DON'T CHA JUST LOVE SCHOOL PROJECTS (and other randomness)

INSERT. SARCASM. 

School projects make me nauseous. They make me sweat. They make me cringe. I do not like them, Sam-I-Am. When Bethany was Grant's age and had a school project, all I had to do was call Rachel and say the words, "Bethany has a project...," and she knew exactly what that meant. It meant we would be at her house pronto and I would play with Grace and Claire while she helped Umby with her project. Because she was blessed with all the creative genes, and I got none. 

Preesh, Rach! And while we were there I'm sure B and me invited ourselves to stay for dinner. I mean, it IS Martha's cooking. 

Well now that we're an hour and a half away from the Colleys (and since Martha won't uproot her family and move closer - hint hint), I'm left to my own devices to help my children with projects. Oh, the horror! 

However, as opposed to freak-out mode when Grant came home with instructions for a project last week, I went into TOOT TOOT mode (which is my and Martha's code for a good, positive, "I think I can, I think I can" type of optimism/attitude). Picture me patting myself on the back for that one.

He had to do his project on an animal habitat and had to present it to the class along with stating three facts about that animal's habitat. ANY animal. Of course he chose white-tailed deer. B and I were on a mission last weekend to find small, plastic deer for him to glue in his shoebox-white-tailed-deer habitat. It was a mission let me tell you. Believe it or not small, plastic deer figurines are not in abundance around here. I'm not even kidding when I say I thought I could run in Target, Wal-Mart or Academy Sports and find some. We're in Alabama for crying out loud. Thankfully I was finally successful in finding some. Grant worked really hard on it (with my help and the help of two other little boys of course), and we were both quite proud of the finished product. We got a "That's AWESOME" from Mackey. If that's not validation I don't know what is! After all was said and done, we couldn't wait to show daddy. Chris took one look at it and after Grant left the room said with a smart-a** chuckle, "He's doing a project on white-tailed deer and you buy mule-deer."

Seriously? My toot-toot mode turned to another mode which he obviously was made aware of by the look on my face (and maybe by the few colorful words I chose to express certain mode). He redeemed himself quickly by saying, "But hey, at least you found some deer. AND it's more than I did."

Good answer.

Grant practicing his presentation:

If you know the Professor, you know that was torture. Pure torture:)

The white-tailed-deer-with-mule-deer-figurines habitat:

OTHER RANDOMNESS:
I'm happy to report we won our second game of the season this week. Victory is sweet, people. Victory is sweet. Since I got pics of the boys in the outfield last game I wanted to try to get them batting this week. "Try" being the operative word. If you can look past the fence, I like this one of Grant with which he got a double:

Mac had a bit of a dry spell this past week as far as hitting the ball (in the first game and in practice) and wanted to quit all-together. We didn't let him. This is the only picture I have of him because I was a nervous wreck when he got up to bat. 

Coach Jay giving him a pep talk:

I so desperately wanted him to get a hit to build up his confidence. And he did! He got a hit and scored a run! When he got back to the dugout Reid called Mac's name. When Mac looked over at him Reid gave him a big thumbs-up. So sweet!

DRAMA QUEEN:

Or is it drama king? It's the boy version of a drama queen so whatever you want to call it, have I mentioned Reid is one??? Case in point:

When he woke up this morning and I got him out of bed, I saw a big Hulk band-aid on his chin. It wasn't there when I tucked him in bed last night. I said, "Oh, Reid, what happened to your chin?" He said, "I scratched it weal, weal bad and needed a band-aid." I'm still not sure exactly how/when it happened and where he found the band-aid but... Upon further observation, this is what I found - go ahead, click on it so you can see where he put the band-aid as well as where the "weal, weal bad" scratch is:

And take a look at that face. :) DRA-MA!

Here's one more so you can see proof Turbo actually does smile and laugh - a lot!

Here's hoping you have a toot-toot kind of weekend!