Kids playing tonight

At 6pm, I got a call from Rick letting me know that I didn't need to work at the Mall location tonight (since they wouldn't be there much longer). Jim brought me home and made me dinner; blackened chicken with dill sauce and salad. Yum!
Elaine got in trouble earlier for scratching more paint off of her bedroom door and painting a toy box with my pink nail polish. I think she is seeking my attention.
I helped the kids clean their room tonight. Then they played with the toys they forgot they have.

That's spiderman (above) flinging a spiderweb, in case you couldn't tell.

note to self: I need to buy postage and stationary/thank you notes for graduation-related mailings.

So much for Locks of Love :(

When I decided to grow my hair out for Locks of Love, Elaine wanted to do the same. If you asked her about it, she'd say she was "growing hair for people who can't grow hair". The minimum usable donation is 10 inches. She has seemed super excited about it. Her hair grows about an inch per month (same as mine), so I estimated that she'd have enough hair in late October to make the minimum donation length for Locks of Love and still have a cute haircut. So we planned to go cut both our hair around 'Happy Hallelujah' (October 31st).
When I got in from work tonight around 11pm, I saw there was long hair on the floor in the hallway!! Not my color at all, and too long to be one of the boys. I went and woke up Elaine; she had cut large chunks of her hair off at chin-length!!!
I sat her in a stool and evened her hair out. She said she is sad that her hair is too small for the people who don't grow hair, but "It will grow bigger later".

This is when I started to even out where she cut the large chunks.
You can really see the difference in length! :(

She gave a few explanations:
1. Maybe Allan did it?
2. I was too hot.
3. It's almost like Larissa's (a friend from church and VBS who has a bob hairstyle).
4. It isn't smaller. Not much.


In other news: Concerned about my lack of recent contact with the registrar at UNT, I emailed my academic adviser, Ana, last night. I was supposed to hear from the registrar by this last week. She wrote back:

"Good Morning!

Summer just goes by really quickly and the Registrar’s Office collects all of the graduation applications for the university, which means processing time on that end can take much longer than it did on mine. You will graduate in August.

Get those invites in the mail!

Ana"

announcements

I'm not as sick as I was for a few days there. I just have a bad sinus headache now.

Tonight I'm working on addressing my graduation announcements. There was a deadline to ordering them online, so I did around the 15th. The website said it could take up to two weeks for them to process the announcements, before mailing them to me. And standard shipping would take 3-7 business days. That meant, at the most, it could take almost 3 weeks for them to arrive!
I paid for the extra shipping to get them sooner. So I'm pretty amazed that they arrived less than a week from when I ordered the announcements. I need to dig out the addresses for some of my aunts and uncles, and get my grandma's new address (it's on this desk somewhere!). I reminded my boss, Rick, about my graduation in a few weekends. He's who schedules the employees at work, so I wanted to triple check that he remembers I have family coming in town around the ninth.


Here's a picture of Elaine's VBS class from last week. She's in yellow.

I'm sick

Regina has been sick since Monday, and now I have similar symptoms. My throat is itchy, I've sneezed and coughed. This has just been since yesterday afternoon. Half of today I've had a fever, at work.

Regina insisted that I take tonight off from working at the mall and she gave me the option of coming to work late tomorrow morning. Regina needs me to come in to the store in time for her to go cook the food for Elaine's VBS camp.

Elaine is singing the songs that she learned so far at VBS this week.

graduation time

I saw on the UNT website that the College of Arts and Science graduation will be August 9th at 1pm in the Coliseum.

More work.

(Double click a picture to see it larger.)

This is my scale rendering of the design for the storefront sign (yellow), and where I'm re-drawing the image larger using a grid and a scale rule. After this photo, I got more of it painted in.

You can see the new flooring at the store and what the old flooring looked like. Micah fractured one of his fingers by hitting it with a hammer while putting in the flooring. He kept hurrying trying to get the job done faster. He's really bummed about his finger, since he was all set to work on recording his CD this summer. He's seeing an Orthopedic surgeon today.

This cloud looks like Falcore from The Never Ending Story

The van

I forgot to tell yall, since I've been working more, we were able to take the van in to get it looked at. It took a few tries to start the van for the last couple weeks and there was a "loping" sound (quoting Jimmy). But we took it in to Christian Bros. mechanics on Tuesday and the sound is gone and we are getting better gas mileage. Jimmy could tell yall what they fixed. I don't remember the terms, but it took all the extra off my last paycheck.
I should be working every night this coming week, after work at the store each day.(That reminds me, I need to go find my tracing paper!!) So if I don't get to blogging again for a few days, I'm just at work.
In other news: Allan has an imaginary friend, Jerry from Tom and Jerry. He was swatting at the imaginary mouse earlier today, saying "stop Jerry".
p.s. Katy Koch got Elaine and Allan some educational goodies from Mardels yesterday. They each played with all the books and games again today. I got a picture of Elaine with it, but it's not on this computer.

EDIT: Here they are.

More Pics

Elaine SCRATCHED this into the paint on the door of her bedroom! She got in big trouble, of course. She said she wants her door white again, instead of seafoam, so she started to get the paint off and made a picture. Whenever I get free time again I'm gonna have to sand and paint over this. I don't think our landlords will find it charming.

In the middle is 'Tom' from Tom and Jerry.

This was a firetruck with a laddar that never ends.

Elaine before we left for Rick & Regina's house yesterday:

MORE PICS FROM THE MALL LOCATION:
It opens August 1st!! Crunch time!!!I painted all the clouds, after Rick sprayed on the blue background.

The black is gonna be covered by wall fixtures and slatwall or something.

Independence Day

We went over to Rick and Regina's house around 6pm. The kids had fun playing with Noah, their grandson.

The house is outside the city limits. :)

Rick and Regina, my friends (and employers)

We're seeing Dave and Katy tomorrow afternoon. Jim's cooking.