Warm, Then Cold Again

I reported that it was very warm last weekend. Well, the cold weather came back. We even had snow flurries all day Wednesday. The snow didn't stick but the flakes were big making it one of the prettiest snowfalls I've seen in a long time. This has been the first week this year we've had five days of school.

GOOD STUDENTS. This is the first year of Student Renaissance at ERHS. This is a program to encourage and reward academics, attendance, behavior, and school spirit. We went to an awards ceremony Sunday afternoon which recognized students for their work in the fall semester. There was an impressive group of students who are part of Student Renaissance. Jenna was among those recognized.

Ben has also made me very proud this year. It would be accurate to say that many times during first and second grade getting him to do his homework was not a pleasant experience. Vicki and I were both very concerned how the next ten years of school were going to be with him. I am glad to report that this is beginning to turn around for Ben, though spelling words are still a source of frustration for him.

What has made me so proud is that Ben has taken it upon himself to start doing his homework on his own when he gets off the bus at Aunt Mar's. I think his goal is to get it done before he gets home so he can play, and this suits me just fine. All I know is that many days I come in and see him studying at the kitchen table or in the living room.

CATCHING UP. Sunday night we were among several families who ate over at Kenny and Lori's. We had taco soup, a jigsaw puzzle, and good conversation. In that conversation Lori told Vicki a funny story about Nate.

The night Pauline passed away the boys stayed over at Kenny and Lori's. Lori must have had Pauline on her mind a lot which made her pay a little extra attention to the boys. At one point Nate asked, "Mrs. Lori, do I have a fever?"

Taken aback she said, "No. Why?"

"Well, you keep touching me."

GROWING. Jenna, Ben, and Nate look like they are getting taller every day. At 5' 4" She is not self-conscious about her height at all. She loves it and hopes to even be taller than Vicki someday. She's turning into a beautiful young lady. I think I need to start keeping my shotgun handy.

Ben's growth was evident the other day when he dressed for school in a pair of pants Vicki bought for him back in August. They are high waters now. When Vicki saw them she told him he'd have to change. This was something Ben did not want to do as we were about to leave to catch the bus. His protest only made Vicki fuss at him all the more, "Benton, you look ridiculous!" Then Ben began to ever so slightly shrink before our eyes. He had decided to squat just the tiniest bit to see if that would make his pants cuffs ride a little lower on his ankles. Vicki started laughing and said, "I'll let you wear those pants if you'll walk around all day like that." We all got a good laugh. Ben changed his pants.

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS. We went to the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby Monday night. The good news is that Nate won third place for speed out of the entire cub scout pack. He was excited!

The bad news is that while Ben's car raced well he didn't place in the top twelve with Nate and wasn't asked to race in a second round to determine the fastest cars. He was crushed. It was a repeat of last year when Nate's car beat his at our church RA race. So how do you handle two kids at two emotional extremes over the same event? Is there a merit badge for that?

Of course, a Sonic Blast smooths over a lot of things like this.

Joe

The End of Snow Days?

Our school system is now out of snow days. We were out of school again Tuesday due to slick roads and this day, which makes our 10th snow day, was taken at the expense of a planned holiday on May 10.

We have a new family that joined our church who recently moved here from Vermont. I said to them Wednesday night, “I bet y’all think we’re crazy missing all this school for hardly any snow.” They laughed and said their kids had missed more school for snow here in Tennessee this year than they’d missed their whole lives back in Vermont. Of course, today we broke 60° and just about all the snow has melted away.

GETTING BACK IN THE SWING. Vicki has had a hard time getting back in the swing of things with all the snow days we've been having, but she has been back to the office some and she has gotten back into Children's Church and Awana on Sundays and Wednesdays.

Speaking of Awana, we have our Grand Prix coming up in a couple of weeks. My hat is off to Jeff Garst. I was supposed to help him make a four lane track for the race, and we got off to a good start over Christmas break, but he's had to finish it by himself over the last few weeks. On top of all that he's been coordinating the production of some 60 cars for all the Awana clubbers. We decided to use cars that conform to RA standards rather than Awana standards so our boys could use them in the upcoming Robertson County Baptist Association's RA Race.

Ben and Nate have also made two more cars here at home to compete in the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. Nate has a really cool looking Batmobile (the design is from the 1989 Batman movie).

THE DISADVANTAGES OF VELCRO. I have mentioned before that as wonderful as Velcro is for shoes, the side effect is that kids today don't learn to tie shoes as early as I did. This came up when we bought Ben some new basketball shoes and he kept asking us to tie them for him. Vicki said, "If you're old enough to play full court you're old enough to tie your own shoes." All this came up one Sunday Pauline was still in the hospital and we were waiting in the lobby while the Jones family were in visiting with Pauline.

