Stories of Eric Carle

The girls and I along with our good friend Lauren, a kindergarten teacher married to Gary's friend Zack, attended the Stories of Eric Carle at the Orpehum Theatre on Friday night. This included The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Brown Bear, Brown Bear and Papa get me the Moon. I was not familiar with the third story, but the other two were favorites of the girls for sure.  We enjoyed the show which was done using imaginative puppets that were very convincing as real. There were only 2 people that handled all the puppets in the show along with a stage hand. We had a great time and especially enjoyed after the show as they brought out the puppets and helped the kids understand the special effects.  The family series at the Orpheum this year has been exceptional and we are looking forward to next year already.

lauren with the girls

zyriek ladies all in a row

Grumpy Chapel Program

Anna's class presented chapel on Friday and it was about being grumpy! It thought it was pretty spot on for this age group. It talked about how people complain about way too many things and most of it simply does not matter. Anna did a great job remembering her lines and the class was great. I always like attending chapel at Harding because I feel the kids are starting off their day on the right foot and I love to hear the scripture memorized, the school song sung and of course the nice behavior.

anna reciting one of her lines during the program

anna with papa...mimi was in texas with her grandsons for their president's day program

sweet girls, but love hunter in the background

Valentine's Day

The day started off great with Gary having flowers for all the girls in the house as they woke up for the day. Of course, I was at the gym at 5am, so they were there when I got home. The girls loved it and they enjoyed reading their sweet cards from Daddy.

Caroline had her party in the morning where they made ice cream sundaes. Love that it was before lunch. I'm sure no one ate anything at lunch nor did they lie down for a nap!! I joined Caroline for her party and after their sundaes, the class played valentine bingo. I am not sure they had ever played bingo before, but they quickly got the hang of it and really enjoyed it.

Anna's party was in the afternoon and Gary joined her for her party.  They also had ice cream sundaes. Gary said it was amusing to watch the kids give out the valentines and can see as the kids get older they really just want the candy and the time not to be learning! Gary took both girls with him after Anna's party and they joined him at work for the remaining 2 hours of the day. They had fun eating more snacks, writing on his big white board and generally doing nothing. They called me on speaker phone to say hello and I'm sure Gary got nothing done. At least the girls had fun! Gary did not take any pictures unfortunately of the party, so just Caroline below.

Gary did a great job for the day. Only a few days left until lent starts, so glad to have a few chocolates today to curb my desire for sweets in the coming days.

gary is so sweet to his girls

caroline with her sundae, round 1

at alsac, everyone got a small box of candy. so fun!

Ole Miss visit

The girls had been asking if we could go and see Auburn play a basketball game. First, Auburn has never traditionally been very good at basketball. Although I grew up a huge basketball fan because of Memphis Tigers games, it was not a highlight while in college. Auburn is a football school, even in the lean years!! Secondly, it is a 6 hour drive to Auburn and not sure I wanted to trek that far to watch Auburn play basketball!! Not as much fun as tailgating and going to the game and see all the fun stuff that is in Auburn in the fall. We compromised and decided to take the girls to see Auburn play in Oxford against Ole Miss. Honestly, Ole Miss is a beautiful school with a rich history of the Old South. Oxford is a quaint southern town with an awesome square to shop, eat, and walk around.  However, with all of that being said, I have not have a very good experience there in the past and have not enjoyed really have not enjoyed the attitude spewing from the fans and the students we have encountered. (Will not recall the story of my brother getting hit in the head with an empty liquor bottle at a football game!) Gary and I have always said we really did prefer for the girls to go to Ole Miss for college and we would struggle if that was on top of their list. I think we have officially crossed that off the list for Anna after this visit!! We arrived in time to go to the square for a bit and let the girls visit Square Books Jr. and pick out a few books. Nothing like a great children's book store. We arrived on Campus and drove around a bit and then parked and walked to the game. The "Tad Pad" where the games are played has been there since the 1960's and it shows. It is not pretty or quaint, but rather very old, out dated and in need of repair.  It is not very large, which is good because Ole Miss could not even fill it up on a weekend night!! Ole Miss is not very good either!!

We took our seats which were in the center section but almost to the top of the arena. Once we took our seats, the lovely Ole Miss fans around us starting groaning and talking about us. I found that to be pretty rude because we are not obnoxious fans, did not bring pom poms and were planning to just enjoy the game, win or lose. Then the Hotty Toddy cheers started. If you are not familiar with the cheer Hotty Toddy, you should look it up. Not very pleasant words when you are in the company of a 9 year old (that picks up on every single word said!!) and a 5 year old and definitely something I would not want my young girls to recite. After hearing it 5 or 6 times before the game, Anna started catching on to the words. Her quote of the night was "This school must not be founded by Christians because they have bad words in all of their cheers". Gary and I loved it. It was hilarious. We tried to be serious but were both laughing hysterically. We told her that we were not sure about the founders and yes, that cheer, was not very nice!! All in all, we heard the cheer over 10x that night. Both teams played ok the first half and then Auburn let Ole Miss run away with it in the second half.

