Surprise Party! (Part 1 of 3)

Alternate title:  Surprise Party - Planning, Details, and Decorations Edition Mom, this is where I will attempt to explain everything you missed out on over the past few weeks.

Let's get started.  When did we decide to throw a surprise party?  I'll be honest, it was during church one Sunday.  After discussing that my mom had a milestone birthday coming up, my sister-in-law Beth asked me if we were throwing a party.  I cocked my head to the side and mulled that over for a minute, and before the preacher could wrap up his sermon and give a benediction, the wheels were already turning and I was forming a plan.  I knew I needed to do some preliminary research and figure out a few details before I took the idea to my dad.

The following Sunday in church (apparently that's where we have our family meetings) I leaned over to my dad who was sitting next to me in the pew and whispered, "What do you think about a surprise party for Mom?"  He gave me a little half shrug, half nod that I took as a positive sign.  Now came the crucial part.  I leaned over one more time, "Is your checkbook in?"  He turned and gave me a glance and I flashed my I'm-your-only-daughter-please-daddy-please-it-would-make-mom-so-happy look and guys, he gave me the nod!

So that was that.  I immediately went into planning overdrive.  First things first, we had to settle on a date.  This was the biggest stress of the whole party.  We were about 5 weeks out and I'm sure I don't have to tell you how busy summers are.  Between holidays and weddings and beach trips and canoe trips, pretty much every weekend was book.  I practically cried in my cubicle as I slowly watched all my surprise party ideas fade away because we couldn't even decide on a date.

I'll spare you all the back-and-forths and just say we finally landed on Sunday, July 10, just two days before my mom's actual birthday.  Next step: location.  I already had a great venue in mind but my dad was all over me about keeping the budget low.  Luckily, since our party was now officially on a Sunday, I was able to weasel the price down a little.  (It's amazing how much cheaper things are when your party's not on a Saturday and the word "wedding" isn't attached to it.)  The space was available so we locked it in.  (By the way, my dad's idea was to have the party in his backyard.  For any of you reading this that actually attended the party on Sunday when it was 100+ outside, you can thank me nixing that idea.)  I was also on the hunt for some kind of musical act.  I had originally thought of just getting a two-person act for a little background music, but when I asked my dad if he had any ideas, his response was, "We gotta get that band from your wedding!"  I reminded him how much we paid them for my wedding but he said to give 'em a shout anyway.  Remember how I said things are cheaper when you ditch the word "wedding"?  Worked here too.

Ok, with three major things nailed down - date, venue, music - the only big thing left was food.  I wanted to outsource it so I didn't have to spend all weekend cooking.  (I already knew I was going to be busy since it was Kendra's wedding weekend.)  I convinced my dad to meet me with me and the same caterer that did our wedding.  It wasn't hard to get my dad on board with this since he was pleased with their food a couple years ago.  Done.  Check that off the list.

All we needed now was decorations.  In keeping with the repeat-everything-from-my-wedding theme, I raided my mom's attic while she was out of town and pulled down all of our glass candle holders.  If you attended our wedding, or even if you've just seen pictures, you may remember that we filled the bottoms of them up with green gumballs, like this:

And this:

Maybe you also remember the candy buffet from our reception.  While I was up in the attic, I went ahead and grabbed everything from that too.

At this point, everything seemed to be falling into place and going really well.  And then, just like that, everything decided to cause me stress.

First, my dad calls me to tell me he handed Mom his phone to find an email and she asked about an email I sent him with the caterer's name as the subject line.  "You did WHAT??"  Rule #1:  When planning a surprise party, never ever ever let the surprisee read through your emails.  Geez.  You'd think that was common sense.

Invitations were a cause of stress too.  Not the making of them (thanks, Matt!), that part was fine.  But the minute I put them in the mail, I freaked out.  Now it was no longer a secret that just my family and I was keeping.  Within 24 hours 120 more people would know about and any one of them could slip and tell her.

Speaking of invitations, wanna see them?  They turned out really cute.

You know how they say when you're planning a wedding, you take the total number of people you're inviting, divide it in half, and that's how many you should plan for?  Well, I wasn't sure if that formula worked for surprise parties, so I thought ahead and included an RSVP card with each invitation.

