Deep thoughts from Andrew

Andrew talks incessantly.  This week I thought I'd write down a few of his ramblings...

-Mom, Allison came to the party in her bathing suit! (Allison did not come to the party in her bathing suit.  She had on a leotard with tights and was ready for dance.)
-Mom, the next time Wade sees me he may not recognize me because I've gotten so much bigger. (Long pause)  And my hair has gotten longer.  He also won't recognize me at Halloween either.  I'm going to be a baby jaguar.  (I have lost track of all of our costumes.)
-Fred was talking to the boys about when Jesus returns.  After talking about a few things Andrew said, "And then the zombies will be on earth."  Ummm, no.  We have a few details to work though I think.
-Andrew asked his Sunday School teachers to pray for Poco (Fred and Renee's dog) because he was old and sick.  His teacher asked him Wednesday how Poco was doing and Andrew said, "He's not good.  He's old.  That's why I asked you to pray for him."
-We walked into a restaurant this week and there was a giant statue of a chef.  It was huge.  As soon as Andrew walked in he saw it and said, "Uhh, that guy is creepy."  I had to agree with him.

Some weeks are hard

Fred asked me the other day if I had posted for the week and I told him I hadn't because nothing really funny or noteworthy had happened.  Honestly, it has been quite the opposite over the last few weeks.  To be honest, I've been kind of down...as in I cry over the simplest things (which I rarely do) and I'm just in a generally foul mood.  I am not in the running for mother of the year this week.  In fact, at one point last week I got so disgusted at dinner that I left the table and sat in the car...with the windows rolled up and screamed at the top of my lungs...for a pretty good while.  It was the only place I could think of to be alone.  We are on top of each other.  Literally, Andrew talks to me from his room on the top bunk when I am laying in bed.  This week my parenting has felt like I'm playing zone defense in an NBA game:

Jack, stop annoying your brother.
Andrew, stop whining.
Clayton, if you wouldn't let him bother you he would stop.
Jack, quit.  He's asked four times.  I've asked once.  It's enough.  Be a joy.  Don't annoy.
Clayton, finish your school work.  No, it is not too much.  Just do it.  (Que speech about work ethic and responsibility.)
Andrew, get off the floor.  Seriously.get.off.the.floor!
Me, who tracked in mud?
Jack, QUIT!!!  For the last time...quit whatever it is that you are doing.
Jack, have you started your school work?
And on and on and on...one right after the other.  Zone defense in a basketball game for which I seem to be very ill equipped to play.

This was a conversation this week.  I can laugh at it now, but not in the moment.
Jack:  Mom, Andrew hit me in the head.
Andrew:  No I didn't!  I hit you in the face!
Classic.

Don't get me wrong.  I've counted (and am counting) my blessings.  We love it here.  We have a place to stay, with warmth on cold nights and a roof over our heads.  We have family here.  We are all healthy.  God has taken care of us at every step of the way and provided a "new family" here.  My list of blessings could go on and on.  But some days, some days are tough.  I miss my friends.  I miss a few of them so bad sometimes it hurts.  I miss my "stuff".  I know, first world problem, but I do.  There is just something about sleeping in my bed.  I miss my running routes.  I knew all the dogs on each route, for crying out loud.

Why write all this down?  Who wants to hear this?!?  Do I really want to remember it?  Do I want sympathy?  (Not at all.  It makes me very uncomfortable.)  Sometimes life is hard.  Sometimes we go through rough seasons.  I write it down because I want to remember it...for the next time I'm down...for when I'm on the other side of this season.  So I can show my children that there are times that life is tough, but God is always faithful to move us from point A to point B.  If we never walk in valleys we don't appreciate the mountain.  If we never know the night how can we enjoy the sun?  It's going to be okay.  Yep, it will be.  He is faithful and He is enough.

Friday night Fred and I did get to go out.  It was a much needed time together.  Several times during the night he said, "Can you believe we live in this city?"  No, no I cannot.  I dropped the kids off at Fred and Renee's (Yeah for family in town!!) and then headed over to Liz's house for a run (this is a Hooray on its own!).  I came back here and got ready for our big night.  We had dinner at The Flying Fish and then headed to a Grizzlies game.  It's difficult to get a good picture in the Forum.  The Grizz won and it was quite the game.  We were too late for the free neck tattoo giveaway.  Clearly, we should have been more on top of our game.

