An End and a Beginning

Well, we knew summer had to come to an end sooner or later. We ended the summer by attending the fair the other night.  The kids had a blast watching the Dock Dogs (those dogs that leap off a dock into the water for great lengths), walking through the barns, seeing people we knew, and we all enjoyed the Luke Bryan concert.  I love fairs! 

We also are reaping a harvest of peppers and tomatoes out of our garden.

Today was the beginning of the new school year.  AJ's last year as an elementary student (although she will remain in the building next year as the junior high moves down for a year) and AD's a second grader already.  Where does the time go?

The left is last year's and the right is this year's of AD

 

The top one is last year's and the bottom is this year's of AJ.

Group shot

(AT goes to preschool in a few weeks!)

Everyone survived the first day of school and are excited to go back!

(If you are wondering why I always choose the frig as my background for the first day of school, I can explain.  It's not because it's the most exciting background, but it provides me a reference each year to see how much they have grown.  It's kind of become a tradition in our house.)

Enjoy your day!

The End is In Sight :-(

After a few whirlwind vacations, we came home to rest.  Ha ha ha!!  Not!  We ended up doing a yard sale on Sat.  We had a bunch of stuff that the kids had outgrown, we had quit using, and well, other stuff as well.  You know how yard sales go.  Once again, one of the hottest days to have one.  We did pretty good and it was fun visiting with family (who had come to sell) and friends (who had stopped by to shop).  After we finished, we had a BBQ with T's side.  We hadn't all been together since Christmas (the whole family that is) so the cousins were all having a blast together.  Today, (yes almost a week later), I finally packed up all the yard sale stuff and filed it away for the next one.  Feels good to get things cleaned up, especially with school starting here shortly.

Yesterday the girls and I headed to town and got some school clothes and supplies.  It took all day (not kidding), but they are ready to go.  T and I had some trainings to go to last Fri, Mon and Tues so we are starting to get back into the idea that sleeping in is about to return to weekends only (ha ha ha).  As teachers, we go back next Wed and the kids start on the 30th.  Not sure when AT heads to Preschool but I imagine it will be somewhere in the middle of Sept.  He returned to daycare this week and was thrilled to see some of his buddies.  He is going to love Preschool.

I have finished up 3 of my 5 semesters for my Master's.  Headed into the home stretch.  Four classes (8 weeks each) left!  I will start the countdown as soon as I start my next class.  Looking forward to having more time to work on it since most everyone will be in school.  Since I am trying to finish, I think this year I'm going to be a little choosier about when I sub.  (I say that, but I always feel guilty telling the sub caller or that particular teacher No.  If you are the sub caller or another teacher reading this, please do not use that guilty feeling I get against me!)

Guess I don't know too much else.  We are just trying to finish up some projects before school starts and we get too busy.  It's coming soon and while I am excited, I always miss the lazy days where we just kind of get up and do whatever we want.  I know schedules are good, but the lack of a schedule can sometimes be a nice thing.

Hope you enjoyed your summer!

Scoundrels

I forgot to mention our run-in with some rascally robbers while we were at the beach.  We had left our cooler sitting out on the front porch next to everyone elses.  There was 5 candy bars, 5 Hershey bars, and a bag of chocolate chips in it.  I get up the next morning and the cooler was tipped over and the 5 Hershey bars were the only things left.  We had locked the rest of the food (non-refrigerated stuff) in the van that night as well.  However, when I went to get the chocolate Costco muffins out of the van in the morning, they were gone.  So I started looking through everything and the marshmallows were open with a couple bites out of them.  T's sunflower seeds were open, as well.  So I'm blaming Adam for the car issues and raccoons for the cooler, when I find a bag of chips ripped open on the back seat.  We had left our driver's side window open until about 9 pm and apparently the raccoons were attracted to what was in the car.  We found the bag from the muffins behind the garage ripped open.  Those darn raccoons had a blast with our food!  I sure hoped they had a tummy ache from all that chocolate.  The lesson learned from this story:  if you are going to think you are smart and put your food in the car, at least be smart enough to roll up the windows!

Enjoy your day!