Two days after the invitations were mailed out, I excitedly ran out to get the mail after work and....nothing.  Not a single one.  The next day I got about 5.  Only five!  Weren't people excited?!?  I started freaking out again.  They trickled in in threes and fours for the remainder of that week, then I had to wait over the holiday mail break.  That Tuesday, the 5th, I only got 3 more. Finally, on Wednesday, just 4 days before the big event, I got what I'd been hoping for: 17 RSVP cards in my inbox.  Jackpot.  I could finally rest easy knowing people were coming to the party.  Oh, but you know what's weird?  Every single day when I pulled out the RSVPs, the first one I opened was always a Regret.  Even the day we got 17 cards and 16 of them were Yesses, the first one was the Regret.  And every single time, my heart sank.  I was terrified of noone showing up.

In case you're wondering how we were planning on getting my mom to this never-heard-of venue on a Sunday night, I had already thought of that too.  The week my mom was at the beach with her friends, this invitation arrived at her house:

An engagement party for Grant Hubbard and his fiance Angela Ray.  Grant is the son of one of my dad's coworkers.  Angela Ray is 100% completely made up.  Actually, I'm sure an Angela Ray or two exists out there somewhere, and hey, maybe Grant has even dated one, but for the purpose of this party and this invitation, Angela Ray is as real as the WWF Wrestling my brother used to make me watch when we were little.

Here are all the invitations, including the fake one, addressed and ready to go.

Mom, are you thinking That's not the invitation that came to my house... ?  If so, you'd be correct.  This invitation, hand-written by me in cursive, which I never ever do, arrived at your house on Tuesday.  Dad wasted no time in telling me it looked just like my handwriting.  Ugh.  So I threw it away, let someone at work address a new one, and dropped it back in the mail.  Thank goodness you were gone for a whole week and I was able to get a do-over!

Moving on to something else that stressed me out: gumballs.  I wanted colorful gumballs for all the candle holders.  I was going with a colorful, festive theme.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Two Friday's before the party (July 1) I visited the local candy store and completely struck out.  No gumballs.  That afternoon I hopped on Sam's website and saw that they sold them.  I arranged to meet my SIL Erin at Costco bright and early the following morning.  I figured that since Sam's had them on their website, Costco must sell them too, right?  Wrong.  No such luck.  A few days passed and on Tuesday morning (T-minus 5 days from the party), I drove out to the nearest Sam's, bought a membership, and set out to find my gumballs.  Strike three, I'm out!  Enter panic mode.

That night I tried my luck and placed an order on Sam's website.  The price was right, but since shipping was included, I couldn't expedite my order.  Drats!  I called Customer Service to see if they could help me, but my order wasn't even showing up on their system yet.  Double drats!  My order confirmation email said my expected arrival date was between July 8 and July 14.  The party was on the 10th.  The odds were against me.  I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

Two days later, this arrived on my doorstep.  Cue the hallelujah chorus!

I tore open the box just to make sure.  Gumballs!  Sweet, colorful, flavor-gone-in-sixty-seconds gumballs!

Even though the gumballs were my primary decoration, I did have a couple of craft projects to knock out.  Both were easy, but they did take a little time.  Instead of buying balloon weights (Have you seen how expensive those things are? Ridiculous!) I decided to make my own.  The ceiling in our event space was really high, so I figured the more of these I had to tie balloons to, the better.

Pea gravel + colorful celephane + curling ribbon = homemade balloon weights.

My other project was candy bags for the candy buffet.  I already had some leftover from my wedding, but they had an "E" sticker on them.  That was easy to fix with labels one size bigger with "60" printed on them.

[Side note:  I just scrolled up and realized how incredibly long this is getting.  Props to anyone who actually reads all of this.]

It's a good thing my mom didn't decide to randomly stop by house during all this planning, since my dining room looked like this.

Let's go ahead and fast-forward to the day of the party.  We all went to church as usual; couldn't do anything to throw Mom off.  As far as I knew, we had made it this far without her finding out, even though we'd had several close calls.  Several people made comments to me at church that morning ("Can't wait for tonight!" "Looking forward to it!" "What should I wear?") and they were making me nervous.  I wanted to hiss Stop talking to me! My mom could be watching!

