Back to School ups and downs

I haven’t posted anything about Elizabeth’s new school yet, because frankly I was waiting until it got better to post about it. I realized that I was beginning to sound like Debbie Downer in my blog lately, so I thought I’d try to be more positive.
She had a great first week at school, but [...]

Most people in Memphis aren’t this rude

Subtitle: One of the few times I’ve seen my husband lose it in public
Lannie called me on the way home from work yesterday and wanted to go out for dinner. He had been seeing IHOP commercials and was craving pancakes. I already had dinner in the oven, but I saved it for [...]

One kid should be a lot easier than this!

My two older children are gone to “camp” this week– that is, Caleb is at a real camp, and Elizabeth is at a “camp” that my parents made up. Caleb has gone to sleep-away church camp for the first time (sob!). He left early Monday morning and will be home Thursday night. [...]

I hope it’s just a healthy interest in material texture

Tuesday, we went to a sporting goods store to pick up a swimsuit for Caleb. He had a swim meet Tuesday night, and he had to have a Speedo. I’m not saying we’re thrilled that he has to wear a Speedo for swim meets, but at least they come in a long shorts [...]

Everything was fine until we tried to go out to eat

My sister-in-law Kim is 8 months pregnant with her fourth child. She’s having kind of a hard summer (go figure), so I offered to take all of the kids to the zoo today. That’s my three kids and her three kids, for those of you who are having trouble counting. As Lannie [...]

Decisions

After nearly two months of trying to decide what to do about school next year, we’ve finally decided to continue homeschooling Caleb. Elizabeth will go back to public school. I’m not sure what I expected from this homeschooling experiment of the last semester, but I certainly thought it would be temporary. I [...]

Loving life

One of the things Phillip has taught me in the past few months is to really enjoy the little things about life. As I was putting him to bed tonight, he said, “I had the best day!” We didn’t really do anything special today, but he just enjoyed his day with his family.
When [...]

The grossest job you will ever love

Kids are gross sometimes. They can’t help it; they are just kids. As a mom, though, it’s my job to clean up after them when they are gross.
It’s the worst part of the job, bar none. Those of you who are men should really thank God right now that you will probably never have to [...]

That working mommy part

So I started back to work full-time yesterday after being off (with the exception of a few workshops) for more than a month. I had kind of lulled myself into the false impression that I was a stay-at-home mom, and it was a shock to my system to go back to work. It hasn’t really [...]

That’s what they get for putting the TV on the curb

Our next-door-neighbor set an old television set on the curb today, which greatly confused Phillip. She also set out the remote control, which confused him even more.
While playing in the front yard with Caleb, he walked over to the TV, picked up the remote, and began clicking it at the TV. Then he walked over [...]