First day of school

Yesterday was the first day of school for our kids. It is hard to believe the summer is already over and that all 3 of my kids are in school.

Emily started kindergarten:


Dylan went into 1st grade:

JT went into 3 rd grade:

I missed them yesterday and today, but I am sure it will get easier as the year goes on. The day does seem to go by alot faster now though. Hope everyone else had a great first day.

Happy Late Birthday Susan and Christy!!

On August 9 it was Christy's birthday and I never officially told her Happy Birthday so I am now and on August 19 it was my sister Susan's birthday so I want to wish her a late Happy Birthday! We love yall both! You saw the stuff I made for my sister Christy's 40th birthday, well for Susan's birthday I made her a little something too. Her and I always talk about how moody and grouchy we have become as we have gotten older. We say things sometimes that we would have never said in our 20's so I made her this old lady M & M cure. I got the idea from another blog that was for medicine or get well, but thought it suited this too. Here was where I got the idea from: http://creativeexpressionsbyjoanna.blogspot.com/2008/07/m-medicine.html

Here is my version, you can click on the photo to enlarge it.

Outside:



Inside:





For meet the teachers night the booster club at our school had a back sale and they asked me to make something, this is what I made:


Here is all of them together:

Summer coming to an end

The last few days of summer have come and gone. It had rained so much the kids had to find new things to play inside. One day when one of my nephews, Hank, came over the kids built forts and shot nerf bullet at each other. It was Hank and Emily against JT and Dylan. They did this several times over the last few days of summer.

Here is Emily running out of her fort to grab some more ammo:


Dylan and JT reload and planning their next move:

Dylan standing taking a shot:

Hank and Emily in hiding:

Rockets soccer

JT's soccer team played in a tournament this weekend. It was a great learning experience for them. We didn't win a game, but they improved greatly from the first game to the last game. We had several obstacles to overcome like we had to play an age up as we were the only ones in our age division signed up for the tournament. Also this is our first year playing with real goalies and we have only had 3 practices. With all that it was great to get them out there and get some playing time. They learned alot and will be ready to go once the season starts in September.

JT is number 6:



JT kicking it over a defender to try and get it to his team mate:

JT is one of the goalies. It scares me a little, but he is doing good. Here he is in the green shirt after blocking a shot kicking it back up the field:

Friday

Friday JT had a friend over and we made snow cones.

Then we went and picked up two other friends and we all went skating and had lunch at the skating rink:

We love to skate and it is good exercise for me!

Bayou Wildlife Park

We asked the kids what was something that they wanted to do before school starts, well JT said he wanted to go here. I had been once with my nephew Justin before I had kids and had fun so I thought it was a great idea and it was. We had so much fun. It is really neat (and a little scary at times) being so close to these animals. JT, our animal lover, was all over this. Emily was very scared and would scream almost everytime a new animal would walk up and stick his head in the cart. If you have never been it is a must that you go. You take a guided tram tour of the 80+ acres with all kinds of animals and you have buckets of food to feed them. Here are a few of the pictures I took, I made them small because I put so many, but you can just click on them if you want to enlarge them. As soon as you pull into the park you have to drive your car through so of the animals. This Emu (I think that is what it is) walked up to our car and was looking for the the food:


You have to drive to the back before getting out of your car and they have a sitting area were you wait for the tram and have picnic tables so you can bring your lunch and a petting zoo too.


Here are the kids as we got ready for the ride.


JT feeding a camel:
This was a water buffalo

The zebra's wouldn't come all the way up so we didn't get to feed them, but they are beautiful!



Todd feeding a Texas Longhorn: It was fun and something we will do again. Next time I think we will try it when it is a little cooler though!

Cards and stuff

It has been awhile since I have made any cards or worked on my scrapbooks or anything along those lines. Well my sister Christy was turning 40 so being the nice younger sister that I am I had to give her a hard time about it. So I made her this card to remind her of how old she was, just in case she forgot (the lighting is kind of bad):

I also made her this little tin with 40 suckers to put at the table as a friendly reminder:

Since I was in the card making mood, I went ahead and made a card for beautiful Katelynn who will be turning 6 at the end of this week. This was actually a card kit I had from Close to My Heart.

Now it is time for me to get back to work on my scrapbooks.

Hard to believe...

that school starts in two weeks from today. While we have everything they will all need, I am not sure that I am ready to send all 3 of my babies away for the day. As the summer comes to end we have a busy schedule (what else is new?) Soccer has already started and looks as if all the kids will have a pretty good team. JT's team will actually play their first games this weekend at a tournament.

The boys had their end of season swim party on Friday night. They got their trophies and everyone got to swim at the city pool.


JT has started playing baseball on a select team. The team just formed about 4 weeks ago. They played in their first tournament over the weekend. The first game was pretty bad, but the second game on they just got better. They did great for only having 4 or 5 practices were most of these teams have been together for a year or more. We may not have won, but our kids were some of the best dressed. I just love their uniforms. Not sure how long I will be able to keep them white so I made sure to get some good pictures before their games. Here is one of JT at home before we left:

This is one of most of the team (3 kids weren't there) before their first game. JT is on bottom row second from the left.
Here is JT at one of his at bats. He got a hit at each at bat:

I now get to enjoy spending the last few days of summer with my angels before they leave me. I still can't believe summer is almost over. It just flew by. Hope everyone enjoys their last days of summer!

This past weekend

Every summer since JT was 18 months old we have gone to San Antonio and taken the kids to Sea World and Fiesta Texas. Well summer is almost over and we haven't been. Our original plan was to take them this week while Todd was off. Then we realized soccer season starts this week and JT's team (which Todd coaches) only has this week and next week before they play in their first tournament. We didn't want to cancel practice so we have held off San Antonio until hopefully this fall. We will have to go on a weekend now (which I hate, we always go during the week when it is less crowded) but it will be cooler. So feeling bad that we didn't make it we decided to take the weekend and go some where close ( I didn't want to fight the heat and the crowds this weekend in San Antonio) so we went to the Woodlands Resort. There is so much to do. We checked in Friday afternoon. After dinner we went to the main pool and they play a movie. Here is Emily siting in the water watching the movie:





Here are the kids after swimming Friday night. We took one of my nephews, Hank, with us too:





It was very pretty out there with a little lake that had lots of animals that were very tame. You could walk right up to them and sometimes they would walk right up to you. Here is the kids feeding some of the ducks. Once they started feeding one a whole bunch of them showed up:




The pool area was great. The main pool had two pools, hot tub, spray area and two waterslides. They had a band out there playing, you could play water volleyball and water basketball. They had an island in the middle of one of the pools that had pictures painted and this treasure box and stuff and had music playing under water. You could get a treasure map and go "snorkeling" to find the painted pictures on your map and when you turned it back in you got a bracelet. They also had a clown face painting and making balloon animals and you could play giant chess and ping pong. Also in the evening besides the movie they had a fire pit that you could have smores at. We didn't make it either night as both times we were at dinner. Here are a few more pictures:

Saturday night we decided to go to Benihanas for dinner. We had never taken the kids and they loved watching their chef cook their food and using chopsticks to eat with:

Overall it was a good time. Both Emily and Dylan had gotten sick Saturday afternoon, but we didn't let that stop us from having fun.