Normally, Doc and I have lunch at my parents' house after church, but this time we needed to hit the road to start setting up.  We made up an excuse - gonna do yardwork, yadda yadda - and got the heck out of there.  The bulk of the afternoon was spent at the venue getting things ready.  Both Beth and Erin met me and Doc there and we all buckled down and got to work.  Who knew it could take so long to put helium in balloons?  Allison met us there too to get everything for the slideshow set up.  Good thing, since we had some incompatible cord issues that needed to be worked out.  Close call!

Around 4 in the afternoon, I headed home to shower and get cleaned up.  There were still a few last-minute items I needed to pick up too.  On my way home, I called Mom just to check in and see if she suspected anything.  Our conversation consisted of her telling me she didn't want to go to this party tonight, she wasn't going to know anybody, and what the heck was she supposed to wear?  Perfect.  Right where we wanted her.

An hour-ish later I was in the car headed back to the venue when my dad called and this conversation ensued:

Dad: You've gotta call your mother. Me: [panic] Why?!? What's wrong? Dad: She wants me to swing by your house on our way to the party so she can get your sewing machine.  Call her and tell her you're not home. Me: Wait, you want me to just call her and tell her I'm not home?  I just talked to her a few minutes ago. Dad: I don't care, think of something!

So I made up some lame excuse to call my mom and while I had her on the phone, just casually mentioned that we were going out to dinner with Matt and Mary.  I had to tell her we were already in the car on our way to their house for fear she might tell me to leave the sewing machine outside or something.  According to all my conversations with her that day, I'd already done yardwork (not true), gone to the grocery store (not true), and was now cleaned up and on my way out to dinner (not true).  Good thing she didn't question me!

Back at the venue, I barely got the last balloons blown up before our firsts guests arrived.  My decorations were simple - colorful gumballs and colorful balloons.  Oh, and colorful candy too.

(Some photos by me and some by Allison.)

I made little labels for each of the candy holders out of chalkboard vinyl.  My first time to use it...pretty cool.

I was able to use the chalkboard vinyl on this drink pitcher too.

I found these old framed pictures from my grandmother's house and just topped them with a little party hat.

And that was the extent of our decorating.

Mom, fill caught up?  Still wondering how you missed everything?  We're pretty sneaky, but it was really, really tough keeping the secret from you!  I needed to be able to call and bounce ideas off of you.  This may be the last time I plan a party without you.  My blood pressure can't handle the stress (see: picking a date, waiting for RSVPs, gumballs)!

One hundred thousand points to anyone who actually read this whole dang thing.  Now we're primed and ready for pictures from the par-tay, so stay tuned!

Sixty!

Today's the day my mom officially turns the big six-oh!  Happy birthday, Mom! You don't get to celebrate turning 60 every year, so my family and I decided to do it up big!  We sent out invitations to all of her favorite people and Sunday night we gathered to give her one heck of a surprise.  It was a super good time, and I have so many pictures to share from it.  But, they aren't quite ready yet.

So, today I'm going to show you some old pictures.  Not old as in from past blog posts, but old as in from when mi madre was a little baby.  We put together a slideshow to play at the party (special shout-out to Allison for all her help!) and these are some of the pictures from it.  Admittedly, some of them aren't the best pictures.  But here's the thing: I had to be sneaky about getting photos from my mom's house, which meant I couldn't ask her where the box of her baby photos is hiding.  I tore her house apart looking for those pictures one day while she was out, but to no avail.  (After the party, I finally asked her where they are and she said she shoved them under her bed.  The ONE place I didn't look.  Sigh...)  So these pictures all came from my aunt, who graciously dug through all of her baby photos and pulled out any and all of them that had my mom in them and mailed them to me.  (Thank you, Aunt Kim!) 

Did I mention that the only photo scanner I have free access to lives at my mom's house, specifically in her bedroom?  Yea, so that was tricky too.  Thank goodness for her beach trip, or I don't know how I would've pulled this off.  Also, I hope that's the last time I have to spend an afternoon sitting at her rickity old (and majorly slow) computer.

Now, without further adieu, let's take a look at my mom through the years.

Who doesn't love a bathtub shot?  Even if the bathtub is actually a basin sitting on a table...