After the game, since we were feeling spry we headed to The Cheesecake Corner.  We shared a piece of Peaches and Cream cheesecake.  I love cheesecake.  I love peaches.  And, I love Fred.  It turned out to be perfection.  Here's part of the perfection, minus one bite.  I got slightly excited when this was delivered to our table.  So excited, in fact, that I ate the end of it before I realized I didn't have a picture.

For those that know me this will make sense....We paid $8 for one piece of cheesecake and we didn't eat it until 10:30 p.m.  Every bit was worth it.  Worth.it.

This...

was at Kroger today.  I bought all they had.  Seriously, it must be my lucky day. Maybe I should go buy a lottery ticket?!?  I kid...really.  I'm kidding.

All my boys have headed to Paris for Fred to take care of some important business...like picking up his road bike...ha!  The big boys are going to stay for a birthday party and we'll pick them up tomorrow.  So, for tonight and tomorrow it will be just me, Fred and Andrew.  Weird, but quiet.  Well, except for Andrew.  He talks incessantly.  It will be nice to just hear him though.

Going on

-Several of our friends from Paris had a swim meet in Tunica and Bartlett was on the way...lucky us!!  It just so happened that our other good friends that used to live in Paris, but now live in Covington were able to come and meet us for lunch as well.  After lunch we came back to the house and let the kids play.  I'm not really sure who had more fun...the kids or the grown ups?!?
Seriously, when did these kids get so big?!?

-The Lego Movie premiered Friday.  We hit the 4:00 pm show with a few friends from church.  The movie did not disappoint.  It did not.  

If I was a good mother I would have gone to the sneak preview Thursday night at 10:00 pm, but we all know how that turned out since we were at the 4:00 pm show time.  (PS-Andrew was really excited...even though his face does not show it.)

 Mimi sent us to the movie with some snack money.  The guy below ate a little bit of popcorn.  We passed it to Jack to share it with him.  He passed back an empty bag...what?!?

-It snowed in Memphis.  Who knew it would snow in Memphis?!?  At least I have my coat now.  These guys ran outside at 7:30 am.  Good thing they went out early.  It was all melted by 9:30 am.  

-My Aunt's birthday was Monday.  We made a quick trip to Nashville to take her to lunch.  While she's not 16, we thought this balloon was just perfect!  We had a great time!

-For Valentine's day we celebrated all day with the boys.  We had breakfast of heart shaped biscuits, sausage, eggs and chocolate gravy.  We then went to On the Border for lunch.  Later that night we headed to Fred and Renee's for a party of homemade pizza, chocolate fondue and minute to win it games.  We had contests to see who could stack the most candy hearts, who could throw the most marshmellows in a cup and who could wrap the Valentine mummy.  It was a blast.  Mawmaw even came through with some prizes.  It was a night to remember!  Below are the three teams for wrapping the mummy.  I love the look on Jack's face in this picture.  He was in it to win it!

Sweet little kiddos making their own pizzas.  It was serious business...

-Fred takes each of our kids out individually to spend a little one on one time with them.  Clayton's turn was this Saturday morning.  He picked breakfast at IHOP with dad.  How could this disappoint?!?

-Andrew asked me this week, out of the blue and very seriously, if we could "change his middle name to Awesome, because that's what I (meaning Andrew) am!?!"  Glad to know his struggle will not be with confidence.  

This week...

-We celebrated Zachary's birthday this week by meeting at Gibson's. Good time, good donuts!  Happy Birthday to Zachary!

After dining on donuts Andrew, Zachary, Eli and another friend headed to Incredible Pizza with Zach and Liz.  Zachary and Andrew played Deal or No Deal (all by themselves) and won 400 tickets.  Then someone else spun something and hit the jackpot.  It was a big day.  By the time they left they had over 2000 tickets.  I'd call that Incredible Pizza success!

