Recently in Fiona Category

Grandad reports on his visit to see Fiona in her musical that he enjoyed the song where the kids said they would be wrapping themselves up like gifts and mailing themselves "to you!". The kids pointed to the audience of family members.

Grandad told Fiona how much he enjoyed the song. Fiona smiled. He told her that when he got home, he was going to go out to his mailbox and look for her all wrapped up in his mailbox.

She looked at Grandad very concerned and said, "I won't be there." Apparently she had not thought the entire song through, and suddenly did not like the idea of being trapped in Grandaddy's mailbox.

Later at Satula, Grandad put on a puppet show featuring an owl. Fiona told the owl, "You should be asleep. Owls sleep in the day and are awake at night." The owl (Grandad) said in his deep owly voice: "I'm a Russian owl and it *is* night in Russia right now."

Fiona thought about this and countered, "No, it is daytime everywhere."

This alarmed Jami who realized she had failed as an educator to teach 4-year-old Fiona about the earth being round and all the ramifications of this fact with regard to time zones. Jami tried to explain that it is night on some places on earth while it is day in others. Fiona would hear nothing of it.

This astronomy lesson pretty much ended the puppet show, although it all left the owl chuckling.

We went to Athens today to see Fiona in a musical at her Episopal Church Nursery School. The children were just precious - all dressed up in their finery with paper crowns decorated by each one full of hearts and jewels. Fiona lent her good friend, Katie Grace, a pretty necklace to wear and Katie Grace, being such a good girl, came right up to Fiona as soon as the muscial was over and returned the necklace. The program lasted about 20 minutes, max. Then we were served cheese pizza and salad (both pretty good actually) and Valentines Cookies in different colors. Fiona ate a pink one. That's her favorite color.

The pastor of the church is a lady and they call her "Mother". I thought that was pretty funny, but actually they couldn't call her "Father".

Michael was quite good. He loves Fiona's school and would like to be attending, himself. He's trying to talk a bit, still laughs about everything.

We went by to see their house under construction. It's going to be beautiful and huge. They got a contract on the house they are living in this morning and it's close to the asking price. Yea!
We visited a while at the house afterwards and Grandaddy put on a puppet show for us. It was soooo funny. We should have gotten him a puppet house a long time ago. He's really good at this!

A fun day. -- Gramalie

For Fiona's 4th birthday, her Uncle Jeb took a day off of work. He drove her cousin Kelly up early to Athens to rehearse all day and into the evening for the Honors Chorus performance. Uncle Jeb dropped in at Satula to find an under-the-weather Grant starting his day. Workers started showing up to work on the house to get it ready to put up for sale.

The grand Southern wrap-around porch was just being finished by Andre when Grady and Mike drove up to do the painting. After about an hour and half of "discovery" Grady and Mike got started on the paint job. By this time, Jami and Michael came back from dropping off Fiona at school. The four Cashin's took a walk to see the new lot Grant and Jami were buying for their new house. Along the way, several of the new neighbors chatted with the group.

Upon returning to Satula, Mike announced he would like a Mountain Dew. Grant and Jeb took a walk to a local store to buy one for him. Along the way, the cell phone call came in that said the deal had closed on the new lot.

Jami and Michael took off again to serve cupcakes at Fiona's school party. Jami left Jeb with the job to build Fiona's new puppet show playhouse. This took him about three hours, although it was interrupted by a lunch with Kelly and 30 of her schoolmates. Jeb escorted the honor choir kids to get ice-cream at Planet Smoothie.

Fiona came home in time to help Uncle Jeb finish the puppet show playhouse. With it's clock on top, Fiona decided that 3 o'clock would be ice-cream time and 6 o'clock would be puppet show time. She could change the clock to be either 3 or 6.

Uncle Jeb had to leave for dinner with Kelly and her chorus buddies. They ate at the Grill. Fiona, Jami, and Michael joined them there, and then all went to the UGA campus to play near the fountain in the wonderful fall weather.

After Kelly and her buddies returned for evening rehearsal, Nicole joined Fiona, Jami, Michael, and Jeb for dinner. Fiona wanted to sit next to Uncle Jeb (who we all concluded had managed to build her first house.)

It was an unusual day in Athens from Uncle Jeb's perspective, but it may have all been quite normal from Fiona's.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FIONA!

Fiona called Gramalie at work Friday with a lot of news, although Gramalie needed some translation by Jami. In summary, Fiona went TT on potty and is wearing Did Birl Tants. (Big girl pants.)

The big milestones in a child's life are birth, walking, learning to go potty, and getting a paying job that can pay for rent or a mortgage.