My mom with her dad, my Pepaw, dressed up for Sunday church.

Something about the look on this face tells me she may have been up to no good.

Just another day hanging out at the Water Department...

Somebody does not look too happy about the new addition of a little sister.

Pretty princesses!  I bet Bren would love to have this dress to play in.

Check out these hats!  They're kinda like plates!

This picture (below) cracks.me.up!  I have no idea what the story behind this picture is, but in my head, my mom is being punished for not having a good attitude like her little sister, and so she has to wear the mask.

This is one of my favorites because I still see this same smile on my mom's face all the time.  She's second from the right, in case you can't tell.

It seems as though my mom went through a little bit of a sassy stage where she didn't smile for the camera.  There are several photos of her like this.

I know my mom's eyes are closed in this picture, but I love it because of my Pepaw.  I feel like he's standing proud and his face says, "Yea, these are my girls."

This picture, I think, was taken at the brunch on my mom and dad's wedding day.  As the story goes, this would be right after my dad informed my mom that he lost all of their honeymoon money the night before in a game of poker...to his brother.

I'm pretty sure this is my oldest brother, Nick, when he was a baby.  But that's not the point of this picture.  See the dog on the couch?  Anyone else think it looks just like Henry?

Fast forward a few years later and we're finally a family of five.  Betcha can't guess which one of us kids was the thumb-sucker.

Three generations of girls.

One of my favorite family photos from my mom's side of the family, even though I think my eyes are closed.  This was on Christmas morning, after we'd already opened gifts, had breakfast, and completely un-decorated my Memaw's house.  We were all about to hit the road to go visit with other sides of our families.

My mom has gotten to watch all three of her children get married.

And now she has a slew of grandkids!

I think my mom would agree that she's had some pretty fun times over the years, especially being married to a clown like my dad.

He's pretty smitten with her.

Happy, happy day to you, Mom...and many, many more!  I love you!

4th of July

I don't have much time to write but I do want to post some pictures from 4th of July before it gets to be too late.  This coming weekend is packed full of fun things so I know there will be different things to write about next week...better get these done now. Doc and I were invited to two parties to celebrate the holiday.  He got up early that morning to get in a round of golf and I headed down to the kitchen to work on some food stuffs.  Why is that I wake up at 6:00 on days when I could sleep in??  Since I was up anyway I got to work on my festive red, white, and blue strawberries.

This idea came via Martha Stewart and was all over the blogosphere last week.  How can she make things look so daggum easy?  The picture floating around the web made it look easy enough - dip a strawberry into white chocolate and then again into blue sugar for a patriotic effect.  I knew I already had some light blue sugar on hand so I thought I was set.  But making these things ended up being a pain in the rear!  If you dipped into the sugar too soon after dipping into the melted chocolate, the chocolate got messed up.  And you couldn't set them down to dry for a minute because then the bottoms would be messed up.  I wish you could've seen how I had my assembly line rigged up; I would definitely get points for creativity.

They were a lot more fun to eat!

I had a box of cake mix on hand, too, so I whipped up a batch of festive cupcakes.  They were dee-lish.

Party Number One was a family gathering at my brother's house.  I could see this becoming a tradition.  It's nice to have a pool to jump in during the middle of the summer!

This picture has to be posted, not just for the super cute fella but also for the towel.

Parker and his mommy gave Bren a new princess floatie for the party.

Can you count the ribs?

Jett gave Mimi a soaking wet hug when she arrived.

And then he jumped right back in!

Even Brennie had fun jumping into the pool.

She wore not one, but two floaties.

The big boys enjoyed playing water basketball.

And they also broke in the freshly painted patio set.

This little boy has gotten so tan this summer.  I'm so jealous!

He got thrown around a lot by his uncle Ben.

I just love Brennie's pig tails.

Party Number Two was later in the evening at our friends' house.  They grew flags in their flower bed!

And look!  More apple vases!

Kendra and Antonio were there...their last 4th of July as singles!

Wesley showed us how she splashes in her pool.

Her mom showed her how to hold her pinwheel in front of the fan to make it spin.

Cliff got the prize for most festive outfit.

I mean, his cap had a bottle opener.  You can't really beat that.

