Ladies Tea, Adventurer of the Year...

I left the house about 8:15 and went to a big community yard sale in Apopka.  I kept glancing at my phone because I knew I had to leave by 10:30 to get to the church in time to quickly change and meet up with the girls who were being dropped off by Duncan.  Tick tock, tick tock.  There were a ton of sales and there is no worse feeling (okay, slight exaggeration) than having to drive out of community passing unvisited yard sales but that's exactly what I had to do.  It better be darn good tea, I thought. Well, truth be told, I brought my own tea with me because I just drink plain black tea and I figured they would have all this fancy stuff like "Blackberry Bliss" or nonsense like that (yup and yup!).

So the Ladies/Daughters Tea is a really cute event put on by the church.  There are about a dozen ladies who volunteer to decorate tables all fancy like and some ladies make a bunch of finger foods. They brought in a lady who was a "one woman show" playing the roll of the centurion's wife from back in Jesus' day.  The girls sat at a girls table with six of their friends and I sat with the moms and also Miss Patti who had done our table and the girls' table.  All and all it was really nice and I'm sure I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I wasn't thinking about as soon as it was over I would be free to go to the Goodwills.  Duncan had taken the boys to Lucky Monkey (much to Brady's gleeful delight) and came promptly at 1:05 to pick up the girls and then I was off.  Oh, it was so nice off by myself.  I can't wait until Mother's Day when I can do it again.  

Duncan has been gone a lot recently on a bunch of trips.  Last week he was in Jacksonville for a few days and then this week he was in Chicago from Sunday night until Wednesday morning.  About the only positive I can say about this is that I didn't have to make as big of a meal for supper each night. But we sure did miss him.  It also got me to thinking that it's been more than four years since he and I were away overnight somewhere with just the two of us.  Yikes!

Thursday morning I took the kids to the play "James and the Giant Peach" at the Shakespeare Theater which is right near the Science Center.  The story is a book which I admittedly hadn't read but the show is targeted as a kids show and I had seen on Facebook where other people I know had gone so I didn't really think too much of it.  I figured it was a nice story about a peach. Ha!  Wrong.  The play was about a boy named James who lives in England and his parents die so he's raised by his two mean, ugly aunts who basically verbally abuse him his whole life until he manages to escape to America on a giant peach.  There were a whole lot of words being used that we don't use in this house including "Shut Up" and "Stupid" among others.  At one point James lies on the ground and says "I'm so stupid.  I'm so stupid." So, needless to say, I wasn't very happy.  Colby at least was well behaved during it and fell asleep for the last 15 minutes although in hindsight I guess it would have been better if he had been a pill so we could have left!  One interesting thing is that he was digging around in my shirt as if he wanted to nurse but that sure wasn't happening.  The morning at least redeemed itself when we went to the Science Center for a few hours afterwards.  

Today we shook things up and went to first service at church as opposed to second service which we usually attend (although had tried third service a few weeks ago).  First service starts at 8:45 and when Duncan had suggested we try that one out, I scoffed at him that there is no way we would be able to get out of the house by 8:30 to get to it on time.  But, after some soul searching, I came to the conclusion that if I can leave the house on Fridays by 8:00 to get to yard sales, surely we can leave by 8:30 for God.  Granted, there is a little more involved in going to church (ironing clothes, showering, etc) but we got as much done the night before and amazingly, we were out of the house by 8:35.  I was quite pleased with ourselves.  Incidentally, the reason we decided to do this now is because the girls had their closing program for Adventurers at 3:30 back at the church so I knew Colby would need to get in an early nap hence we needed to move everything up.  Plus, we really want to move out of second service anyway.  

As soon as we walked into the sanctuary, I knew it was meant to be.  A little back story.  On one of the girls many story CD's is the story of Horatio Spafford who wrote the song It Is Well With My Soulin 1873 after his four daughters died (his wife survived and he wasn't onboard) when their ship travelling from America to Europe sank.  He was inspired to write the words when he was on a ship that sailed past the place where the girls had died.  It's really an incredible story and the words to the song are so beautiful.  Anyway, as Calleigh likes to do, she relayed the entire story to us one night at supper which prompted Duncan to find the song online and listen to it.  The version that we heard featured a singer named Guy Penrod who we didn't know from Adam at the time.  We listened to the song over and over again.  Then, a few weeks later when we were at my parents for Christmas, we started watching the Gaithers on my parents Roku and realized that Guy Penrod is part of the Gaither Vocal Band.  If you've ever heard of the Gaithers you may be making fun of us right now because you probably think they're for old people.  And it's true, Bill Gaither, who started the whole thing, is almost 80. But, all I can say is that we all LOVE the music and the whole Grodack family is now hooked on them.  We have watched them sing It Is Well With My Soul so many times now and it's our favorite song.  Going back to church service this morning...we walk in and what song is the lady playing on the piano for special music?  Yup!  I'm sure you can guess.  I knew we were meant to be there. And as I side note, we are going to a concert in Myrtle Beach in October so we are very excited.  

This afternoon it was back to the church for Investiture.  Calleigh is at the end of Sunbeams and Aubree is finishing Eager Beavers.  The have a program where they do the song, pledge, etc and then call each child up to get a trophy and a certificate.  Each class then award "Adventurer of the Year" honors to the two kids in the class who got the most points based on attendance and participation. The girls have each won it once.  I knew Aubree probably wouldn't win because she had missed a week when she said she didn't feel good but Calleigh had a perfect record.  In fact, someone had accidentally sent all the records out in an email yesterday to all the parents so I sort of figured what was coming.  Calleigh indeed won the award again and was very pleased with the $10 Target gift card.   We can hardly wait for next year when Brady joins and we get to see him in his little uniform.

  

Conversations with the kids...

On the way home from their last Adventurers meeting on Wednesday night, the girls asked me to tell them a story from when I was a little girl.  I was telling them about how I started going to "real" school when I was in 6th grade and I was part of a walkathon that year.  I tied in walking the most miles in the school with 20 miles.

Me:"Twenty miles is pretty far.  I was so tired.  And boy, the next day my dogs were really barking."

Aubree:"How many dogs did you have?"

Sometimes I forget that they take every expression literally.

We had a challenging school day on Wednesday and then this conversation happened later.

Calleigh:"When do I start learning cursive?"

Me: "Oh, we won't be working on that until next year."

Calleigh: "What do I use to learn it?"
Me: "We will get a book that gives instructions.  I think a good one is called Handwriting Without Tears.  We also probably need to get Math Without Tears, Reading Without Tears, Spelling Without Tears, and so forth." (Books which I made up to make a point).

Calleigh: "Well, you can get those but that's technically NOT going to happen."

Yay!  Already planning some tantrums for next school year.

Incidentally, if we tried to finish our curriculum we would probably be in school until the beginning of July but I have made the unilateral decision that our last day of school is June 11.  Actually, the next week VBS is supposed to start which aided in my decision.  Of course, we may not get into that VBS now but that's a story for another day.

Some pictures before closing..

Enjoy the rest of the weekend.