out, and swept up animal crackers, raisins, hot dog pieces, smushed up peanut butter sandwiches and so on…. I even got slapped in the face and spit at a time or two. There have been days when I never wanted to see a three year old again, and then I took one home with me. Thus, the hope for an assignment change next year.

And, I have fallen in love. There were days that I would go determined to remain in the foul mood I arrived in, and a child would cheer me up in spite of it. Those 17 kids touched my life. There are things I will truly miss. All those things I listed before made it hard, but they managed to creep into my heart. I got daily hugs and requests to be held (even from the kid that slapped and spit), was told I was beautiful, received artwork made at home especially for me, invitations to play with dinosaurs, babies, cars, books, puzzles (and even to come to their house to play those things there), and was admired for my drawing ability (which I really don’t have any of!). By the end of the year, they stopped showing me what they got out of their nose. They had learned where to get the tissues and how to wash their hands. They learned to throw away the paper towel instead of sticking it in the drain or just throwing it on the floor. They got better at keeping their food on the table and to throw it away when they were done at lunch. They didn’t leave my room knowing all their letters, colors, shapes, and numbers, but I think they are ready to learn those things from their next teacher. They are moving on to other things, and I am too. They probably won’t remember me years down the road, but I will always remember them.
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One of my younger kids had a tendency to use the entire bottle of soap when she washed her hands. She pumped and pumped until she had washed not only her hands, but her arms, face, and clothes. I reminded her day after day to only use one pump. Near the end of the year, she’d stand on the stool and would get one pump of soap on her hands. Then she’d exclaim proudly that she only got one pump. She said it with such fanfare that she generally would throw her hands in the air and the soap would fall off. She was so proud of herself. I was proud of her too.
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At the end of every day, the school janitor would come by to change the trash bags. As the kids would get up from nap, they would stand at the door and watch for him to come down the hall. Then, four of them would rush over to the trash can and carefully walk it to the door so he could have it. They would then wait patiently until he was done replacing the bag and would then carry it back to it’s proper place. The janitor got a big kick of it.
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Almost every day of lunch, I had a water bottle that I would add some lemonade powder from one of those to go packs. I had the same conversation every day as I made the lemonade.

Mrs. Lori, what you put in your water?
It’s lemonade.
Why you do that?
Because I like lemonade.
(By this time I have added the powder. I put the lid back on and start shaking the bottle.)
You shaking it?
Yes I am so it will get mixed in.

The last couple days, one of the little boys brought some Sunny Delight in a sports bottle. At lunch, he started shaking his juice and said “Look Lori, I shake my bottle like you!” Luckily, the lid was on. That wasn’t the case for all the kids who started shaking their drinks.
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I am so glad I listened when God told me to apply for a job when I was checking out preschools around town. That’s just three stories. I could spend all day writing stories about the year, but that wouldn’t make Scott and the boys very happy. There are things to be done around here!

Posted by mommyfranklin at May 26th, 2008

  On Thursday, Scott and I realized that the next day was our tenth anniversary.  We both knew it was coming, but have been so busy that we made no plans to celebrate.  Neither one of us are really the type to worry about such things.  We threw around some options to celebrate and explored some childcare options, and finally decided to go bowling as a family.  We decided this since it would be near impossible to locate a babysitter to come to the house on such short notice and taking the kids to a kids’ night out place would cost in the neighborhood of $40 plus food.  So, instead we went to buy a bedspread for our new bed, went out for dinner, and went bowling as a family.  Well, I should say that Scott and I bowled.  The kids pushed the ball down the alley.  We had the gutter guards turned on for them and, for the second game, they rolled their ball down a ramp pointed at the pins.  We’re not great bowlers, but we had a really good time.  Parent’s night out at church is in a few weeks, so Scott and I will get our date night in then.

For Memorial Day weekend, we went on our first camping trip of the season.  Now that the kids are old enough that we don’t have to take a lot of extra things for them, we plan on taking several of these trips.  That’s one of the reasons bought our Trailblazer a few months ago.  The Montana would not have made it on many of these trips.  We had hoped to be able to get a pop-up camper, but that is going to have to wait at least another year.  In the meantime, we are set up for tent camping.

Our first camping trip was to Lake Colorado City State Park.  We didn’t want to go too far from home in case of inclement weather, but didn’t want to be so close that we wouldn’t feel like we actually went anywhere.  Lake Colorado City is just over two hours from here.  When we arrived on Saturday afternoon, we found that all the campsites had been reserved so we were smart to have made reservations.  We found our spot and got our tent set up about 10 minutes before the rain came.  It rained off and on for the rest of the evening, so we spent most of it in the tent.  When the rain would stop, we’d get out and move things in from the Trailblazer.  During one reprieve, we cooked out hot dogs on our propane stove (campfires weren’t allowed).   It was a lot of good time spent as a family.