After everyone had eaten, it was time for the best part - sparklers!

We tried to take a girls' picture but we got photobombed.

Our hosts for the evening.

And just to prove we were both there, here's one of me and Doc.  I look a little sleepy.

We ended the evening with a mini fireworks show in the front yard.

And that's a wrap for our holiday.  It was a good day!

Sad Day

Today has been a very hard day, as my family and I have had to say goodbye to our sweet girl, Taylor.

We noticed that Taylor didn't feel well this weekend when she spent all day Sunday laying inside the house.  She has always loved being outside in the yard, so this was not like her.  Monday morning my parents had to help her to her feet so she could go outside, but after some pain medicine she seemed to feel a little better.  Thinking maybe her hips were just bothering her (common in German Shepherds), my parents left to spend the fourth of July at my brother's house.  They returned home late that evening to a very sick dog.

It took both of my parents to get her in the car Tuesday morning, and at the vet, my mom had to get assistance to bring her inside.  Sweet Taylor did not feel well at all.  After spending the day at the vet, we got the news we didn't want to hear: kidney failure.  The vet told us it did not look good, but that he would do what he could.  The last two days were spent flushing Taylor's kidneys out and trying to get her body to respond to medicine.  This morning, though, it seemed as if Taylor was only getting worse.

I hate so much that I was unable to be with Taylor during her final moments.  My dad said she perked up when he and my mom and brother walked in.  I like to think she was glad they were there.  Both my mom and dad said it was a peaceful goodbye for our girl.

Taylor, also known as Tay Tay or Tater, was a part of our family for over ten years.  My brother Ben brought her home from college as a puppy and she eventually made herself at home at my parents' house.  She had her fair share of bad puppy moments - like when she ate every button off the back of my bridesmaid dress for my brother's wedding (luckily the day after the wedding and not the day before) - but she grew into the most well-behaved pet we've probably ever had.  Not many dogs would welcome in three new puppies (Minnie, Henry, and Lolli) as well as she did.  Of course, she always needed to get one good growl in on them to show them she was boss, but after that they were pals for life.  In fact, they all thought she was their mom.  Henry, for one, spent hours kissing on her and following her around.

Puppies weren't the only ones Taylor loved, she also welcomed in three new babies (Jett, Bren, and Parker) even though they stole all the attention away from her.  There aren't many dogs that would lie still on the ground while a two-year-old climbed all over them.  It always made me laugh because the look on her face while they pulled her hair said "Really?" but she just let them have at it.

Over the past year, we've known that old age was catching up to Taylor.  Many a times we have said "She sure will be a hard dog to replace."  But that's the thing, I don't think you can replace a dog like Taylor.  Her German Shepherd and Lab mix made her unique, but so did her laid-back personality and loyalty to everyone in our family.

I will miss seeing this face as I pull up my parents' driveway.  She usually stood to greet me when I got out of my car.  As she peered through the bars of the fence the look on her face didn't indicate that she wanted to be let out, but that she wanted me to come in.  Come in and play.

I feel certain that both Greta and Minnie were standing at Heaven's gates this morning, ready to welcome her in with tail wags and lots of sloppy dog kisses.  We'll surely miss our girl, but I look forward to seeing her again one day.

Weekend Update

This weekend was jam-packed with activities.  It was a lot of fun, but it was also sad, scary, and every emotion in between.  Oh, and did I say exhausting?  It was that, too.  Might as well start at the beginning... Friday night after work we met up with friends to have some of Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken.  This place is definitely a hole-in-the-wall, nothing too fancy about it at all.

Matt and Mary were excited about fried chicken.

As were Chris and Allison.

Jenny joined us too, even though her other half, Darrin, was still in China for work.

Doc was there too, of course.

If you're a beer drinker and you find yourself at Gus's on a hot Friday night, might as well order up a 40.

Allison and Mary Elizabeth were excited about the beverages.

Jenny was too.

Sometimes a drink that big requires two hands.

It didn't take too long before our food arrived.  I gotta admit, I wasn't super excited about eating there since I'm not the biggest fried chicken fan, but this stuff was goooood.

This isn't your ordinary fried chicken; it's got a spicy kick to it.  The crispy skin is dee-lish and the fries and baked beans complete the plate.  I guess it's World Famous for a reason.

