on our way out from chess club this afternoon we found madelyn's character champion picture in the hallway. because she came home injured the same day, i didn't really share about her "character champion award."
madelyn seems to always be chosen "character champion" in february. her teacher nominated her for the following character values: trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship. and here is the reason she gave:
"madelyn is a wonderful role-model in our classroom. she is polite and kind to her teachers and classmates. she exhibits all of the ymca character champion traits on a daily basis. i can always count on her to come in with a smile on her face and ready to learn."
i think that madelyn was a little relived since mason had been awarded character champion a few months ago. when he got home from school she told him that they could walk in the parade together now!
we are so proud of all of our kids and happy when others recognize their sweet hearts too. love.
...and injured her neck in such a way that she can't put her shoulder down.
madelyn got off of the bus crying. as best as i could figure out what happened, she had pulled a muscle in her neck. in a totally me like injury, she had whipped her head to the side celebrating a point scored for her team during volleyball at gym and essentially gave herself whiplash.
this was something difficult to gauge for severity. it was the end of the school day, so she might be dramatically tired crying, but she was clearly in extreme pain. the doctor's office couldn't get her in and told us to take her to urgent care or the er. i wasn't convinced that she needed medical attention, i had called more to find out if we should ice or heat her neck and what to watch for in case it was actually serious.
poor girl. we have her a little pain med and sent her to bed. she is so my daughter. love.
mason got a great welcome back at school today - he was given the "character champion" award! he still looks a little rough, but is really excited. here is what his teacher had to say about him:
"Mason is a shining example of a Character Champion. He is very respectful to his classmates and teachers. He comes to school each day ready to learn with a smile on his face. I am very proud to nominate Mason for this award."
this is one of those rare times when i think the boys being mildly sick has been a blessing. i don't think i could have gotten through the past week if they had been energetic and healthy. they have all had diarrhea and/or vomiting that has left them tired and weaker than normal. but not dramatically so. they only get sick once every 24-hours and it has been manageable.
in fact, on wednesday morning, when i was at my worst, manning slept for almost 24-hours. i would never have been able to communicate with the extended family if he had been his normal self.
pretending to 'sleep' at breakfast before laying down and actually going right back to sleep after a 11 hour night
this is how he spent most of the day. i did keep an eye on him and was praying that we wouldn't have to take him to the hospital too!
this same day madelyn had 'costume day' at school and dressed up as minnie mouse (i failed to even think about a picture of how cute and happy she was). that night she had a graduation ceremony from the program she is in at church. i thought that it would be hard to talk to those who already knew about wyatt and were praying, but it was the praise and worship songs that just opened the floodgates! i couldn't even sing. i had not been prepared for that kind of emotion - i should have been because i get emotional almost every week at church. i guess one reason i was able to keep it together was because my thoughts were all over the place and impossible to focus. since matt stayed home with the sick boys, i took a few videos. here is madelyn (look for the mouse ears in the middle) doing motions to "God's girl" - it is long.
the generosity of others has been overwhelming too. i have had flights checked and priced, a car offered, extended childcare offers and even a private flight! so much to where "thank you" has lost its ability to capture my actual gratitude.
i had to renew my driver's license this week - partly because it is the law and partly because i wanted to be able to get on a plane if needed. i wasn't expecting a vision test and explained that i might not do very well since i had been crying for days and had literally stayed up the entire night before. talk about having to focus! i could hardly see peripherally and had to super concentrate to find the words for the numbers i was reading. thankfully, i passed and have one of the most unfortunate license pictures ever (actually, it isn't that bad because i was laughing trying to keep maddux and manning's heads out of the picture as they were climbing on me - but my eyes are nonexistent, just little slits in my swollen eye lids).
we had a crazy saturday scheduled which included me hosting our mops group for a service project (cleaning the trail), breakfast and a craft. i went ahead and canceled the mops event, mainly because the boys were just getting over being sick and secondly because i didn't feel like i had the mental capacity to host. but our morning was still busy. all three bigs had swimming lessons and then we had to split up the carseats so that matt could take mason and maddux to soccer practice and madelyn, manning and i could go to a mother/daughter tea at the library. maddux isn't on the soccer team, but since it was just a practice, we thought we could dress him to play and he could practice with the team. i guess they ended up scrimmaging and matt had to carry maddux on his shoulders while he coached so that maddux wouldn't be sitting on the sidelines unsupervised (i told him that he should have just asked on the team parents to keep an eye on him so that he didn't get up and leave from where matt told him to sit). so the splitting up didn't work out so great for matt, but madelyn, manning and i had a wonderful time!
