Here HeComes

Cute lil redhead

Water Babies

Where's Perry?

The older Perry IV gets the more like his grandpa he looks. We did a comparison of the two Perry's and what do you think? I think from all the old photos of his grandpa he is the spitting image of him.

Aunt Yvonne

Aunt Yvonne is a special aunt. She loves to spoil all the grand kids. She has a special place for each of them in her heart and they love all the attention she gives them. Byson was right at home in her arms.

Like father like son

You have heard the phrase "the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree" Benjamin looks so much like his father when Perry was his age. We don't get the older boys here in Tennessee very often but when we do so many of our friends say boy they do look like their dad. We have four sons and it is so much fun when they come for a visit. When Benjamin came to visit he got to the airport to find several flights were cancelled the night he was suppose to come for Thomas' graduation. Since his Aunt Yvonne works for American Airlines he was looking for a nice evening flight and get here around 11 pm. Every American flight he tried to get on was booked because flight were cancelled because of the severe weather they had that weekend and it did not look like he would get a flight here. Good ole dad came to his rescue and booked him a flight on southwest and he made it to Love Field but his luggage did not. He spent the night (what was left of it) at his Aunt Gail's and they took him to the airport early to get his luggage and get on the first flight out to Nashville. Of all the weekends he wanted to travel the severe weather cancelled more flights and he was not able to get a flight until 5 pm. the day before graduation. We were attending a special program at our two youngest children's school when we got a call saying he was actually at the Nashville airport and no one was there to pick him up. Boy was he glad when he got to our house that night.

Byson with his dad

Kids do the darnedest things. Byson is really becoming mobile. When Catherine and Marcus spent the weekend with us during Thomas' graduation Byson was always into something. He got a little help in figuring out how to open grandma's kitchen cabinets from his brother Blaze. When Perry IV was here they crawled everywhere and kept each other pretty much entertained. On the day we had a party here for Thomas everyone was in stitches when Byson got the plastic storage cabinet opened and instead of pulling out everything to play he climbed into the cabinet and started to hand out the plastic ware to his cousin Perry IV. Boy did they make a pair.

Getting Ready For The Trip Across The Pond

Our son Thomas has been across the pond for the last 14 days. Lord willing he will be home tomorrow. His flight left London tonight and so he is flying across the ocean as I type. Each year the seniors at his high school Franklin Classical take a trip after graduation to England. This year he and his friend David wanted to back pack across Europe after everyone else came home. Well, to say the least that didn't happen but a dear friend who chaperoned the kids volunteered to take Thomas and David to Scotland for four extra days after everyone else left. He has over 1000 pictures and we can't wait to see them when he gets here. They toured lots of cathedrals and saw the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, visited the bookstores and I don't know what else they did. Hopefully I will be able to update tomorrow night and fill in the blanks on what all he did.

My Perry

When Perry and Kim and the kids arrived at our house the Thursday night before Thomas' graduation their youngest did not recognize grandma. He was only 5 months old when he saw us last in Texas at Thanksgiving and here he is almost a year old. But I did some fast thinking and got him something to eat and in the end he became my friend I hope for life. It reminded me of his sister Megan when we moved back north when she was almost a year old. She had never met us and did not want a thing to do with us. Her parents were napping after we had gone to visit some friends for the afternoon and she was awake in her pack and play looking out the upstairs window. I sent her older sister to get her and fixed her some supper and fed her. After that she let me hold her without crying. It is true of children like men. The way to a child's heart is through their stomach.
I was sad to see the time for the children to go home. But just wait until next time...

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.