Colleen's Birthday

Today is Colleen's birthday so the family got together at The Mellow Mushroom pizza place in Fort Worth. They have them in the dub so Eric felt right at home. Anyway it was all of our family, two of my brothers, Colleen, her brother, dad and uncle. It was so good and I just love that Eric is here!! Now all we need to convince of Texas greatness are mother hubbard, my brother and his family; then we'd have the whole clan in one state.

Fabulous Friday

On Friday Bailey's got to participate in Fabulous Friday. Every nine weeks the kids who have good attendance, grades and citizenship are rewarded with a Friday filled with various fun activities. Well being the last nine weeks some of the kids also earned a trip to Johnson Rd. park to eat a picnic and play. Bailey insisted that I stop by and I love how much she still wants me to be around because you never know how long that's gonna' last.

Memorial Day at Jesse's

Yesterday we celebrated Memorial Day/Eric's return to Texas with a pool party at Jesse's. The kids love swimming at my brother's plus Riley is allergic to chlorine pools, which Jesse's is not, so we were happy all around. Bailey was in the water all day long!! She only got out to eat and even tried to bribe my brother into taking her home so she could stay longer. Normally Jesse would've caved but he had to work super early today.

Hurricane Harbor with the KMS Choir

Guest Blogger: Jeremy

This month Nadirah's choir class got to go to Hurricane Harbor for an awards ceremony. Jill had originally signed up to be a chaperone but backed out when she decided that the water was going to be too cold for her liking. I told Jill I would go in her place and if the water was too cold for Nadirah and me, we could just play sand volleyball instead of swimming. Nadirah had a lot of fun hanging out with all of her friends from choir. The water was pretty cold but we were able to brave it anyway. We also got to play a couple of games of volleyball (if you can call it that) some of Nadirah's friends weren't too good at it. We had a great time but I have no idea what awards they won because that part of the day was LAME so we left early.

Camp Grady Spruce

Last week Bailey and I took a four day trip to Camp Grady Spruce in Possum Kingdom. It's an outdoor education camp with lots of fun activities. Anytime I go out of town things get kinda' crazy and this week was no exception. I did my best to prepare Jeremy, Nadirah and Riley. I made all the arrangements for rides to school, drill team and soccer practices, plus the kids Wednesday night activities. I even made an organizational chart that I emailed to all who were helping and left individual notes and reminders for Jeremy, Nadirah and Riley. So at 8:30 on Tuesday morning I get a call wondering who was taking the kids to school...oops. I wasn't even out of the city of Keller and already the kids were late for school. Luckily that was our only chaotic moment and my friend was able to leave work, get the kids and take them to school. But onto our week ~ it was absolutely fabulous. Bailey and I hiked a mile and a half up to Johnson's Peak, learned about orienteering, shot a bow and arrow, rode horses, took a nature hike, climbed Devil's Island (we were like two feet from the edge of a cliff), ate S'mores, sang campfire songs and so much more!! One of the highlights for Bailey was seeing her teacher and principal get pushed into the lake. The camp tries to make the kids aware of how much food they're wasting while so many go without. At the end of every meal they weigh the amount of food waste and if the school as a whole can get less than 10oz. at two consecutive meals they get to push two teachers in the lake. Well, the school has been going on this trip every year for many years but no class has ever been able to make it until this year. The kids started off with over 7 pounds of waste but got it down to zero!! The kids and the camp counselors were super excited and unfortunately for the teachers the lake was super cold. One of my favorite nights was Thursday sitting by the camp fire singing songs with Bailey. It's moments like these that make me so thankful for the privilege of staying home and having the time to make these memories with my kids. The only down side to the trip was leaving my pillow at home which did not help make for a restful four nights sleep.

4th Grade Play Day

On Monday Bailey was scheduled to have play day (which is basically field day but you compete against other schools not just your classmates), but when we woke up it was raining pretty hard so naturally we assumed it would be canceled. I took Bailey to school and decided to go in just to make sure the day had been called off. Clearly not the case ~ they decided to go ahead even in the rain. So even though it's already May it was really cold out there in the wind and rain. I had to go home and get warm clothes for me and Bailey (you can see all the kids were prepared for warm weather wearing shorts and t-shirts; I'm glad we live close to the school). Bailey competed in four different events; all running events so apparently she's pretty fast. She won first place in the 50 meter, 2nd place in the shuttle relay, 3rd place in the 90 meter and 4x100. I'm so glad I was able to go for the whole day! It was super fun for me to watch her compete and win!!

Lip Sync

Still working on getting the video from You tube.

Riley and his friends all entered a Lip Sync contest at Northwood church. It was designed to raise money to buy shoes for kids who need them to go to church camp in Vietnam ~ they raised over $1300! Anyway all of the groups from 7th - 12th grade were invited to participate. There were quite a few acts but our boys definitely stole the show! It was hilarious! Seriously I laughed so hard. I was so surprised when Riley told me he was the star playing Miley Cyrus from Hannah Montana. The boys all dressed up as girls and lip synced It's A Girls Night. You have to see the video to get the whole effect so hopefully I'll have that posted soon or you can search You tube for Northwood lip sync 2008.

