My Girls Is Ten!

It has always been a goal of mine to write about once a week. It seems that lately I have not been able to accomplish that. Life just gets busier and busier as the kids get older--well, except for Vicki who just finished her two game a week volleyball season. (They finished their season being eliminated from the tournament by the other Mt. Carmel team.) I say this to let you know that I am not giving up on writing, I’m just trying to fit it in when I can.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JENNA. Jenna celebrated her tenth birthday Friday. That fact just seems hardly possible to me. I remember all the events around her birth so well, from the tornados hitting Nashville two days before, to the trip to the hospital, to catching a first glimpse of her foot as she was born (she was breech and born by C-section), to bringing her home in that Saturn we used to have. Now she is a big girl about to finish the fourth grade. She and Vicki had a girls’ day out Friday to celebrate and Jenna is sporting newly pierced ears (we had no school of Friday). Jenna has really been looking forward to this. She has wanted to have her ears pierced for a long time and Vicki said she had to be double-digits before this could happen.

That night Jenna and I went out on a daddy/daughter date (Vicki and 16 other friends from the church were hitting the town for a concert). We had a complete family celebration at Pauline’s last night. Jenna picked out the menu…it was great. She informed us that now she is older she wants to be in charge of cooking a meal once a week. Vicki is celebrating that one!

THE HOUSE WAS ROCKIN’ BUT NOBODY WAS KNOCKIN’. We had a most memorable event Friday morning. Around 4:40 am Vicki and I both woke up to squeaking and shaking. This went on for at least ten seconds (that we were aware of—the tremor reportedly lasted about 20 seconds). In her sleep stupor Vicki wondered aloud if we had two dogs “having relations” on our porch. I would have considered this more if she had suggested two cows instead. Her next guess hinted at more clarity of thought: an earthquake. After going outside to look around a call to the Sheriff’s Department confirmed this. We learned later this was the 5.4 magnitude quake centered near West Salem, Illinois, which is about 180 miles from here. It was an interesting experience. Earthquakes are so rare around here and when they do happen they aren’t strong so I’ve never before been conscious of one as it was happening. At least we got a good laugh at Vicki’s original guess before going back to bed.

TMI (TOO MUCH INFORMATION). So Ben and I are wrestling and I have him pinned down where I can tickle him. Just to aggravate him I look up his nose and say, “Boy, you’ve got a lot of boogers up there!” I got a little too much information when he said, “I try to clean it out every day, but there’s one big one that’s stuck up there and I can’t get it out.”

RHYMING KING. Nate is into rhyming. He’ll hear one of us say a word and think of several others that rhyme and give us the list. He does this quickly so you know these words are just popping into his head. For example, if he hears the word ‘bed’ he might say, “Bed, head, said, led.” Then he adds, “Ding-a-ling, a rhyming point for me!” There’s no telling how many rhyming points he has now.

LEFT SPEECHLESS. Pauline said to Vicki, “I got Bro. Bill good!” She was at church the other day when a friend, Lillie Mae Rippy, noticed several bruises on her arm. Bro. Bill happened to be passing by and Mrs. Lillie Mae called his attention to it. Looking her arms over he quipped, “Mrs. Pauline, has someone been grabbing at you?” Quick with a comeback she said with a twinkle in her eye, “Well, don’t I wish!”

MY TABLE. One gift Mom gave me for Christmas was an Introduction to Furniture Making workshop at the Appalachian Center for Crafts in Smithville (part of Tennessee Tech). This workshop was scheduled for last weekend so I left early last Saturday and came home last Sunday (spending the night in Cookeville). Our project was to make a side table. The design was a bit ambitious for a two day workshop with splayed lags and four tapers on each leg. I cam home with all the pieced cut and milled, but need to sand it down, glue it together, and finish it. Now I am ready to turn the chicken house into a workshop.

CHANGE OF WORK ADDRESS. For those of you who have my work email address, please note that this will be changing on May 5. My new email address at work will be joe.swann@rcstn.net. My old address will be deleted June 30. On that note, we will officially be changing the domain for Robertson County Schools from www.robcoschools.org to www.rcstn.net on May 5 as well. We will keep the old domain for backwards compatibility, but it will no longer be used as our official URL.

Joe

Rain, Rain, Go Away!

I almost hate to chant that old children’s rhyme with last summer’s drought fresh in my memory, but we’ve gotten so much rain you’d think Tennessee is supposed to have a monsoon season. All the rivers are way out of their banks now. The kids and I drove over to Milldale to see the section of river we sometimes play in during the summer. The deck, which is normally ten feet or so above the water, is a mangled mess. The deck was built against one large tree and had steel I-beams as pilings. The tree next to the deck and another close by have been washed down as well as the levy next to the river which served as the road to get down there. I really need to give our yard its first mowing of the year, but it will be a long time before I can run the mower without the risk of miring it up.

A QUICK VISIT. Aunt Linda and Uncle Bob drove up for a quick visit last weekend. I didn’t get to see them a whole lot, but I Mom and Aunt Mar really enjoyed their visit. They got several games of Spades in over the weekend.

We had dinner over at Aunt Mar’s last Friday night when they arrived. The Dees came over for dinner as well so Aunt Linda and Uncle Bob got to meet Tanner and catch up up on the Ashland City branch of the family.

A COLD JOB. Last weekend was pretty cold. The PTO at school had scheduled a workday to clean up the playground and prepare it for some new pieces of equipment they had bought. When I got there I was asked to assemble a car and a Buck-a-bout, both of which are mounted to the ground on large springs. It took me over six hours to put the pieces together. All the bolts came mixed together and I bet I spent half my time trying to sort out all the parts so I could find what I needed. When I left the house I thought I had enough clothes on but since this job kept me fairly still I felt like I was about to freeze.

Vicki found it easier to stay warmer than I did. She swung a sledge hammer part of the time driving re-bar through timbers to anchor them to the ground. She rediscovered muscles she had forgotten about.

SCIENCE FAIR. Jenna entered a project in the science fair this year. She investigated the question “Do bigger apples have more seeds than smaller apples?” In the end she determined that apples have a random number of seeds (her sample set had between four and nine) no matter what their size. She speculated in her conclusion that the number of seeds probably had more to do with how well the flower was pollinated than anything else. Her project won second place in the fourth grade at school.

CUTE MOVIE. We took the kids to see Horton Hears a Who (which Nate thought was titled Norton Has a Zoo) last weekend. We all thought it was cute. If you have young kids or have fond memories of Dr. Seuss you will enjoy this film.

CONFUSED. One morning during Spring Break Vicki was in a rush to leave and was having a hard time getting out the door. I was staying home with the kids. Nate, who is used to having Vicki at his disposal in the morning, kept asking her to fix his breakfast. (He didn’t want me to do it.) Vicki, who had refused him several times, finally said, ”Nate, I am not here. Ask your father.“ You could see the confusion play on his face as he considered this for a moment. It was no surprise when he said, ”But you are here…I see you.“

COLD FEET? The other day Vicki told Nate to get his shoes on so they could leave. A moment later she heard him cry, ”Owwww, my shoes are too small! I’m not wearing these.“ When she went to him she noticed his fat feet.

”Nate, how many pairs of socks are you wearing?“

”Uh, three…no, four!“ His voice had that ”why, is that a problem?“ tone.

Vicki talked him out of three pairs of socks and the shoe problem was fixed.

Joe