Our Little Sweeties

What fun it was this summer to take our grandchildren with us to the lake. Watching Byson and Perry IV crawl all over the kitchen and trying to get in cabinets snacks and anything else they could was so much fun. They loved giving each other kisses and tugged toys out of each others hands. When we went out on the boat with them they definitely did not like the life jackets they had to wear the first time they were put on but got used to them the longer they were on. Perry IV liked to stand on the edge of the boat and hold on to the wall and look at the water rushing by. Byson liked to stand up and hold on
to the edge of the seat and watch the water rushing by.

Vacation Highlights

What a time we had this year as we made our annual trip to Hot Springs for a week of boating, tubing and just plain relaxing. This year our oldest son and his family of 8 children and his wife came with us. The kids really had a blast flying behind the boat of our dear friend since high school, Randy. He brought 2 of his grandchildren and with our children and grandchildren we had a total of 12 under the age of 14 with us this year. They had a blast with the hot tub, swimming and all the boating. The weather was great and only the day we left did the storms come in. The only bummer this year was the restaurant that has some of the best chicken fried steak was closed during the middle of our vacation but Grandpa C. came to the rescue and cooked breakfast almost every morning we were there. We took turns on the suppers and lunch was on the boat when we got tired of tubing. Grandpa C. made sure we had plenty of snacks and sent the left overs home with the grandchildren to enjoy. Also we made out trek to Wal-Mart and stocked up on perishables so we were all set when we found out the restaurant would be closed for two days. It was a good thing I started a couple of months ago stocking up so we were able to cook our own meals. We had our own little restaurant available for us. When the children were not tubing, the boats were nice diving boards for the children to plunge in the lake and even the babies had fun playing in the water. Once our youngest grandson was looking over the side of the little plastic raft he was floating in with Grandpa C. and when he asked Abigail to watch him while he untangled some goggles all of a sudden we heard lots of commotion. When we looked to find out what was the matter grandpa c was pulling Byson out of the water. He had looked so far over the edge he fell in face first. Momma Catherine was quick to scoop him up and Perry IV took his place on the raft. He was not interested in looking over the edge and had no problems staying in the raft. Pictured above the 3 musketeers in mean our 3 oldest of the clan enjoys the view from the tree house in the back yard where we stayed.

Spring and Summer Happenings

I can't believe summer is here already. We made it through the spring with all the program practices and programs at the preschool and on top of all that we managed to get our youngest son graduated. He had a whirlwind of senior activities the last two months of school and we will always treasure them. He did an amazing job with his senior oral defense of his thesis paper this year as did all of his classmates. They are a tremendous group of young people who will indeed change the world with their talents. Right at the time of his senior defense a flu like bug hit our family. Dad got it first and then it hit me right after his oral defense. The Friday of his Jr/Sr banquet it hit Thomas but he rallied back and made it to the banquet. Abigail was only down one day but her older sister had it two weekends in a row. We had hoped we had seen the last of it but right after everyone came to visit for the graduation it hit again this time giving it to our grandchildren.
Thankfully it was after Thomas was on his way to England before it hit them and he missed it. It tried to mess up our vacation but we managed to get the kids lots of time tubing, water boarding and swimming, snorkeling and just having a good time with the hot tub around the guest house we stayed in.
We had the privilege of staying at a lake house where cell phones did not work (they don't even have phones in guest rooms at all) the computer did not work and we had the luxury of relaxing every morning before we headed out to the lake. It was great!

Midnight Painting

Sometimes I surprise myself. Like the other night. I was tired from going to get a new car with my daughter and spent over 4 hours in the car and got to bed around midnight. Tuesday night the kitchen was finished with the tile job and my husband was planning to put the appliances back the next morning. I came home from work around 8 pm and fell asleep on the sofa watching TV to relax. When I got up and started to bed around 10 pm I noticed the laundry room had not been painted yet. So I got the bright idea to paint it, it was a small area and it couldn't take that long right? I got the paint out, the roller, brushes and ladder and went to work, by midnight I was finished but it took me another hour to clean up and get a bath and go to bed. Boy when will I learn I'm not young anymore. It did look rather good when they put the washer and dryer back.

Dream Come True

We took all the furniture out of the living room, dining room and our Florida room 3 weeks ago today, and our dream is finally coming true. The kitchen is finished with beautiful gold swirly tile and the Florida room has the wood laid and the workers are putting the wood in the dining, living room and our hallway today. It is gorgeous! it is almost like camping with the way our house is torn up. Most of the furniture is upstairs some is in our bedroom, Abigail managed to put the TV in her room and we have little walkways to get from the bathrooms in each room. On second thought it's not like camping it's like moving. We will be glad when we can put the furniture back and have a house again.