Vicki gets all the credit on this because I have tried to show Ben how to do this several times only to frustrate him. She had him tying his shoes within five minutes. Everybody says I tie my shoes weird anyway. Ironically, I looked up tying shoes on the Internet and my method is the suggested way to teach children. This doesn't say much from my teaching ability.

STEALING KISSES. Ben is not an outwardly affectionate person. As a matter of fact, I'm the only one he'll hug on his own accord...and that's usually combined with a flying tackle. Even Vicki does not get special consideration here for being his mom. The funny thing is that somehow they have this little contest going. Vicki has told him she can slip in one kiss a day (it has to be somewhere on the face) and Ben says she can't do it. So far Vicki has come out on top everyday this week. Of course, he acts disgusted, but then the next day he'll taunt her until she pulls it off. It's so funny to see her get him when he least expects it.

Joe

The New Normal

I think one of the hardest things about grieving is when it comes time to get back to normal. For one thing, when someone passes away normal goes out the window. You have to find a new normal. Then too, I don’t think our American culture allows us enough time to deal with death. Given the permanence of the separation, we simply need more time to reflect.

PAULINE ALWAYS LIKED SNOW. As I indicated last time I wrote we were expecting snow and while we didn’t get the record snowfall Washington, DC, and other places got, we did have plenty of the white stuff here. Saturday (the 30th) was probably the worst day for getting around. Vicki had decided she wanted to record herself singing a couple of hymns for the funeral service (she didn’t think she had it in her to sing them live) so we went to church and taped My Jesus I Love Thee and It Is Well With My Soul. Michael Johnson met us at church to discuss music and play piano for Vicki. As we were recording Michael suggested Vicki do It Is Well a cappella. She did and it was beautiful. Pauline would have loved it.

While we were doing this Will took all the kids sledding in Cross Plains. They and several other families from church met there to enjoy the hill at the City Hall. Even Ethan was there taking a few runs down the slope.

ABOUT THE FUNERAL SERVICES. The funeral arrangements went off as planned. Both services were well attended and Bro. Bill delivered a separate eulogy for each service. He did a great job both times. After the graveside service we drove around to some of the places Pauline lived in Camden and then went to visit Aunt Sue.

THE REAL TREASURE. Will, Darice, and the kids stayed here until last Wednesday (the 3rd). Vicki, Will, and Darice spent Tuesday and early Wednesday going through Pauline’s papers and things so we can begin the process of settling her estate. It was during this time we discovered Pauline’s jewelry box was missing. Someone had broken in her house a few weeks ago (something I decided not to report here at the time). The thief must have only been interested in a quick job as nothing else in the house had been touched, however, he did take the precaution of cutting the phone line in case of an alarm system. All is to say that while we hate to lose the things in the jewelry box the real treasure we found was a box FULL of love letters between Pauline and Jessie.

AN ACTS 2 CHURCH. While the funerals were hard we definitely felt loved and supported. Our schools and churches get a little gun shy here in Tennessee when it comes to snow and our services were cancelled Sunday morning (the 31st), however, the funeral went on and there was a crew of men who cleared about half the parking lot for us. One Sunday school class organized a meal to feed us after the funeral (and if we’d known how much food they were bringing we would have invited all those attending the funeral to eat with us). Still others made sure the ladies in Pauline’s Sunday school class could get to church in spite of the snow.

ETHAN UPDATE. A couple of weeks ago I reported that Ethan would be having an MRI to see how well all the chemo and radiation was treating his cancer. I am sad to report that some growth was found on Ethan’s spinal cord. He is now receiving oral chemo. Please continue to pray for Ethan.

BACK TO LIFE. With all the snow it’s been sort of hard to get back into our normal routine again. The kids had three snow days last week and two more this week. We’ve actually used up all our stockpiled days that were set aside as of today. Ben got up Monday and said, “I wish the weekends were five days and the school days were only two days." I couldn’t agree more.

Later that morning Nate was taking his time getting ready. When I tried to make him hurry up he asked, ”Are we late-late or just late?“ He is his mother’s child.

What made Vicki and I crack up though happened as The Who was performing during the Super Bowl halftime show. When their performance was over (and you have to picture all of us singing along on Who Are You) Nate said, ”That was some of the best music I ever heard!“

You can complain all you want to about the old geezers playing the halftime show, but at least with Roger Daltry and Pete Townsend there was very little chance of a ”wardrobe malfunction.“ Rock on there, buddy.

Joe