Aftewards we drove around for what seemed liked forever to find a parking space near the square so we could grab some dinner before heading home. We finally landed one and went to Square Pizza and then Ya Ya's (just like all of our self serve yogurt places) for dessert. The girls had a great time, slept the whole way home and were glad we went. Anna was a bit disappointed we lost and Caroline was missing Aubie (Auburn mascot) and the cheerleaders. She did not really understand why they did not go to away games.

Glad we went. Loved exposing our girls to other college campuses and glad we could cheer on Auburn in person.

sleeping on the way to oxford....this was hilarious!!

the girls with gary ready for the game and decked out in their auburn shirts!

Viking Class for Valentine's

Gary and I took a "Date Night" cooking class at Viking Cooking School for Valentine's Day. It was a lot of fun and we met some fun couples. It seemed that most of the people we had a connection with either because we attend the same church, kids attend the same school, or knew some of the same people. There were 6 couples in the class. There were 3 sets of 2 couples that worked together during the class. We had a yummy filet with a homemade sauce, a salmon filet with sauce, sweet potato souffle, salad with homemade dressing and a raspberry tart for dessert. It was a fun time and we could not believe how long it had been since our last class. Great and creative way to spend our Valentine's Day!

anxious to get started cooking

the table was all set and they provided some appetizers to keep us from being too hungry!

gary with most of the finished product! so good!!

Jr K Program/Open House

The kindergarten program at Harding has traditionally held Open House in February and it is accompanied by a music program. Caroline had been working on the songs since before Christmas. We were not sure of the theme for the program because we could not connect the dots on the songs, but finally we heard it was The Sights and Sounds of Memphis. Very creatively done by Kristen Williams, each song had to do with a place to visit in Memphis. Caroline's class sang a duck song which represented the Peabody. They were backup singers on Hound Dog for Graceland as well as Let's Go Fly a Kite for Shelby Farms. It was so well done and by far the best directed program we have seen. Caroline was so proud. They all wore red or blue shirts and did an awesome job. It was hard to get good pictures during the program because the lights were done and we were not close to the stage. Awesome job kindergarteners!!

After the program we were all invited to visit her classroom and see the work she has accomplished since the beginning of school. It was a great tour and glad that her grandparents could visit as well. She was so proud to show us around her classroom.

Caroline with Miss Sharon before the program

Caroline and Ava ready for the show!

The stage was all set for the program

Caroline's rainbow

"If Jesus came to my house....I would read a book with him"

Caroline's book about Tennessee

Caroline with all her family

The Zyrieks and the Speeds...good friends for many years!

Caroline with some of the Sights of Memphis display

Such a cute program!

Cheer season

Caroline cheered at Hope Pres for the kindergarten basketball teams. While she was not always on task and in a straight line, she enjoyed herself and of course she loved her uniform and pom poms. The season was not that organized and Caroline has already expressed an interest in cheering at school next fall like Anna did at that age. We'll probably give that a shot to see if she likes it. Rah Rah Rah!!!

nice pose!

right after doing her "high kick"...serious look on her face!

cheering during halftime

caroline with mya after getting their season ending medals

Caroline gets a visit from the tooth fairy!

Caroline surprised us recently with a loose tooth! We were remembering that poor Anna did not have a loose tooth until the summer before first grade and she was literally dying to have a tooth come out. Caroline is definitely ahead of that schedule and has a different mantra for it. She kept wiggling her tooth until she wiggled it out herself. No pulling, no crying, no freaking out. Very funny. We had been at church on Saturday night and when we came back to get her from her class she had it in a tissue in her pocket. She was excited to have the tooth fairy visit and excited to be the first one of her friends to lose a tooth. She goes to the dentist on February 20th and is ready to surprise him. She is now working on other teeth to see if she can find any others that are loose!

not the best picture of caroline but at least you can see where the tooth is gone!

Girls night out

My friend Rachel invited me to her Sunday School class' Girls Night Out which was a paint party at Art & Soul. I have taken Anna to a few parties and her own at Art & Soul but I had never given it a try myself. I had a good time and enjoyed catching up with the Highland ladies from my fantasy football league as well. I am not very artistic, but I gave it my best shot. I think it is best to look at my painting from a distance rather than close up!!

rachel doing a splendid job with her cross she painted for laura beth

my finished product

our group with the varied versions of the cross painting

one girl in the group was an art major and did this without instruction and it was very good!