Remodeling

I just can't believe we are doing it. Remodeling that is. When we bought this house (May 30, 2002) almost 5 years ago (yes, son we have lived in the same house for almost 5 years) we talked about putting wood floors in the main part of the house, and ceramic tile in the kitchen and bathrooms. Well, the day is here Lowes bought the materials for the kitchen today and Friday morning the installers will be here to put the tile down. We have become spoiled in our "old" age, we splurged and are having a warming pad put under the tile so in the cold months our bare feet won't be ice from walking on tile. What will they think of next. We also tackled the job of repainting and I got to select colors for the walls this time. (you see my man is a neutral wall type of guy) We still have our red room but to complement it we put gold on the living/dining room walls and a lighter gold in the kitchen. What a chore to get it done but it will be worth it in the end.

The picture above shows what the floors look like now. This was taken at Thomas' graduation party.

Teenagers and Cell Phones

I don't know how we have survived this far having raised four teenagers. Thomas is going on 18 and Abigail will be 13 on her birthday this coming Valentine's Day. It is a little sad tho because that means our six children are almost all grown up. We did the unthinkable and got Abigail a cell phone for this past Christmas. You should have heard the groaning and complaining from Thomas and Catherine. "I had to wait until I was . . . to get my own cell phone." For one thing life was different when they were 12 years old. Now that Abigail is in the 8th grade she sometimes goes to friends homes to work on projects and it is so much easier to keep up her with her own phone. I don't have to do to her what I put her Dad through all those years ago when cell phones were unheard of. I would look up the number where he was going and call and ask the clerk to page Perry Coghlan. He just hated to hear his name over the loud speaker. Last summer I'm sure I drove Thomas crazy like his dad when I needed to talk to him and called all his friends to find him. Even tho we did without them in the past it is so much easier with them.:)

Random News

Revised Feb. 25th

January was a busy month. We put away Christmas decorations, cleaned the preschools and jumped into a new year. The theme in January is always snow, we haven't been getting any outside so we decorated with snow all over the insides of our two schools. The kids made paper doily snowmen, paper plate snowmen, had snow ball fights with paper snowballs, and painted snow scenes with chalk. The weather just wasn't cooperating with temperatures in the 70's but we imagined it to be cold enough for snow. Well we probably wished a little too much as it got cold the third week of January and stayed cold for a month. We actually got two snow days in the first three weeks of February. It did wait until the day after Valentine to give us our second snow day and the kids were sooo happy.
It was great because we had planned a birthday party for Abigail our youngest daughter at Pump It Up in Cool Springs on that day, and by 9 am the roads were cleared. We had a fun afternoon with her friends from school helping her to celebrate her big day (it was really on Valentine but with all the Valentine activities we celebrated the day after). I'll try to post some pictures of Byson (our 9th grandchild) enjoying the big slide with his mom.

Week One

The first week of the new year has past and it was back to work for me. God has really blest our preschool's we only have 2 openings at our second location left. We are excited to begin the new year with a full house (almost). We will have a full schedule with Valentine parties, Easter egg hunts. Then it will be time for our annual spring program. This year at our second preschool we will be having a kindergarten graduation too.

Back to Normal

Another day of work. Our sweetie is back and Catherine is at work and I get to dress him and take him to her when he wakes up. His Deluxe Jumperoo is waiting for him to get a good workout and I can't wait to shower him with kisses. All the teachers at our #2 school was soooo excited to see him yesterday. They all said he had gained a ton of weight. He really looks like a little rolly polly sausage. He still has the same twinkle to his eyes tho. He still remembered grandma. He didn't cry once when I took him from his daddy at the airport. Abigail can't wait until she gets home from school to spoil him a little.
Thomas is busy working on his senior thesis, and looking for a job. He has to get his passport this month for his senior trip to England. What a busy second half this will be. Well gotta go and get ready for work. I'll try to post pictures of our sweetie tonight.

Blogger Nighmare

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the new version of blogger. Well, last night I was typing away and when I took a break and came back to type some more it asked me if I wanted to switch to the new version of blogger. I clicked yes and my husband's gmail account came up and asked for his password which I promptly gave and clicked enter. It was only then I realized I was signing up with his email and not my own. I tried to stop it and I tried to change it after it went through but no way would it change. I tried to look up how I could email the site to ask them to change it and could not find a way to do so, finally I gave up and turned off the computer. Tonight I was able with Kim's help to add myself as the administrator of my blog site but I cannot find a way to delete him as administrator. I just want myself listed as the one on my blog site. If anyone knows a way to do so please post a reply to help me.

