2013 Week 39

Was out shopping with my friend, Juluisa (Julie), and she couldn't resist buying this for me - and a "good witch" one for herself lol  Mine reads "you say wicked like it's a bad thing."

Kaitlyn says for once she's happy about falling on her bike. It knocked a tooth loose and now she will be getting a visit from the tooth fairy!

Sam had the day off on Friday and decided we needed to start the celebrating for my birthday a little early.  So while the kids were at school we went up to the big mall in Raleigh, had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory (love that place!) and did a little shopping.

Tyler had his first every spelling test on Friday and he aced it!

 Family fun out with friends this weekend.  A whole group of us went to the corn maze and had a great time. 
Kaitlyn liked challenging herself with the sledge hammer thing.  And Tyler had to try out all the heavy equipment.

 Then we hit the maze in teams - boys against girls.  The boys won.

 And when we were all hot and tired (it almost hit 90 that day) and ready for a rest we went on the hay ride.
I'm very happy that we've found this great group of friends that like to have fun and get together regularly.  And that the kids are all good friends too.  It really adds to the fun of every-day life.

 Bambi cuddles!  Oh those kids love that dog and she's very patient with them.

2013 Week 34

Enjoying the last week of summer vacation.  School is coming up on us quickly.

Kaitlyn started dance class Monday.  She was very happy to be back in class.  Me, I'm not sure I'm happy she's having fun and I love that she loves dance, but 7:30PM dance classes on Monday nights - it's a little rough week after week.

 Final swimming lesson on Tuesday - Thanks Miss Danette!  The kids learned a lot over the last few weeks.  Kaitlyn can now do all of the major swimming strokes (and is already better than me at the crawl stroke) and is quite a good swimmer.  Tyler has moved past his doggy paddle (yay) and gets around the pool better than ever.

His favorite part of swimming lessons - sinking the Titanic

 

We've also tried to spend quite a bit of time just hanging out at the pool with friends as much as we can this week.  It's been kind of rainy and colder (not complaining about the temps - I love when it's in the 70s), thus some time reading at the pool.  Kaitlyn is really into the Harry Potter series right now.  She's on the 5th book after starting the series only a month ago.

Just for fun :)

 Saturday we took the kids to an orchard (something we've been meaning to do for a few weeks but kept having to postpone).  We had a lot of fun picking peaches, apples, and grapes.

2013 Week 17

Bambi is growing fast!  She's probably doubled in size since we got her.  She's starting to learn a few things - I think we might have a handle on the potty training and she knows how to sit on cue.  She is still very much an energetic puppy, which is fun.  The biting and jumping have toned down a little bit but she still has a long way to go with that.

 I'm pretty sure she recognizes the sound of the alarm on my phone when it's time to go to the bus.  And when that bus turns into our neighborhood she gets SO excited to be mobbed by all the kids.

Kaitlyn and Tyler love their puppy and have so much fun playing with her.

On Friday the kindergarten got to go to the Aloha Safari Zoo.  It's an exotic animal rescue and oh what a great place to visit!  There was so much more interaction than you get at most zoos.
(Miss Allen, Mrs Plumber and the rest of Tyler's class)

 Tyler's favorite part was feeding the giraffe.  His name is Strech, which Tyler thought was a great name.

 There's Tyler's teacher Miss Allen taking a photo of the big snake.  They brought that thing out and just let it crawl around on the ground and the kids could go up to it anytime they wanted.  Tyler stayed at least 10 feet away from the snake - not that I blame him! He did however like touching the tortoises, baby goat, and the pot bellied pigs that were also out wandering around.

They also give you a ride behind a tractor to see some of the larger animals in their fields.  All the animals come right up to the fence so everyone gets a really good look at them.  Zebras, buffalo, camels, antelope, watusi cattle...

2013 Week 16

 Awards assemblies this week.  Once again the kids did fantastic during this term at school.  (Too bad I left the memory card for the camera at home and only one of the photos I took with my phone turned out.)  Kaitlyn got Terrific Kid (they select only one per class each term), a PE Leadership award and Principal's List (high honor roll - all As).  Tyler got the Roaring Writer and Bookworm.  I'm always so glad that my kids love school and love learning and that it comes so easily for them.

