First Day in the First Grade

Can you name that Veggie Tale movie??? I was also MG's first day in the 5th grade. She is now in middle school. She changes classes and has a locker (locker decorations are the most important thing about staring school this year!) She is doing very well. I am 3 weeks late posting this and she has done well so far, I can monitor her grades online and she has a study hall to get most of her homework done.
GW is loving his class. He has a wonderful teacher and most of his buddy's are in his class. Not sure if that is a good thing or not yet, but he loves it! I have lots of pictures to post. We had a busy summer. Cute photos from Minn. where we finally got to meet the newest member of the family (7 month old Cora), fastpitch softball, and lake pictures. So I promise I will post again soon!!

What do you do with a possum after you catch one?

My wonderful 73 year old born and raised in the country, but now lives in the middle of the city dad caught a possum yesterday. He actually had a pet possum when he was young. His name was Sammy and Sammy lived in the house. Anyway, yesterday morning there was possum under my dads car and then it went up a tree, so my dad caught it. That was were he stopped the story.

So I asked him what he did with it.

He threw it in the trash.

The trash trucks were coming so he just threw it in the trash. When he put something else in there later he said it just looked up at him. So now my dad thinks there is a happy possum running around the dump. I didn't want to tell him that the crusher thing probably took care of the possum before he even got to the dump, I will just let him think he made the thing happy!

The kids are in Minnesota and I am bored out of my mind. So I will post of pictures that I have taken recently. Gracie in all her mountain biking gear and Garrett swimming. Oh, and Barbie giving Garrett a bath. I really think she thinks he is hers. She gives him a bath every chance she gets. I think every boy needs a Barbie dog!

Just a Quick Post

These were taken after her team placed 2nd at state. She was trying to smile while crying. She played so hard and we are so proud of her, but these pictures are just sad.

Garrett being Garrett.

I am looking forward to a nice relaxing long weekend of swimming and cooking out! I hope everyone has a nice relaxing fourth!

It Has Been a While

It's summer so we have been swimming and at the ball fields. Just thought I would share a shot of GW celebrating the fact he made it to second base! Have a good weekend!

The Difference a Lens Can Make

Today is my 33rd birthday and my wonderful hubby got me the lens that I have needed for a while now. Our house has wonderful lighting for living. Very soft lights, but for pictures it pretty much was awful. Most indoor pictures are blurry. So Sean got me the 50mm lens for my b-day. These are straight out of the camera and I love them. I should also be able to get the basketball shot that I want next year! I am just so excited! The kids are already tired of me sticking the camera in their faces! Barbie even got her picture taken and I usually cannot get one of her that is not blurry! I will spend the next several days playing with my new toy!! Sean, it was the perfect gift! Thank you! It is so nice to have a husband that gets me!

Rituals

Every year I take pictures of all the girls on the softball team and make little books for them. At the end of the year party they pass these books around and everyone signs them and they have pictures of themselves in action and one of all the girls. My favorite pictures are the batting pictures. Gracie always looks mad. I don't know if she is trying to scare the pitcher or if the sun is just in her eyes. Several of the girls stick their tongues out while they bat. Some have thier faces screwed up in concentration. One girl has her eyes closed in almost all the pictures of her batting. It is amazing what your camera catches. Things you don't notice while watching the game. Gracie has a ritual before every pitch. She draws a line from the point on the plate out, then she crosses it like she is marking her spot. Then she pounds the plate with her bat. Then she is ready. She repeats this with every pitch. The other night we were watching my nephews baseball game. This one boy came to the plate twirled the bat and hit his cleats a few times then got into his stance. After the third time Gracie asked why he did that. I just looked at her and said cross, cross, pound, stance. She just smiled.

The Graduate

I had such a harder time with graduation than I did when he went into kindergarden. It just seems like yesterday that Grace was in her little cap and gown and now she is going to middle school and Garrett will be starting 1st grade and they just don't stop growing!! He was nice and loud for this performance also. You could hear him above all the other children. I will have to remind him of this when he is older and too cool to actually sing in the school programs. Anyway, he made it through K-5 and we will see how 1st grade goes!

Wild Boy

I haven't talked about Garrett lately. Soccer season was over today. I missed a lot of his games. When they both have games I usually go with Grace and he goes with Garrett. He did have a lot of fun and did not want it to end. He will move up to all boy teams next year and he will make a great defender!

Remember Gracie and the solo drama. Garrett has no stage fright. In fact he could be heard even when he wasn't in front of the mike. His teacher promised them 10 merits if they sang loud and GW as determined to get his ten merits. He sang loud and off key, so maybe he got extra merits for that!

Teeball is in full swing now. I just haven't uploaded any photos yet. I will make a post someday that does not involve sports and children, I just don't know what I will post about yet! It seems like this is all I do!

Happy National Scrapbooking Day!

Julie has posted some challenges for NSD on her blog so I am posting my layouts here! I love challenges. I would have never gone in Gracie's room and found an old treat bag in a basket on her desk, cut it up, and put it on a page. Just a simple page from the dad and daughter dance.

Ouch!

And this is the face you make when the ball hits your hand instead of the bat. I felt to so bad for her. That had to hurt. Well, it is softball season. I really did not want her to play softball this season, but really it has been a life saver. She loves it. Plain and simple, she loves it. She loves her team and she enjoys playing with them. Oh, and I am not a mean mommy. She shook her hand a few times and continued on with batting practice. I will post some fun photos from this weekend when my computer decides to obey me. Lots of outfielders running to get balls hit by my daughter. Fun times!