We all hung out downtown for a while longer before finally calling it a night.  Most of us had to get up early the next morning...

...which brings us to Saturday.  Saturday was a day that I had been really excited about and dreading all at the same time.  I haven't written about on here yet - mostly because I refuse to believe it's true - but my alma mater, Lambuth University, will be closing it's doors for good at the end of this month.  Yesterday, June 18, was Lambuth Heritage Day - a day of celebrating Lambuth and its history, and also the last time I would see all of my friends, classmates, teachers on campus.  It was a bittersweet day.

We arrived on campus around 10:30.  Doc had been to Lambuth with me once before, but I was glad to have him there with me for this last reunion.  I was going to make this a whole post of its own and include a photo tour of the campus, but apparently you can't steal pictures from Facebook anymore.  Did y'all know that?  I didn't do a great job of taking pictures around campus but a lot of my friends did.  I was hoping I could post some of them, but I guess not.  We'll just have to work with the few pictures I took.

This is the steeple on the chapel.  The chapel sits in the middle of campus so, since we parked on the outskirts of the quadrangle, we walked towards the steeple to find the crowd.

This is in no way the best shot of the chapel (it's not even close), but I think it's almost impossible to take a bad picture of it.

Fun Fact:  You can't tell from this picture, but from this view, the chapel goes straight back but then has a small wing on both the left and right sides.  From a bird's eye view, it looks like there's a cross situated in the middle of campus.  Or at least that's what I was told, and it's what I told every prospective student I took on a tour during my time as a Student Ambassador.

With the chapel such a prominent feature of Lambuth's campus, it only made sense that the heritage day started with a service in it.  In all my years as a Lambuth student and then graduate, I have never seen the chapel as full as it was yesterday.  Every pew was full and late arrivals had to stand in the back or around the sides.  I sat on a pew with some of my best friends from college just like the many chapel services we attended as students, only this time our husbands were sitting with us.

The speakers at the service were all good, focusing on the idea that Lambuth doesn't need a campus to stay alive, because it will live on in all of us.  There were some short stories shared, and lots of praise and thanks to the faculty and staff that stuck with the school during its last days.  But for me, the best part was the music.  I loved hearing some of my favorite hymns - O God Our Help In Ages Past, Come Thou Font, My Hope Is Built - sung by a packed house.  I recorded a couple of songs on my iPhone but since it picked up my voice the most and we all know how off-key I can be, those will have to be for just me to enjoy.  The last hymn, It Is Well, was tough to make it through.  By that point, I was well past the emotional point.  The service closed with us all singing the Lambuth Alma Mater, followed by the Irish Blessing.  That moment is one that I wish I could bottle up and put on a shelf so that I could get it out and relive it any time I wanted.  But since that's obviously not possible, it will just have to be a sweet, sweet memory.

Immediately following chapel was supposed to be a big picnic out in the quad, but as we sang the Alma Mater, the rain came.  Luckily, several buildings on campus were open and we were able to duck inside for lunch, but it did mean that the crowd got split up into different areas.  My friends all made their way to the cafeteria, so we had our picnic lunch there.  I am thankful that we were all together for one last lunch in the caf, but I hate that I probably missed seeing so many others.

Some of us in the cafeteria.

It was really good to hang out with my best friends on campus again, but also to see some great friends that I don't get to see often enough.  And I loved meeting all the new spouses and even several babies.

The rain eventually stopped and we were able to head back outside.  This is just a handful of sorority sisters that were at Lambuth the same time I was.

The schedule for the day included a Greek Rally Around The Flagpole.  I'm not sure who named it for the schedule, because every Lambuth student knows it's just called Flagpole.  As far as I know, this is pretty unique to Lambuth.  I'm sure fraternities and sororities on every campus have their own chants that they do, but at Lambuth, we had Flagpoles.  The flagpole is located right outside the chapel, so its also in the center of campus.  During a Flagpole, the greek organizations take turns rushing the flagpole and then circling around it, chanting and singing songs.  For the girls, there was usually a lot of choreography.  For the guys, it mostly consisted of hurrahs and woos.  We had Flagpoles all the time and for every reason: first day of school, first day of recruitment, bid day, initiation, drops and engagements.  Pretty much anything worth celebrating got its own Flagpole.