It is only 5 hours away when our little sweetie pie will be home again. We just can't wait. I will kiss him over and over again. Catherine, Marcus and Byson will be leaving to come home in just 2 hours and Thomas and I will be at the airport with bells on our toes to get them. I still have to wrap his presents and get his little bed ready to come home. It has been over three weeks since he has seen us. I hope he hasn't forgotten us. Just give me a few minutes with him and he will remember grandma. I have the Christmas tree waiting for him. He has a free standing jumper waiting for him to try out tomorrow. I just can't wait.

Our Christmas Tree

Christmas Giving by Cheryl Parvin

Christmas is for giving, like Christmas gifts and cards.
And giving smiles and hugs, and giving help with things too hard.
Why is there so much giving? Is it just for fun?
We give gifts of love because God gave to us his son.

That sums up why I love to give gifts to my family.
It was such a joy this year to give our sweet four oldest granddaughters their own lap top computer. We hope to read lots of news as they work on their blogs this year. To make sure the two little girls were not left out we gave them a Leapster TV game system to enjoy with a Kindergarten game to interact with. Rachel and Perry IV will be sharing a Little Leaps Grow with me Learning System. Since we could not be with them to see their delight in opening their gifts their dad has preserved it on a movie that we can't wait to see. To make sure the girls could get online we sent Kim a router to make their house wireless and Perry a Bluetooth headset so he can talk hands free while he makes the hour commute each way to work and back.
Our son Benjamin was here for Christmas and he and Thomas and Abigail helped me shop til I dropped on the day before Christmas Eve and then we had a nice quiet day on Christmas eve and ended it attending the fourth Advent Service at Dr. George Grant's Parish Presbyterian Church in Franklin. Dr. Grant made the message of Christmas so alive while he preached and we could not help be excited to celebrate the most wonderful gift ever given to mankind, the birth of our Savior.

Why is there so much giving? Is it just for fun?
We give gifts of love, because God gave to us his Son.
Amen

My Two Perry's

After seven precious granddaughters we now have another Perry in our lives. He looks just like his grandpa and dad. When he was only two days old we flew to Texas and looking at him was like going back in time to when I held his dad as a baby. Now the girls can't keep their hands off him and he is truly spoiled. If he lived closer there would be no hope for him indeed. 

Happy New Year! 

Merry Christmas
To all of our family and friends

Christmas Joy

For the first time since 2002 we spent Christmas at home. It felt so funny being here and not being with our grandchildren. We stayed at home this year and traveled to Texas instead at Thanksgiving and Perry and Kim and the children joined us for Thanksgiving with our families. We arrived the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and stayed until Saturday morning and headed back to Tennessee. We had Catherine and our sweet little Byson with us as well. He was quite the traveler and slept most of the way to and from. Since we made the trip then our son promised if we stayed home at Christmas he would bring the family to Tennessee after his work slowed down after the first of the year. We can't wait until they get here. Our son Benjamin came and spent the holiday with us, but it still was quiet without our little sweetie around. They are visiting his other grandparents. Perry took his sons and Abigail along with two friends to see the new Rocky movie and I shopped for last minute gifts. After the movie we talked Dad into joining us at TGIF for a late lunch and then hit the mall for more last minute shopping. Considering the day before it was not very crowded at all. We had a quiet Christmas day eating our traditional turkey and ham dinner and watching the DALLAS Cowboys get stomped to death. We just could not believe how badly they played. Just when we think they are back to a winning streak they lose. What a day. We finished it watching George C. Scott's "Christmas Carol".

WE DID IT!

What a game, Thomas' team won the national 8 man football championship game Saturday night 46 - 32. The game was a cliff hanger. We took the lead early in the first quarter. When half time arrived the score was 26 - 20. We had the lead until in the third quarter they got a touch down to take the lead. The score was 30 - 32 until the last 3 minutes of the game. We caught a punt return and Taylor Huskey returned it all the way for a touchdown and that brought the score to 38 to 32. To clinch the win when Redemption kicked off the ball bounced off their player who just stood and looked at it. David Swift who was the best player all around did alot more than just look at the ball he jumped on it and it was Knights ball again, we got another touch down in the last seconds of the game. We won 46 to 32. What a night.
We had traveled down to Birmingham with the team and stayed at the Drury Inn. We had quite a turn out of other students to support our Knights. After the game we returned to the hotel and hooked up our dvd of the game and watched it again until almost midnight. What a night it was we really had a good time and celebrated all the way back to Franklin.