Insanity

We have had a truely insane weekend. Grace had 7 games yesterday. Seven. We started at 7:45 at the soccer fields and we left the softball field at 11:24pm with first place trophies for both tournaments! You would think she would be falling over tired (I was). NOPE. I am very proud of her. We were running from one field to another. She didn't miss any games and she played her heart out. We got to one softball game right as she was up to bat, her coach was calling us and pretty nervous, she is third batter. She ran to the field and batted and when she made it around the bases she ran to the dugout and asked if she had time to go to the bathroom! Even through the last softball game she was yelling cheers and having a blast. I think she thrives in this enviroment. Free time drives her crazy. I have tried to get her to rest and watch movies and read books today and she wants to run around and play outside. Sean came to some of the games, we didn't think Garrett should have to spend his day running around and going from field to field, so he had a dad and Garrett day, until the last couple of games, he fell alseep in my lap at the ballfield. I have a feeling this is just the beginning of insane busy weekends.

Julie wants seven random facts about me.
1. 4th grade science is kicking my butt. Seriously, do you remember the 5 layers of the atmosphere or all of Newtons laws?
2. I am becoming a scrap product collecter instead of a scrapper. I need to make time to scrap.
3. Sunday after church I will google the words to songs the band sings so I can find the songs on itunes. Then when I mow the lawn or I am folding clothes I can listen to worship songs. They usually sound better coming from the band at church, but I have found some great artists and songs this way.
4. I am a Big Brother junkie. I read the spoiler threads at a couple of sites. This seasons people are skanks. Seriously and you don't know that unless you read the spoilers.
5. I love the movie Enchanted, but I cannot look at McDreamy and not be mad at him because he is not with Merideth.
6. I volunteer in the office at my children's school once a week and I love it. I miss having other adults to talk to.
7. I have been wearing flip flops and my toenails are not even painted yet. Really, I have no business wearing any kind of shoe that shows my toenails or cracked heals, I need to take care of that!

Random

Miss http://julieamberjones.typepad.com/ tagged me to post 7 random things about myself. I really can't think of 7 radom things so I decided to post 7 random photos I have taken.

Soccer Season!

Basketball was over on Tuesday and Saturday we will be in Russellville playing soccer. She is going to be on a basketball team that plays some tournament in the Spring and Summer so hopefully I will get the lens I need for bball pictures, but until then here is a soccer picture from the Fall. I love her serious expression. She didn't care that the girl was a head taller than her. She stood her ground! I hope for her that is a life lesson!

Daddy and Daughter Dance

They clean up pretty well don't they! It was amazing to go from her basketball jersey and ponytail to curly hair and a dress! She is so beautiful and grown up! (I may be a little bias!) Sean got her a Webkinz for her little present and then they get to dance! Gracie loves going to Minnesota for weddings because she knows she will get to dance, she loves it! Garrett and I are just going to hang out and eat McDonalds (only because that is the "special" thing he wants to do with mommy! YEA!)

SNOW!!!

Our lovely snowman is now face down on the ground, but it was fun while it lasted!

Toothless Wonder

I know it is not the best picture, but he is so cute with his toothless smile!
This is not the first tooth he has lost, but it has been over a year since he lost his other two. He was so excited that the toothfairy was coming and he woke up the whole house yelling about the two dollars the tooth fairy left him! It has been a while since I wrote about him. He is reading little words and adding numbers! He would play video games 24/7 if we let him. He is so excited about teeball. We signed him up last Sunday and he is ready to play! He is growing up too quickly, the other day Sean asked him if he would stop growing and he told daddy that he had to grow up! But he is not getting married when he grows up because he is going to be Darth Vader and Darth Vader is not married.

I Scrapped!

My house is a total mess and I have a mountain of laundry to do, but I scrapped! My BIL and his wife had a baby on Dec 27th so I bought several outfits and I made an album to send. We didn't know she was a girl until she was born so I have had fun finding cute girly stuff to send. I really struggled witht he album though. I am a simple scrapper and felt like it was a little to simple so I kept adding things so it may have too many ribbons. Anyway, it is done.

Save!

I know this picture is so blurry it is not even funny, but I love it. She dove on that ball (the black and white blur)! It was an awesome save. She has not touched a soccer ball since the KC tourney, but she did pretty well for being rusty. Right now it is basketball, basketball, and more basketball. She is having a really good season so there will be basketball pictures soon, I was just really proud of the picture (not the photography ability but the save)!

A Wii Christmas

We had a nice quiet Christmas at home. The kids (and by kids I mean G&G and Sean) played Wii most of the day. I have really never played video games, but this is addicting!

Oh The Christmas Solo Drama

There are like people here.

Um, seriously, a lot of people

Maybe if I look this way they will go away

Deep breaths

I am saying a prayer.


maybe if I look at the ceiling

Or just look at my brother on the front row dancing to Silent Night





That wasn't so bad.

Seriously, I don't have pictures of her coming off the stage and I had to go talk her into going back up there. She stood doubled over for the three songs before her solo. Sean had to go on the stage to tell her she was ok. A teacher also went onstage to pray with her hoping it would calm her. The turtle neck was not a good choice. She about tore the thing off. (I guess the whole sweater dress, cami, tights and sherpa(?) lined boots while cute were very hot). I was very proud of her though. She sang the last verse of Silent Night and hit every high note. She really does have a beautiful voice. She received lots of encouragement from her friends on stage with her. Sereval people told me at school the next day that they had been praying for her. She needed it. I think the choir teacher needed those prayers also, she was very nervous when her soloist almost passed out onstage!