WINNER WINNER

chicken dinner....why does that phrase pop in my head every time I hear the word WINNER?!?! Who knows!

Calli turned up to be the BIG winner last Wednesday at school! As a way to encourage high performance, they do a drawing every sememster. For every "A" you get as a semester average, you get 2 tickets. For every "B" you get 1 ticket. All of the tickets are placed in a big bingo barrel and names are drawn for prizes. Prizes like gift cards, PSP's, Kindles, TV's, etc.

So the whole school (6th, 7th and 8th) is in the gym and they begin drawing names. Calli got the most number of tickets you could get...14. So her chances were just as good as anyone elses...and better than most. Wouldn't you know, her name was drawn for the 32" flat screen tv. She says she didn't scream but that all her friends around her did.

Now let me preface this next part by saying Calli really, really, really wanted the TV. But that was the one prize I didn't want her to have. I'm not a big believer in TV's in kids bedrooms. I don't think you are bad if you do, I just don't think it's a good idea. Most of it stems from my parents not letting me have one growing up. My mom used to always say "you'll spend all of your time in your room...we want you out here with us" And you know what? She's probably right. And since we have 3 very nice TV's in our house, there is no reason she needs one in her room. She KNEW I wouldn't buy her one but I really didn't think she'd win one so I blew her off everytime she brought up the scenario of her winning.

So here's the conversation we had via text as soon as it happened.

After school, on my way to get her, she called me and told me where to park so I could pick up the TV. At this point I'm thinking 'Wow! She's carrying this thing far'. When she met me at the door and escorted me to the front desk, I really thought she was taking it far. Much to my surprise when I responded to the front desk lady that "My child tells me she won a TV" her response was "Well she sure did!"

And so when i loaded it in the car and arrived home with it...I knew she had won it.

So now what were we supposed to do?!?! It sat in the living room for a couple of days until Wes and I could talk over a compromise and Calli accepted it. We allowed her to put it in her room and attach a DVD player to it. This will hopefully prevent her from being in there all the time AND from watching things she shouldn't. Although, she told me that I can take it away from her if at any time she abuses the privledges. Maybe I  should get that in writing? I guess this blog is proof.

And now she's a celebrity around town. For the last week, anytime we go somewhere, we'll run into someone from her school who will say "hey, that's the girl that won the TV". I told her I would get her a t-shirt that says....Yes, I'm the girl who won the TV.

DRAMA

I think the last thing Calli needs is a jacket! Which is why my mom was hesitant to get her the Woodlands Elite letter jacket that I suggested for Christmas. They are just like a High School letter jacket and Calli was THRILLED when she opened it. And wore it every day since....until this past week. It went MIA for a few days and I've never seen Calli so diligent and persistant in trying to find it and getting more upset by the day. I usually get really aggravated when either of my kids lose something. They have a really bad habit of leaving things wherever they are when they no longer need it's services. I always tell them the old saying "Everything has a place and there's a place for everything". They hear my lecture many times...."If you put your "insert object name here" in it's spot, when you needed it again, you could look in its spot to find it." But this time I was not aggravated because I was as baffled as she was. And lately she has gotten so much better at keeping up with her things. This jacket was her prized possession and she puts it on the same barstool every day, wears it every day, keeps up with it at school, church, practices...not once has she said "Oh I forgot my jacket". So last week it went missing. I was in charge of it at Ft Worth on the last day when she took it off for  a short time to wear her National Champion jacket so my heart skipped a few beats thinking it was my fault and maybe I left it at the competition. Then I remembered a conversation at home Monday night about the jacket and looking at it so I knew it had made it home. Anyways, she was very distraught and honestly so was I. She told Wes that it was the best present she had EVER gotten. On Saturday night she wrote me this note, snuck it into my room to put it on my vanity and I found it Sunday morning as I was getting ready for church.

     
           Dear Loving Mommy,

           I love you so much! and I really wanted to make you proud of me with keeping

          up with my stuff and I already failed. I feel like a total failure!!! But I also wanted you
          to know that I tried my best and I don't think I misplaced it. I love you and I am sorry
          for letting you down. But I am praying the Lord will help us find it.
                     I love you,

                    Calli Grace

I know...this makes me sound like CPS should come take custody. I promise I was not THAT hard on her. I told her I'm as confused as she is because I SWEAR it was on that barstool and she didn't wear it to school on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Anyways, Sunday night as I tucked her in she said "Did I leave it at your office? What day did we go up there?" Hmmmm...we went up there Wednesday night and I had not been in my office Thursday or Friday. Maybe it was but I was skeptical. But I opened to the door of my office Monday morning and look what I found

I texted her at 8:30 AM but my obedient child follows the rules and didn't turn her phone on until 2:35 when she got out of school. She replied "AWESOME  AAAAHHHHHHHHHHH" and then immediately called me with her voice about 10 decibals above normal. All is once again righ with the world.

