Happy Things

From me!

• "It was one of those meals where you think, 'I don't think I have room for salad on my plate.'" --Dr. Paine, on our first family-cooked meal the week that Culinary is in Nashville [we DO love Culinary!]
• "Was I too picky?" --Autumn, as I gazed at a page of 28 bona fide purple x's [student scoring errors] Autumn had found only hours after I had encouraged her to not be too particular when she purple x-ed
• Having people on the other side of my wall so that I can knock on it again
• Faith or Annabella proposing that my tombstone be a wooden ship [because they have to build military ships for the current Challenge]
• People named Lauren F. and Emily L. who call and sing "Taylor the Latte Boy" on my voice mail
• Jonathan accidentally freezing his calculator by taking it into the walk-in freezer with him
• Mr. Ritchie hearing that the cheesy grits were "Autumn-made": "That makes them Autumn-maded!"
• Annabella thinking that I was talking about "possessing" when I presented the concept of "pizzazzing" people
• Kendra and Lydia B. trying to remember the words that precede "a pirate's life for me": "Yo yo . . . No. Ho . . . No. Yo ho . . ."
• Kendra, justifying singing, "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me" in kitchen cleanup: "Some people think it came from a movie, but it didn't; it came from Disney World."
  Autumn, protesting: "It came from Patch the Pirate!"
• Baby Landon coming to brunch singing the "Hallelujah Chorus" (I kid you not!)
• Steven getting Landon to say, "Yes," when I asked Landon if he liked the Red Sox (Steven didn't even know the Red Sox were a real team, for shame!)