They misspelled her name!

Franklin- Wednesday, March 4–Linda Davis’s “Kids on Stage” Showcase Join us this evening for a very special show with some very awesome talent! Grammy Award-Winning Singer/Songwriter Linda Davis will be joined by some of the stars of Kids On Stage: Nikki Archuletta, Jordan Birdwell, Deanna Cunningham, Jessica Foulk, Emily Gaphart, Millie Grasso, Vanessa Hendel, Hannah Johnston, Mo Kirkpatrick, Jessica McCall, Maci Pye, Kendall Swanson, and Taylor Ware. This is a rare opportunity to see some true superstars in the making. 7pm show, $5 cover, reservations 615-794-5527.

So that's the ad on the Puckett's website. As you can see Em's name was misspelled. I even emailed them with the correct spelling. Oh well. It happens. We haven't told many of you, but Em is taking a class tomorrow on Stage Performance and she is singing at Puckett's this Wednesday night. It's a big deal.We'll see how it all goes. It will be very telling as to whether she is serious about singing or not. We bought a new video camera and will do our best to record it and get it out on the blog. Say a prayer for her and her momma!!!

The 5th grade Presidential Program

Michael's 5th grade program was this week. For those of you who don't know the story, the 5th grade class does this huge project/musical presentation each year about all the president's of the United States. They are assigned a president or first lady, have to research that person, write a paper, prepare a speech and get items from that time period. Then it ends with their play and display of all they have gathered.We knew about this project when we were in DC. We were debating whether we should buy a book about the presidents when we were there. Well, it wouldn't have helped, because Michael was assigned a Vice President. There were more boys than presidents. He was SO bummed. He said "Mom, he's not even a Republican!".

Anyway, Michael was chosen to be Walter Mondale. We googled his email address and they ended up emailing each other Friday a week ago. Michael thought that was cool. Modale was VP in the 70s so we went to Goodwill and found some plaid polyester pants. I had a K-Tel album from the 70s and a fondue pot. Their program was cute. Nobody passed out. Hopefully, we'll get a DVD of it, because my video did not turn out - or course.

Dnow weekend

We are in the midst of Dnow weekend for the middle and high schoolers at church. It's kind of like a mini summer camp. The kids stay in homes and meet for worship at church. Friday they had the opening at church and found out which home they were staying in. There are 11-13 kids at each home. After worship they headed to their host home and had small group sessions with their group leader. Some are college students, others are out of college and working. Then it was supposed to be lights out, but Em informed me she stayed up until 5:00 am. That was a great decision!

Saturday they had more small group sessions and then all met for rec time and lunch. After that we were back to church for worship and then our group went to the nursing home and delivered flowers. Em got to see Ms. Eda again. She has visited with her a couple of times at this nursing home. Then back home for another small group session. 2 of the homes hosting 7th grade girls met up at one home and we had a chocolate fountain and they played games. Then back to the host home for a one on one session with their group leader. Hopefully they got some sleep last night!

I did not host, but I am driving for it. I have probably put 200 + miles on my car in 36 hours. I'm getting ready to go back out to the house and help load up the girls for church. Their closing session is this morning.

Let's go fly a kite...

Today was just beautiful. It was 68 degrees, sunny and windy. Michael left us for the day and headed to Huntsville for a friend's birthday outing. He got to go to the Space Center. He came home this evening completely exhausted.

We spend a majority of the afternoon in the front yard with kites. Emily informed us that she had never flown a kite. I have a hard time believing that. I'm thinking that she has never successfully flown a kite. At least, that's what I'm going to tell myself. How horrible is it that my child has never flown a kite!

Today she flew a kite for probably 2 hours. It was a great day for it. She had a unicorn kite - Charlie. Some of you will get that. Or maybe it was a Pegasus with a horn. Someone asked if it was a goose?! Anyway, Kevin decided to get out the beach kite, too. It's a red tri-plane like the Red Baron. After several attempts he finally got it to stay up. Pepper wasn't sure what to think of them. She really did not like them when they landed and stayed as far away as possible. She is also completely exhausted tonight.

Gram and Gramps are here. They had a trip to Bowling Green for a conference and headed down here afterwards. Gramps is...exhausted - ha! So we have a house full of exhausted people and 1 tired animal. It was a GREAT day! And I'm not being sarcastic. Really.

Super bowl party - a few days late.

We hosted the church 7th grade Super bowl party. We only had 9 show up, but it felt like 18. We had both boys and girls. Wow, middle school boys are interesting. They stayed for the whole game, but I think they only watched maybe the last quarter. It was the most exciting part anyway.

And the diagnosis is...

Sever's (Seaver's) disease. This is what Michael has. It's not a disease. The doctor couldn't even tell me why they call it that. Basically, there is an inflammation in the heel growth plate. It's probably due to rapid growth. It's also something that he will more than likely have to deal with until that closes up. So, for now he's gellin' (ha) and has to do PT for a couple of weeks. He also can take Ibuprofen if he can tolerate it. We tried it for a week (yes, with food), but his stomach started giving him fits. We're going to try a lower dose and see what happens with that.

Our fun story tonight was our dinner. I tried to cook a pork tenderloin. This was not the first time. When the timer went off, the bottom was cooked, but the top was raw. It was not an attractive sight! We determined that something must be wrong with the top heating element in the oven. The power went off today, so I don't know if that messed something up or not. Anyway, I thought maybe we should try the broil setting to see if it worked. We finished cooking the pork on broil, opened the oven and the cool air busted my Pampered Chef bar pan. Dang! Then in the midst of all that, we messed up the mashed potatoes. You could slice them! Then I dropped a box of baking soda while looking for something in the pantry, Kevin got up to get more potatoes and flipped the spoon out of the bowl. In the process of trying to catch the spoon, he busted his hand on the granite. As all that was happening, I was sitting back down at the table and busted my knee on the edge of it. Whew! What an exciting meal. After dinner, I apologized for the meal and my sweet husband said, " you could have cooked a normal meal and we could have had a normal dinner, but instead, you created a fun memory." And that's why we are still married after 20 years! Sorry there are no pictures to post! LOL!

Our weekend!

Our weekend started with a birthday. We celebrated one of our favorite girl's 11th birthday on Friday. The kids went to see Hotel for Dogs and then we all went to get pizza. A fun time was had by all!

Saturday, Michael had a game. He is still not putting any weight on his heel, which makes running a challenge. They lost their game even though they were within 4 at one point. :(

After the game, the boys worked on rearranging the Bonus room. That afternoon we went back to church to read in the new chapel. The pastor of our church wanted the whole Bible read in the new chapel. They started having people read last Sunday. I believe there was someone in the chapel from 6:00 am until 9:20 pm everyday until yesterday. They finished reading the Bible by Thursday, so they started over with the New Testament. Our scriptures involved the parables of sowing seeds, calming the storm, driving out Legion into the pigs and John the Baptist's beheading. It was a neat experience to be in the chapel together as a family reading God's word aloud.

This is the new Children's worship space. Em sings once a month on the worship team. Today was her first day in the new worship space. It's pretty amazing.

Tonight we ended with the dedication of our new space. We met in the chapel for the service. It's hard to believe that it is finally done. We added the chapel, it holds about 400 people. They will hold services in there on Sunday for those interested in a more traditional form of worship. Our pastor's image will be on a life size digital screen during the sermon. Ok, so it's kind of traditional. We also added a whole new preschool wing and play area, an incredible children's worship area and a high school area. We are so blessed by our church family and excited about God's plans for the future!