 Tyler got hold of my phone while we were in the car one day and took at least 100 photos of the top of his head :)

We wanted to do something fun this weekend and although we would have preferred the beach it wasn't really beach weather.  Saturday Kaitlyn went to a Girls Day Out thing with a friend which left Tyler hanging out at home with us.  He rode with Sam to get the tire fixed for the motorcycle then they came home and got the lawn mower started.  Tyler's so big!  Sam let him mow almost the entire back lawn on the riding mower and he did a great job.  It was his most favorite thing all week!

On Sunday we decided to explore a new hiking trail.  It was a little chilly but we all loved being outside, including the puppy.

When we finished everyone was hungry and we were close to one of the neighboring towns so we grabbed a quick lunch at Sonic.  Then on the way home we still didn't feel like we'd have enough fun for the day and it occurred to us that we hadn't taken the kids to do miniature golf in years.  So we dropped the puppy at home and looked up a golf place and headed out again.  Turned out to be a great idea.  It was a lot of fun.  And once they kids stopped trying to rush through it and actually took the time to try to hit the ball straight, they did pretty well.

 

2013 Week 13

Spring!  I love seeing the bulbs starting to peek up through the ground and knowing that soon there will be lots of pretty flowers!

It was a bit of a rough week.  I did manage to take some time to do crafts with a friend.

Of course we didn't manage to get them finished in our first session, so she and her kids came back later that night (Tues).  The crafting went well, but at one point the kids were in the kitchen getting snacks and we hear "ewww GROSS!  Tyler just threw up!"  Yup.  Ewww.  We got it cleaned up and sent everyone home and hoped it was a random thing.  Nope.  By 10:30 that night he was throwing up repeatedly - so often in fact that by 2:00 Sam took him in to the ER.  They gave him something for the nausea and Sam said that by the time the dr saw Ty he was feeling well enough to flirt with the nurses :)  We had to keep him home from school on Wednesday (where he sadly missed the Easter hat parade) and Thursday, but he was able to go for the short day on Friday.

(**need to add photo of Ty in his hat with his friend at school)

Friday also marked the beginning of Spring Break!  We started it off with Easter festivities.  We dyed eggs on Saturday.

 And due to rain in the morning, the Easter Bunny hid not only the baskets but all of the eggs in the house.

The kids got roller blades, sports equipment, flip flops/sandals, and all kinds of fun stuff.

Bambi also got her own basket and a few new toys.

The roller skates were by far the favorite item from Easter.  Luckily the weather cleared up in the afternoon so the kids could gear up and try them out.  They LOVE the skates.  It looked like so much fun that Sam and I pulled out our roller blades for a little bit and skated with the kids too.

2013 Week 12

The puppy was my little buddy all this week, spending as much time as I could manage keeping me company while I got stuff done.  At this point she likes to be by people, but she's a puppy and gets into way too many things she shouldn't so especially when I was painting I had to keep her contained.  She was NOT a fan of that.  I was happy to see however, that all the construction vehicles going by our house didn't phase her one bit.  Once we get past the puppy stage, I think she's going to be pretty mellow.

 Bambi also got her first bath here.  Kaitlyn wanted to do it all herself but we knew the puppy wouldn't be cooperative (we were right - she wasn't a fan).  I love that Kate is so responsible when it comes to taking care of the puppy.  She makes sure the puppy is fed and has water.  She takes Bambi outside for a walk as soon as her homework is done and knows to put her outside a LOT to avoid accidents in the house.  Tyler is a pretty good help too, though he isn't big enough to manage the puppy much on his own.

 The Kindergarten does an Easter hat parade every year at the school.  The kids all get to make a fun hat then parade around the school to show it off to everyone, so we spent some time on Sunday making one for Ty.  Tyler decided he wanted his to be a "fire hat" so we took that idea and ran with it.  We used one of his dress up firemen hats and added some burning buildings, a "road" and some emergency vehicles.  He was pretty happy with the result, and looked very cute in it!