IT'S NATIONALS

These are the 5 flyers on Calli's team...all age 11. Calli is on a Senior team this year which means most of the girls are 14-17 but the flyers are all 11. Being younger makes them smaller which makes them eaiser to keep in the air. I was hesitant about her being around older girls initially but not really worried. Calli and I had prayed about her placement on this team and so I felt like she would be protected if this is where God wanted her. I am so thrilled with the older girls. They are roll models for Calli. Most of them are good Christian girls and you should see the love they give Calli. They don't blow her off or try and run from her. Calli even says that she's walked up a couple of times on a conversation and one of them will say, let's not talk about that with Calli around. I am so impressed.

Anyways....Cheer really has two seasons. In the Fall I look at it more like scrimmage season. It's cool to win but really it's just practice for the girls...a chance to get your routine in front of judges to see how they like it...a chance to see if they see all the difficulty or if things should be rearranged to better showcase the talent...etc. Beginning in January the pressure is on! It's Nationals and it's big time! Most of our Nationals competitions are out of town and all of them are 2 day events. Which means you have to be good BOTH days! It really should be called jacket season because all the national competitions give out jackets. And much to Calli's...and most of the girls at WE....dislike, each competitoin gives out the same jacket as the prior year.

Two weekends ago we had our first National competition of the season in Ft Worth. This is one of my favorite competitions because I just like Ft Worth. Everything is so close we park our car on Saturday and pick it back up on Monday....walking everywhere. The Sergeants, Calli's team, came away with a jacket and they did awesome both days. They were in high point (highest score of all level 3 teams) after day 1 but I think dropped to 3rd or 4th. But in their division....Senior Level 3....against 6 other teams, they came in FIRST!

Our trip was a little crazy because Carson's team didn't do so good and Carson's mom turned into psycho cheer mom. But I was smart and just fled the scene. Unfortunately I couldn't flee the 3.5 hour car ride home but lucky for us she had calmed down a little.

Overall we had a great time and the big W for the Sergeants was outstanding!

PROUD IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT

For at least 2 months Colson has been talking about his Rodeo Art. So much so that I wondered if all they did was Rodeo Art....all day, every day. He talked for weeks about this boot and buckle he was drawing. I actually saw that drawing and was quite impressed. But somewhere along the way Mrs. Martin recognized a little talent in him and knew he would do better with something a little easier so she asked him to draw a field of Cactus with an owl. I never saw that one. As a matter of fact I must have tuned out some of the rodeo art talks because I didn't know of the cactus until he came home JUMPING FOR JOY that his picture had been selected to represent the school in the district art show....from there a winner is picked to go to the big Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. So he JUMPS in the car and can hardly stand the short pause it took for me to ask him "what happened?" and he tells me the news. "That's GREAT!", I say, "what color did you end up coloring the boot?" "Boot???" he says, "It's a cactus mom!"

So the art show was a couple of weeks ago and while he didn't get selected for the Houston show, he did get a blue ribbon so he couldn't be more proud!

SANTA'S STUCK

SANTA'S STUCK
By Colson Schubert, age 8

"Help! Help!..." I herd. I got out of bed and walked into the game room and saw one white beard.
I said, "Hoo are you?"
"I am Santa. Can you help me?"
"Only if you give me more presents. How did you get stuck?"
"I ate too much cookies. I will give you more presents"
So I got a lot of carots and his belly shrunk.

Oh how I wish it were that easy to make my belly shrink!
This was in Colson's Monday folder this week that he had written before the Christmas break.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JWS

So it's my annual post to give a shout out to my fabulous husband to tell him HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Only my fabulous husband doesn't read the blog so I'm really just documenting it for myself...and telling all of my 5 followers. Except that it's now 9:43 PM which means my 5 followers will probably not see my fabulous husband between now and the end of this day we call his birthday to shout out to him. So, if you saw him today, I hope you said Happy Birthday. Even though he acts like he doesn't really like to celebrate birthdays, I know he likes to know he's loved....I mean who doesn't like that?

So being a work day, I tried to make it as special as I could. I had planned on taking him to lunch and even had planned on some surprise guests. So glad the surprise guests fell through because he bailed on me 12 minutes before I was supposed to meet him at his office. Who does that?!?!! Hey, if it's your birthday, you can get away with anything. He was busy at a client's office and couldn't get away. The kids and I brought sopapilla cheesecake up to his office with candles. Because you know you can put candles on anything and since cake won't make him cheat on his "healthy eating", I knew sopapilla cheesecake would. And you can't eat healthy on your birthday!

Don't worry, no candles were harmed in this windstorm...nor were they even blown out.

Happy Birthday Wes! I'm telling you, this guy is truly amazing. There is no way I could imagine my life any better than it is and God providing him as a perfect match is a dominant factor. I pray he has many more years left in that vertically challenged, sweet, smart, kind and funny frame of his.