The Puddles

Today was a long and complicated day.  It was full of excitement and activities.  The day started with Papa Lake picking up Ben for a day at camp with the Webelos.  Ben couldn’t spend the night, but they spent the ENTIRE day with the scouts.  Thank goodness Papa was able to step in.  Out of the four overnights this year, Chris has only been able to do one.  Thank God that the Lord moved us closer to family.  Both Papas have been called into duty this year when it involved scouts.  Ben really wanted to build a fire.  He was upset last night thinking that he would not be able to learn to build one.  So Papa helped him build TWO fires today.  One was called a Dakota fire pit (that was a new one for me). There is one picture posted of Ben showing me how he built his fire and how you blow into one end to get the fire going.  He was very excited and animated.  Ben even drew a diagram for me in case I wanted to build one.  Sweet boy!  They didn’t just build fires.  They also went fishing, played basketball, played mini golf, and much more.  It was a very full day for Ben.

Next we dropped the friends off at her house and then headed out for Ainsley’s activity.  Not to be outdone, Ainsley had a gymnastic meet today.  She did an excellent job.  I was again very impressed with his skills.   She came home with a page full of ribbons and a trophy.  I was very proud of her today!  

Then there was Madie.  Madie didn’t have a scheduled event, but instead had a series of adventures.  We took her 3/4 violin into the shop and upgraded it to a full size violin.  She has bought more resin and strings for her other full size violin.  Now she will have one to keep at school and one to keep at home.  After the  violin switch, we started driving towards home.  Madie also needed a costume for her Murder Mystery Dinner Party/Lockin next Friday.  She is a Hollywood  actress on her way to a teen award show. We first stopped at one set of stores.  We couldn’t find a costume, but we were able to find some clothes for Ainsley at Old Navy.  The girls then made a craft at Lakeshore while Mom looked around (but didn’t buy anything.  It was a miracle!).  Next stop was Lifeway where we had fun looking at books and devotionals.  Madie bought some music that she heard at the Winter Jam Concert and really liked (they even burned a cd for her with just the songs she wanted to purchase.) Ainsley and I found two books by the same author about being a “Woman After God’s Own Heart” and a “Girl after God’s Own Heart”.  Then we still needed an outfit for Madie, so we went to Plato’s Closet.  She was given a limit of $20.  She managed a dress, glasses, and a purse for around $20.  She had so much fun trying on outfits.  For anyone that knows me, I am not fond of this store.  It is a little overwhelming to me.  But we stuck it out and Madie really had a good time putting together an outfit.  Then we walked down the sidewalk to Once Upon a Child and found some shirts for Ben and lots of nice Carter pajamas for Ainsley. It was a very successful trip.  After all of that we headed home.

We went home to dinner and getting ready for bed.  Papa soon came home with Ben.  Ainsley and I read our devotional book together and talked about what hers said.  She has never done a devotional on her own before, so this will be interesting.  The devotional was about distractions in life pulling us away from God’s purpose for each of us.  And about waking up in the morning and trying to think about how God wants us to be that day.  My devotional’s Bible verse was from Deuteronomy 6, “5Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”   Ainsley and I talked about if we love the Lord with our entire being how should we behave.  She said, “This is hard, Mommy.  I don’t know if I like this.  It makes be feel uncomfortable because I don’t know if I can love God enough.”  It was certainly a good discussion for the the first night.  She is a deep thinker at the age of 8.

Now everyone is settled down for the night.  Ben and Ainsley made a video for Daddy to tell him that he is missed.  It was sent already.   With all of the comings and goings today, I think that I got everyone taken care of.  This single mom thing stinks.  But thank goodness we have a great support system and was able to tap into it today!

So Day 3 was pretty much a blow off day for learning at school.  Each of the kids was still celebrating the end of STAARS testing by having Game days and Read-a-thons and Movies.  Madie has one teacher who insisted on absolutely no break and threatened a test the day after the STAARS. Hopefully she was just being sarcastic, but Madie wasn’t completely sure.   Madie had a friend come over and spend the night.  The evening included pizza, junk food, swimming, and watching movies.  Ainsley and Ben had to settle for a slumber party with just mom, while the older girls hung out.  I think even the youngest were satisfied with the evening.

Ainsley sent me this video from school begging me to come and get her.

I finally called the school and asked the secretary to let me talk to her teacher.  I spoke to her teacher and told her what was going on. She was shocked that Ainsley was texting me all of that because she was laughing and playing all morning.  So I spoke to Ainsley and told her that I was NOT coming to get her and that she needed to stick it out.  Hopefully that is the end of the non-stop texting.  Giving an 8 year old the ability to text during school may not have been the wisest move this morning.

The following is the text conversation that Ainsley and I had this morning.  Madie decided to put a text free ap on Ainsley’s iPod this morning.  Ainsley is having a game day at school in honor of their post STAAR status.  Yesterday was a Read-a-thon at school.  So think about that as you read . . .

Needless to say, she is not thrilled.

I come home from dropping the kids off to school to find this . . .
Apparently, the person who played with the dogs prior to going to school this morning didn’t shut the door properly.  When I came home from dropping the kids off to school.  Hannah met me at the door with my shoe in her mouth.  Hank had decided to take a different route. He went upstairs and took stuffed animals off of Ainsley’s bed and ripped the heads off.  The once clean living room has been reduced to a killing zone for the dogs. They probably had half an hour to destroy things, but luckily only one cat died due to a beheading. Ainsley is NOT going to be thrilled at all.

So on the morning of our first day without Dad, we woke up early, got ready with smiles on our faces, and then . . .  reality hit.  The girls started missing Daddy.  The littlest began to melt (Mom could do nothing right.).  The best thing for us to do that morning was to get to school.  So off we went!  After a trip to the post office and the rest of the day spent in the office working, the school day ended and I picked up A and B so that we could head to Texas Children’s in the Woodlands for a Holter monitor and an EKG.  Back to pick up Madie and then we headed to church for Wednesday at the Tree.   The kids and I decided to bring the snow cone maker in order to celebrate the end of STAAR testing with our small group.  There needed to be some sort of celebration regarding the end of the STAAR test for 2014. We decided the best way was to have snow cones!  They were a hit. Of course in the middle of our snow cone celebration, Ben comes to me because his “stickers” from his Holter monitor are falling off.  If he hadn’t had so much fun playing games, maybe they would have stayed on!  But you can see from the picture that he is really groovin’. When we got home, we decided to not take any chances.  We put new pads on his chest and taped them down.  I asked him what we would do if this didn’t work.  He joked and said “duct tape”.  I said, “Awesome idea. Maybe we shouldn’t wait until they fall off.  Let’s do it right now.”  The last picture is of Ben hoping that I won’t really do it.

Everyone is in bed.  Hopefully getting plenty of rest for the next day.  We miss Daddy.  We love looking at his blog and checking out the daily posts from Turkey.  Chris called me from Turkey and we were able to FaceTime.  It was incredible clarity!  I am amazed at technology.

One day down and many more to go until Daddy comes home. 

Isn’t she lovely this morning?  She has her good luck testing pencils tucked into her hair.  But she is not thrilled about today.  At.All.  

Wait until Daddy opens up his suitcase.  He is going to love all of the notes that the kids wrote him tonight.  Madie’s was a tutorial on how and when to call us from the time zone in Turkey.  Ben wrote a mystery letter for Daddy to guess at.  And Ainsley wouldn’t let me see the letter because it was “just for Daddy.” Tomorrow we are all going to the airport to say goodbye to him.  We are all going to miss Daddy.  But we will try to have adventures of our own while Daddy is gone!

Dad leaves tomorrow for Turkey