we have been to several free programs at the library now and they are always nice, but this one was exceptionally nice. it was put on by the "friends of the library" and you could tell just from the set up that we were in for a nice morning. i felt bad about bringing manning since you really aren't supposed to bring siblings outside of the ages allowed, but we were a little stuck. he behaved better than he ever has before! the program lasted an hour and there was glass place settings and hot water for the tea - it could have been a disaster.
everyone got to make paper lanterns like the ones they had hanging throughout the room
a picture of my completed setting. apparently the tea set was donated by mrs. hoover years and years ago (like, hoover vacuums, mrs. hoover) and was super nice.
madelyn pointed out that the pineapple was like the sand at the beach which i had not noticed that they were all arranged the same way. i thought it was just a scoop of mixed fruit a first glance.
madelyn enjoying her pinwheel finger sandwiches and a chocolate eclair. she even drank her tea!
i shared with manning. i was a little disappointed when he chewed up and then spit out my entire eclair - i missed out!
when we got home, i realized that i was in such a fog that i didn't even acknowledge madelyn being selected "character champion" for this month! i congratulated her when she got home from school and we called daddy, but i didn't take a picture or call the grandparents. so here is a picture of our "character champion" - a day late.
maddux was really insistent on helping with dinner that night (polenta garden pizzas) so he helped me prep everything and after watching me make the first pizza, he made the second one all on his own (except for drizzling the olive oil - i did that part). he even used the rolling pin to roll out the crust. i was pretty impressed with how patient and attentive to the details he was the whole time. i might have a new sous chef.
yesterday, we finally went out to celebrate our "character champion" (and the kids cleaning up the entire basement of toys on their own!) with, her request, friendly's sundaes. we ordered manning a milkshake, but he was much more interested in sharing with matt and i! i think he ate more than i did! he was really going at it and matt was joking that he was going to start licking the cup.
today we were rewarded by browsing the baked goods on this rainy afternoon when we ran up to the grocery store to pick up one more ingredient for dinner. the kids all got to pick free cookies! (for my publix people, they aren't normally free here. you pay a dollar for a card that gets you like 10 cookies or something - punch card style. we have never bought them.) maddux really scored with an orange one!
when we got home, i went out to make our first harvest from the garden - asparagus! this is the first we have been able to eat. i guess with asparagus, you can't harvest it until the third year. we have been waiting patiently and were excited to have enough for a new recipe. we also got to pull out the last of our frozen pea pods from last summer's garden. all four kids took care of shelling the peas while i prepared everything else. it is nice to have actual help in the kitchen at dinner time!
and madelyn is planning on making us dinner this week with the cookbook she was given as a parting gift from the mother/daughter tea. it is a super nice junior betty crocker one and she is really excited. we will see how it goes!
so while i have wanted to just lay in bed, crying in a ball, life marches forward. i am thankful for my little ones to keep me moving. praying always. love.
the irony in madelyn's 'moving down' at school the past two days was that she was awarded "character champion" for the month of february! she even forgot to bring her award home yesterday because she did not get her things together at the end of the day.
this is the surprise that i found out about during the parent-teacher conference and not shared in my earlier post. matt and i had discussed it and we decided that whenever she got the award at school, we would take her to dinner, wherever she wanted, to celebrate. and she brought it home today, when she got yellow. well, that took care of those plans. we were pretty disappointed because she has been talking about trying to be "character champion" for a few months now and told us that she was always trying to be her best because any one could nominate her at any time for anything.
this is a program through the ymca to recognize students for showing "trustworthiness, respect, responsibility and caring toward the school and [their] classmates". the principal and someone from the ymca come into the classroom to congratulate the student and present them with a certificate, dinner voucher for a local restaurant and a guest pass to the ymca. apparently they make it a pretty big deal.
we got a nice letter home (even with all of the typos from it being a fairly form letter) - it actually made me tear up because i was so proud of her. here is what her teacher said when she nominated her:
"madelyn is a great role model in our classroom. she strives to do the right thing, all the time, even when no one is watching. she is a very caring friend and is always lending a helping hand. madelyn is respectful to the teachers and adults in the building. she is very deserving of this Character Champion nomination." her teacher told me that madelyn really deserved this during the conference and madelyn said one of the boys in her class told her that she really was a caring friend and deserved the award.
we are so proud of the person madelyn is growing up to be and the choices she is making about how she treats others. love.