Ultimate Frisbee

Here we are at the park on Saturday playing ultimate frisbee. We love taking advantage of living within a block of a fabulous park. Not to mention the warm weather and the sun ~ both of which make me oh so happy!!

Papered Again

Apparently this is a scene we're going to have to get used to. We were driving home a few Saturday's ago (sorry I've been really busy lately and my blogs behind) and as we're turning the corner I think ~ no I actually said something like haha someone got papered. Of course this completely amused Jeremy as he wondered which of our 80 year old neighbors did I think was the victim:) Anyway we never actually found the culprit, so I assume it was a girl (the boy's always fess up sooner or later). They did however do a fabulous job adding not only paper but forks and tortillas on the roof.

Indianette Try-outs

These last two weeks have been crazy busy!! Nadirah is trying out for the Keller High School Indianettes (our drill team) and for the past two weeks she's had prep-clinics, mandatory meetings, a workshop to learn two routine's (jazz and kick), mock tryouts, and then finally the much awaited official tryout. Obviously, tryouts are pretty intense and very intimidating. They had to perform each routine in front of a panel of five judges. So I picked up Nadirah from school on Friday and rushed over to my friend April's to fix her hair and makeup. We had about ten minutes to get her ready and get her to the high school on time. We dropped her off, brought her dinner and roses for encouragement. Gave hugs and kisses leaving nothing else to do but wait. It took all the way until 9:00 to finish tryouts and another hour before the results were posted, but it was well worth the wait. She made JV Indianettes and we are so proud of her! She's really excited for herself, but some of her friends didn't make the cut. She will start practicing in May and her first football game performance will be in September. Sorry I don't have any pictures to post but I forgot my camera.

Reading

Last night I realized that Bailey had been M.I.A. for awhile, so naturally I went to look for her. Well, this is how I found her. She's been reading like crazy lately. It seems everytime we turn around she's back in her room with her dog and a book. She read the entire book in two days! I'm so glad my kids love to read because I didn't enjoy reading as a child though I love it now. I barely read the books I was assigned for class and don't ever remember reading for fun.

Cute Pic!

There's not really a story behind this picture I just thought it was cute so I posted it.

Easter

On Easter our kids don't get to wake up to a filled basket of candy. Instead they have to hunt for their goodies. Normally we do this on Sunday, of course, but this year the family convinced me to let them hunt early because Sunday was supposed to be cold and rainy while Saturday was beautiful and warm. So here are the kids hunting and sorting through their eggs. It was a lot of fun and they all got way too much candy! I've actually always wondered how a day set aside to celebrate Jesus death and resurrection now involves bunnies and eggs. Well this year I actually learned the reason ~ they represent hope and new life.

Spring Break

Make a photobook - it's easy!

Because we've already planned our family vacation for December we decided to stay home this Spring Break, but we still wanted the kids to have fun and really enjoy their time off school. Enjoy!

St. Patrick's Day

I'm not really the sentimental type so we haven't established many family traditions. We pretty much change things from year to year. But this year I decided I wanted to incorporate more tradition especially on holidays so they will be able to pass them on to their kids one day. So here we are decorating homemade sugar cookies with green icing and green sprinkles while wearing green shirts (mine does have green on it). The kids loved it! I let them each decorate five cookies ~ three for tonight and two for tomorrow. They were enjoying themselves so much I decided to let them eat all five! At first they thought I was kidding. And with a little luck I won't be cleaning up sick kids tonight:)

Texas Snow!!

Yesterday we finally got some snow ~ crazy thing is it was 80 degrees on saturday!! The snow started falling around lunchtime while the kids were at school and by the time they got home there was already a few inches of accumulation. I had to convince Jeremy to let the kids go out and play last night because he kept trying to tell them to wait until Friday when they could play all day assuming school would be canceled. Good thing they went out because I had three very sad children this morning when they realized not only was school on it wasn't even delayed! They had a blast building the snowman, but it was too heavy for them to put together without Jeremy's help so yes my husband is outside in the 20 degree weather wearing shorts, a t-shirt and no shoes. Oliver loved the snow too and played outside with the kids for about an hour. He kept running all around and rubbing his face in the snow. While the kids finished up outside we got a fire going and some hot chocolate ready to help warm them up. So today the kids asked if we could move to Colorado:)

Austin Getaway

On Friday I decided it was time for Jeremy and I to get away. I don't usually plan our dates so I wanted to be able to surprise Jeremy with an overnight trip. Well, all didn't go exactly as planned but I was able to get us a sitter and pick a destination spot before letting him in on my secret Saturday morning. I had a little trouble finding a hotel so I let him help me with that. Immediately after Bailey's basketball game we dropped the kids off at my brothers and were on our way. The drive isn't too bad so we were able to do a little walking around and pick up a cup of coffee before dinner. When we go to Austin we always go to The Oasis! The restaurant is right on Lake Travis and is absolutely beautiful at sunset! The weather was so amazing we decided to go for a run at Zilker Park Sunday morning ~ another one of our favorite Austin places. On the way home we did a little outlet shopping then finished our trip with lunch and coffee in downtown Fort Worth before picking up the kids.