Saturday morning, we woke up and had eggs, bacon, and Texas toast.  We checked out the interpretive trail not far from our campsite.  About halfway down the trail, we decided the end would take us too far from our tent so we turned around and made it right back to our tent.  Going to the end of the trail would have meant walking back along the road instead of the trail, so we thought this would be better anyway.  We’d already drank all the water we brought, so we headed in to town for more ice, water, and some other camping essentials (broom for the tent and a can so Emily wouldn’t have to hike to bathroom in the middle of the night).  Then we went swimming in the lake for a few hours before heading back for a sandwich lunch.  After we cleaned up the campsite and tent, Scott and the boys went fishing while Emily and I stayed at the tent to read a bit.  I had been taking pain medicine for an awful crick in my neck all weekend, so I was ready to relax.  After about an hour, Scott came back and asked if we wanted to go home.  The ranger had come to the pier to tell them there was a storm coming.  We talked about it and decided we’d done everything we had planned to do, so we packed up and came home a day early.

It’s 11:00 on Monday and we’re still in our pajamas.  I wonder what we’ll do today?

Posted by mommyfranklin at May 26th, 2008

Our tax rebate was deposited at the same time as our pay for the online classes we teach, which was good timing for us.  They say the purpose of the rebate was to stimulate the economy, so we didn’t see putting it into savings as an option.  In the past, we’ve used such items to pay off credit card debt.  We finally don’t have any of that, our online class pay paid off my surgery and some has gone to savings, so we got to use the rebate for some fun things instead.

Since the amount of the rebate was determined by the number of children, we wanted to get something the whole family could enjoy.  So, the first thing we got was a new dinette.  We have had our old one for 9 years.  It’s served it’s time.  It was falling apart and we had really outgrown it.  It had gotten to the point that the five us did not fit comfortably around it even with the leaf in and were tired of the chair with casters.  We did some shopping around and finally arrived at an upscale consignment shop just down the street.  It was here that we got a beautiful 6′ solid wood table that we just love.  It came with two leaves that we will pull out when we have company.  It has 6 chairs, 5 of which we keep at the table.

Our second purchase is a new box spring and mattress set for our Queen Size bed.  Eight years ago, we bought a water bed.  After five years, the tubes started leaking on a fairly regular basis.  After replacing a couple of the tubes, we decided to get rid of all the tubes and get some foam inserts for the bed.  Over the past two years, the mattress sagged and the sides of the box spring began to collapse.  So, after shopping at the high dollar furniture stores, we headed to a mattress outlet store and got a Distinction Pillow Top mattress.

Just doing our part to help the economy.

Posted by DaddyFranklin at May 26th, 2008

Posted by DaddyFranklin at May 26th, 2008

I just browsed through my photo album and thought you might enjoy these:

Posted by mommyfranklin at May 21st, 2008

I was tagged by Merissa, who I am just excited to be talking with again.

1. WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (Mother and Father’s middle name): Fontaine Douglas
2. NASCAR NAME: (first name of your mother’s dad, father’s dad): Adrian Alvin
3. STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first name): Fralo
4. DETECTIVE NAME: (favourite colour, favourite animal): Blue Bassett
5. SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born): Diane Englewood
6. SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd fav colour, fav drink, add “THE” to the beginning): The Red Lemonade
7. FLY NAME: (first 2 letters of 1st name, last 3 letters of your last name): Lolin
8. GANGSTA NAME: (fav ice cream flavour, fav cookie) Vanilla Snickerdoodle
9. ROCK STAR NAME: (current pets name, current street name) Cramer Lucy Huron
10. DANCER NAME: (name of your fav perfume/cologne, fav candy): Taboo Reeces

I tag you!

Posted by DaddyFranklin at May 21st, 2008

I attended Timothy’s Hawaiian end-of-year party at his school.  Despite the fact that Timothy was proud to wear his grass skirt (hula) and some “jewel” stickers, it was a lot of fun for me.  I followed the class around as they went on a scavenger hunt finding each element of their outfit before going back to their classroom for lunch.  I, then, entertained a few kids by dancing my own version of hula dance and sticking paper umbrellas in my cap.

Tomorrow will be Zachary’s party.

Posted by DaddyFranklin at May 15th, 2008

Today, I went with Timothy’s class on a field trip to a place in Lubbock called Kenny’s Korral.  It was a blast, as you can probably tell from the pictures and videos.

Posted by DaddyFranklin at May 14th, 2008

For nearly a decade, I’ve had fruitless mulberry trees in my yard.  In Plainview, living there from 2000 – 2007, we had one very large in the front yard and one equally large in the back.  They provided massive amounts of shade, which was great for the front yard, not so great for the back since the previous owners of the house had installed an above ground pool that spent the hottest hours of the day in that shade.   It made for pretty cold swimming.

It was almost comforting to see that the house we decided to rent in Lubbock also had one of these trees in the back yard.  Well, turns out, to my surprise, it is not a fruitless mulberry.  Similar though it is to those Plainview trees, we are now tracking mulberry juice into the house as it has shed quite a few berries. 

Looks like we have ourselves a good old fashioned Texas Mulberry tree: