What A Great Day

I love my kids; they’re a blast. In Tyler’s school there’s a huge mailbox where kids can submit artwork they draw; then some school officials pick an “Artist of the Month” from each class. There’s a giant bulletin board in the front hallway of the school where all the winners’ works are shown. They put a picture of the artist, the picture the artist drew, and a little bio about the artist so everyone knows a little something about him or her. Today Ty came home telling me he got picked as “Artist of the Month” in his class.

He was really excited about it and I almost cried, from pride, mind you. Tomorrow I’ll run up to the school to take a picture of his display so I can show everyone what he submitted. I can’t wait until the day he has his first gallery opening. I’ll be the one in walking around cheering and crying at the same time. People will probably think I’m crazy but I won’t care.

After Ty’s announcement, I was helping Zach with his homework and one part of it had me laughing hysterically. He’s got this notebook he has to write in on the first of every month. He has to write a letter to me telling me about what he learned in the previous month, then I have to either sign it or write back to him. I write back; it’s more fun than just signing my name. When I read what he wrote this month I was impressed with the things he learned in each subject. He even learned about owls and gave me a fact about them on the bottom of the page. Owls have a feature called “facial disks,” however, when I read what Zach wrote I had to question him. He’d written “owls have facial dicks.”

It took me a minute to gather myself from the laughter to have him re-read what he wrote and he did, then he took a closer look and almost fell off his chair laughing. He knows what the word dick means (from the buttheaded kids we left behind in Independence) and couldn’t stop laughing at his own mistake. Then he said he didn’t know how to spell disks so I helped him correct his error. I’m just wondering if his teacher read it before Zach brought the book home. Too funny.

Dolly was great today too. She stayed home because I couldn’t get all the kids to school when they needed to be. You remember, I mentioned it the other day. So she and I spent the day bringing boxes in from the garage and unpacking them. She was such a help pushing boxes across the floor and digging through things to find places for them. She was mama’s little helper today and we had fun doing it. We got a lot done, too, and she finally got to unpack her dollhouse and other items like that: a My Little Pony farm, two castles, a Littlest Pet Shop ice cream parlor, and her doll house. She was really happy to be able to break out the bag with all the little tiny pieces. She played for hours afterward.

When it was time for bed, she wanted to finish watching a TV show with her brothers before they all got in bed. Fine by me but she didn’t clean up her mess. There were little pieces all over the floor. I asked her to clean them up and she said, “But Mom, I’m too tired. Can’t you do it by yourself?” Then, without even waiting for me to answer, she said, “Great, thanks mom,” and hustled herself off to finish the show. I couldn’t not pick up her mess after that. She was so helpful today she deserved the break.

Then it was bedtime for all and Dolly wanted to call Paul before she went to bed. I dialed the phone and she got the voice mail. She handed me the phone and said, “Mom, it was the guy on the phone saying that dad can’t talk because he’s at work.” More laughter from me. I guess she doesn’t realize that “the guy” is Paul leaving his message. But they all headed off to bed without a complaint and two of the three are now asleep. It’s my turn to relax with a snack and some Bananagrams so I’m outta here for tonight. Just wanted to pass along what a great day we all had.

Until next time…peace to all.