We were the last sorority to go on Saturday, and we had the biggest crowd!

Lots of hand-holding and singing...

...and even some awkward motions.

During our last slow song, half of the circle held hands and the other half put their arms around their neighbors' shoulders.  Somehow I was the point where those two different motions collided.

As much as we sometimes dreaded Flagpoles during the school year (remember, we had them ALL the time), I'm glad that we had a chance to have just one more.  This one was definitely awkward since there were so many generations there and things have certainly changed over time, but I think we pulled it off and it was ok.  I'm glad Doc got to see it since it was such a foreign concept to him, especially since he attended a school that didn't have a greek system.

After the Flagpole we took a group Phi Mu shot.  This is most of us that were there.

I won't even try to tell you where I am in that picture because you can't really see me.

The rest of the afternoon was just spent visiting and walking around campus.  There were a couple of auctions going on, plus lots of memorabilia being sold in the bookstore.  I didn't really expect to buy anything, but I also didn't expect them to be selling old desks.  You know I had to have one!

(This picture was taken after I'd already put the desk in the attic for the time being.  Ignore all the junk around it.)

I snagged my wooden desk for just $25.  Completely worth it.  The majority of my classes were in the business rooms that had table seating, but I did spend my fair share of classes in these desks too.  I'm probably even guilty of writing on a few of them.  I quickly glanced over the ones for sell but I couldn't find my autograph on any of them.  I've read over the scribbles on the one I bought and all I've learned is that Amanda Loves Chuck and Christy Sucks.

There may also be a few wads of gum on the bottom of the desk.  Kinda gross, but hopefully they can be scraped off.  I have no idea what I'll end up doing with it (keep it as is or paint it?) or where it will find a home, but I'm sure I'll blog about it when I decide!

We left Lambuth around 3:00.  I'm sure Doc was exhausted from meeting people and I was exhausted from the range of emotions (so happy! so sad!).  But I said this weekend was also a little bit scary...

...and that brings us to the ride home Saturday afternoon.  About halfway home, Doc received a text that said Wyatt was headed to the emergency room for an ultrasound.  Obviously, a trip to the hospital for any reason is the last thing that any parent wants to hear, but not knowing many details was especially scary.  I'm sure Doc felt helpless as there was really nothing we could do at that time except keep driving.

When we finally pulled into town, we went straight to the emergency room.  I dropped Doc off and then drove my friend Jenny home (she had ridden with us to Lambuth).  Everything ended up being completely fine, but it was a long afternoon and evening.  Doc stayed by Wyatt's side as he had some tests done and I sat at home with phone in hand, waiting for instructions.  The word "surgery" was thrown out very early, before anyone really knew what was going on, so I think we were all thinking the worst in our heads.  After a few tests, it was determined that he was fine.  Hallelujah!  The doctors just said he needed lots of rest and maybe a little pain medication.

We are very thankful that he was able to go home that night (around 8 or so) and that it ended up being nothing too bad.  He does have to stay home from camp this week, but that's a-ok with us if it means he's a healthy boy.

Doc and I didn't get around to eating dinner until after 9 that night and then we crashed hard.  What a long day!

I forgot to mention that Friday, before dinner, Doc got to open his Father's Day gift from Lolli.

I know, I know, kinda silly, but remember - I thought we were going to be having a picnic on Saturday and we didn't have any outdoor chairs.  I picked up a couple and thought they might as well be a gift, right?  They had to be from Lolli since he was already getting something different from the kids.

Lolli helped pull off the bow for him.  And her handwriting is better than her spelling.

So I guess this finally brings us to Sunday, Father's Day.  Doc was supposed to drive the kids to camp today, but since that didn't happen, we ended up getting to spend the day together.  We went to church and then had lunch with my parents.  We worked in the shop most of the afternoon and then came home to get ready for the week.  Just a typical Sunday.

Hap, hap, happy father's day to three of my favorite fathers: my dad, my father-in-law, and my husband.  I am so thankful to have each of you in my life, and hope that you had the best day today!

"Happie fodder's day" to all of you other dads out there, too!