-Clayton has another science project due.  Gag. We are trying to bite off small pieces each day to get it done on time.  We were sitting on the floor and researching.  I was typing everything Clayton told me to put down.  At one point he said with all sincerity, "Mom, do you just want to finish this up while I go work on my Latin and Greek root words?"  Uhhh...no. Thanks anyway.  

-Thursday was free FroYo at Menchie's.  I love frozen yogurt and I love free things.  This was a perfect storm for me.  Fred and I both got free yogurt and the boys enjoyed a treat.  Mawmaw and Mimi were even able to meet up with us.  Good times.  

-We had bagels with cream cheese Thursday morning.  Friday morning I found this in the pantry...

I think my biggest boy cleaned up after breakfast.  It's better than when I found ice cream in the pantry.  

-I write this for my memory, not for anyone else.  If you think it's crude I apologize.  It's just the story of my life with three boys.  

While eating potluck lunch with an older crowd of ladies at church Andrew was eating chili.  He wanted a spoon and I encouraged him to just wipe off the spoon he had and use it again.  Once he used his napkin he held it up and said (with all the older women gathered around), "Look Jack!  It looks like diarrhea!!"  

Around this house

-Andrew's birthday is October 26th.  Since October 27th we have been discussing what kind of party he will have, who he will invite, what he would like to do, what kind of cake, etc.  My answer is always, "Oh yes, that sounds like a good idea!"  This may come back to bite me since I don't really remember all the details.
Not only is he planning for his birthday, but he also plans for Halloween.  I can't count how many times, just in the last week, that he has said, "For Halloween I fink I would like to be...(fill in the blank).  Will that be okay?"  Just within the last two days he's asked to be a Memphis tiger, a lion, Captain America and Wolverine.  He asked about Wolverine this morning when I walked in the door from the gym at 6:20 am.  Like he'd been thinking about it all night.
-Jack is a good reader, but he doesn't really like it.  Since we drive to Jackson twice a week we have checked out several books on CD.  He loves Judy Blume's Fudge series.  I challenged him to read Superfudge by himself.  I told him if he did we would go to Menchie's and get frozen yogurt.  Of course he did it and of course we, as his parents, delivered.
The yogurt cup below is what happens when you leave a 7 year old alone with an empty cup and a yogurt dispenser.

 Games in the table and frozen yogurt...yes please!

 With all sincerity Clayton handed this cup to Fred and said, "Here you can have the rest of this dad."  Fred and I both laughed.  Clayton did not.  I still don't think he got the humor in it.

-Friday when we finished school I told the boys we would go to the Children's Museum.  We grabbed some buddies and loaded up my car and headed downtown.  Clayton stayed with our friends oldest son while I took the four little ones.  It was so much fun.  After I stopped Jack from running through the museum and playing hide and seek (I know, I'm a kill joy.) we found our favorite corner...the Lego corner.  They played and played and had the best time.  

-I went to Boot Camp Monday morning.  I sent my usual picture/text to my group.  For whatever reason the workout was really hard and at some point my headband fell off.  So, by the end of the class this is what my hair looked like...

Fred's response was boot camp hair, don't care.  He's so funny.
-Fred and I went on a date recently.  We have a list of restaurants that we like to pick from on this and this (follow the link on this) blog post. We are systematically working our way through this list.  Last night we decided to try Elena's Taco Shop and their Carne Asada Fries.  Once we got there we decided to split the fries and we both ordered fish tacos.  It was delicious!  Next time we go we will split a piece of their homemade flan.  I do love flan.

In keeping with the Hispanic theme we headed on down Summer Ave and hit up a Mexican ice cream shop called La Michoacana.  You know it's authentic when you are the only English speaking people in the place.  So good.  Then we found an awesome movie theater that shows older movies for $3 per person...not for the matinee...for the 7:00 movie.  Awesome.  In all we spent about $25 on our date night.  I call that a success!
-Fred and Renee's church hosted Preschool Olympics on Saturday.  Andrew participated.  He did not win an event, although we gave the three legged race a valiant effort.  He did have a good time though, especially after he learned that everyone would get a medal.  It was touch and go there for a while when he was not getting a medal.  He made it though.  Barely.