8:30 p.m. on a Monday evening and I am walking around my house. The sun is barely resting over Cacapon Mountain. Actually, it is not even dark yet outside. As I come down the steps from tucking in everyone, I can even hear Dan snoring in the bedroom. You won’t believe this! All the Hott’s are asleep – even Isaac!To what, you may ask, do I owe this unnatural course of events? When normally, we fight bedtime tooth and nail, how is it that a 7, 8, and 12 year old v.o.l.u.n.t.a.i.r.l.y went to bed E.A.R.L.Y! On normal school nights here at the Hott House, we are lucky to be finishing the nightly routine of baths, jammies, brushing teeth, and reading by 9:00 p.m. And if American Idol is on, well…. let me tell you this, it can even be later!So, here’s the deal. It is called public schools’ Standardized Testing! Yes, this week, all across the state of West Virginia, students in grades three through eleven are undergoing the statewide WESTEST 2, or the … [Read more...]
TweetHandprints for Mother’s Day
By the time y'all read this column, many will have spent yesterday celebrating mothers both here and passed. For those of us with toddlers to teens, we may have been honored with special tokens of love. As a volunteer at a weekly community church program called GoFriends!, I saw first hand oodles of precious crafts from hearts, hand prints, to planted flowers in red solo cups nonetheless, LOL! All were beautiful and carefully crafted by children eager to share their prize with mom on Mother’s Day.With my forth and last little one to climb the ranks of elementary school here in our town, I was thrilled to see my Levi barrel across the church to show me his gift. Unable to wait until the actual day, I was honored with my creation three days early, when he got off the bus for GoFriends!.As he ran down the aisle of the church, I could see the large picture with Levi’s painted hands framing a poem carefully colored by my little artist. From two pews away, I recognized … [Read more...]
TweetWhere Were You When You Realized “I’M PREGNANT!”?
Pacing the bathroom floor, the longest three minutes of my life have been spent waiting for the little pink plus sign to appear. You? What will it be? Negative… again! Or, wait…. it’s positive! We’re pregnant! How many times have you watched the clock tick the seconds away to reveal the outcome of a pregnancy test? For both moms and dads: Where were you and what was going on when you got the blessed, the once in a lifetime, the “from now on my life will never be the same” news: “I’m pregnant!”?I was thinking about this last night as Levi was sleeping with his seven year old toes under my ribs. Do you remember the moment you got the “good news”? Do you recall what was happening when you got the confirmation that God was sending you a little person? Maybe it was those toes digging their way to my spine like before Levi was born, but I was up around 2:30 a.m. going through the next days schedule, when I remembered a post I recently saw … [Read more...]
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