Images of Summer

As you can guess from the title of this post, I finally have gotten my pix uploaded.  So here goes:

The first set is from our State Babe Ruth trip.  The kids and I wandered into the city to the Aquarium.  I hate driving in big cities :-( but we survived.  AT would look at each exhibit for about 3 seconds and then run to the next one.  There were so many people there for a weekday I was scared I was going to lose either him or AD.  We tried to go watch the famous "flying" fish but the market was packed, the kids were tired, and no one was buying.  We saw only two and the kids were not that impressed.  Maybe next time.

It was a beautiful day on our last day.  You could see the mountain so clearly as we rode the ferry.

Can you guess where we are?

We came home for a week and then we were off to the amusement & water park with Gma & Gpa.  They brought their motor home and we tent camped (always my favorite).  It was a lot of fun and while two days was a lot, we did get to do everything we wanted to do.  I'm not sure that I would go on the roller coaster anytime in the near future.  It moved at speeds of 60 mph and that was not good.  Going through the tunnels, I thought I was going to hit my head (even though I wasn't).  The kids (and grandparents) played at the water park for a long time.  It was a lot of fun hanging out with Gma & Gpa and I would definitely camp again to go up there, but I don't know if I would stay for two days.  It was a lot of walking and AT was about done by the time we were to go home.

We got home Wed from camping, went to some appointments, washed some clothes, and packed our bags to leave Thurs morning for the west side again.  We have family who have a beach house over there and we went with T's brother, his family, and his in-laws.  The weather was beautiful on Fri and the kids and T went to the beach.  (I had to finish a paper for my class which was due on Sun.  Thank goodness for wireless!  I watched the sunny day from the confines of the beach house.  I did finish so I could enjoy Sat & Sun.)  Sat was rainy but we enjoyed visiting a few brave yard sales and the thrift shop.  Plus there is a great used book store there that we always visit.  I always come home with tons of books.  The guys had been crabbing so we had tons of crab to eat while were there and even brought some home.  It was so good!  Sun was a beautiful day so T and I took the kids and went to the beach.  We found a great little sandy beach and the kids had a little fun.  AT was dying to see the lighthouse so we went there as well.  He was a little disappointed because he couldn't go up in it. 

I love this pic of AD.  She was actually mad at us and went off to pout (a common occurence lately).  However, it looks like she's off admiring the view.  The land along the horizon in the distance is Canada!

Sun the kids went sea glass hunting and I had an hour or so by myself at the beach house.  I sat in the chair on the deck reading.  This was my view:

Well, now that we are totally vacationed out, we are glad to be home.  It has been a very busy summer between baseball, gymnastics, and life in general.  I'm glad I finally got it all caught up for the blog.  One more thing I can check off my to-do list.  Which I better go because that list is beckoning.

Enjoy your summer! (We did.)

Way Too Long, But No Time to Tell

Okay, I know it's way too long since I last wrote what we've been up to (try a month exactly), but I am a little short on time to tell it all now.  For one thing, I have a major paper looming ahead of me.  The other major reason is that I haven't got all my pix downloaded from my camera.  It's so much more fun to tell what we've been doing with pix!

In a quick nutshell, however, we spent most of the early part of July preparing to go to State Babe Ruth baseball.  Yep, that's right.  "Oh hon, we will be done with summer ball by the 4th of July" turned into the 24th of July.  However, these are all boys that I have taught in some way (subbing or job-sharing) in the last 3 years, so I was really excited to see them make it.  We were really outnumbered and outsized at State.  We played in the 15 yr olds and we had 13-15 yr olds on our team.  Plus the teams we played were 3A and 4A schools!  I thought our boys did really well considering all that was going on and the level of competition they were up against.  Some of the other teams were even cheering us on because we were the "little" guy.  I love underdogs and this team did a great job.  AT was dying to be in the dugout with them but maybe next year he can be the bat boy.  He loves hanging out with his baseball buddies.  Good job boys and can't wait to watch you next spring!

Like I said, there are a few more adventures we have been on, but I want to be able to post pix with them.  I will try to put that on my list of things to do so I can keep you all current.  Hope all is going well with you!

Enjoy your day!