First Day!

Summer flew by!  It's hard to believe that it's already over, but alas, we are three days into a new school year.  Let's back up and look at all of our first day festivities!

We have a traditional back to school dinner!  I cover the table in butcher paper, have the kids write some stuff on it, and we usually have pasta.  I love seeing some of their answers.

Graham is excited about wearing headphones at school, and he is nervous about nothing!!

Here's what Clare had to say:

Jane's responses:

And lastly, Sydney's:

On the first morning of school, everyone was up early and ready to roll.  I think everyone had some nervous energy...no one ate much breakfast!  

Graham is headed to first grade, and one of his best buddies is in his class!

Jane and Sydney are in fourth grade.  They have two great teachers...one for reading and writing and one for math.

Clare is top dog this year as a big 6th grader.  (sniff, sniff)  

My four smarty-pants!!

And a more serious one for posterity's sake!

All reports from the first day were good.  Clare's teacher was out sick, so that was kind of a bummer, but she seemed ok about it all.  

Praying for a great school year!

Colorado 2017

At last!  It was finally time for our week in Colorado!  The cousins were excited to be reunited!

One of our first stops was Jane's Lane!

We started our week off with our second annual campout.  The campout always provides some good memories.  This year we saw a moose on our drive to our campsite.  It rained a bit, and we were very thankful for our tarp setup!.  Thankfully, the rain passed by, and we were able to cook our dinner and have a good night's sleep!

These five love the camping trip.  They hang out by the stream, gather wood, look for animals, and they even shot the pellet gun.

We spent a day on Mt. Crested Butte.  The kids love all of the activities, including bag jump

and Euro Bungee!

Several in our group hiked up to the top of the mountain!  

Clare's had an injured foot, so we passed on hiking this week, but she thought something was pretty funny!

Another day, Megan took these four on an easier hike.  They loved it, and I love the pictures that she got!

On Friday, Mom helped the kids have their second annual lemonade stand.  "Cousins Lemonade!"

Graham was excited to get a matching shirt with his uncle Nate!

LoLo had a fun project for the girls.  They made no-sew fleece scarves!

It was a great week in a beautiful place!!

July Phone Picture Dump

Here are some random pictures from my phone from this month....

I took the girls shopping one afternoon.  We had such a fun outing, and those girls can shop!  I think we stayed at the mal for five hours!  The highlight for the girls were the food court snacks!

Jane and Sydney struck a sassy pose for me in the dressing room.  They look so much alike to me in this picture.

This guy isn't much for shopping, but he's on a first name basis with the tooth fairy!  I think he's lost four this summer.

As seen above, my girls are big fans of Starbuck's.  They had a friend sleepover, and they decided to try their hands at homemade unicorn frappacinos.  They were quite pleased with their re-creations!

After all that working, they needed to relax!!!

In 6th grade, you have to choose between band, orchestra and choir.  Clare chose band, and she selected flute.  We picked it up yesterday, and next week she will go to a few band practices to get started.

Summer is a great time to practice fort building skills.  I was pretty impressed with Jane, Sydney and Graham's fort.  They even slept in it one night!

We celebrated Casey's birthday with a dinner at Hutchin's!  (Syd had some attitude about posing for a picture.)

Summer definitely means more time at home, which often means more arguing.  I was so pleased one morning last week.  I was in my room getting ready, and it took me longer than usual.  I came out into the dining room and all four kids were sitting there coloring together.  It was such a pleasant reminder of that they are nice to each other a lot of the time.  Made this mama proud!

That's it for July!  Can't believe August is right around the corner!

Missoula Children's Theater

This summer all four kids were able to participate in this summer tradition!  The kids spent a week auditioning and rehearsing for the Saturday performances of Gulliver's Travels...in Space!

Graham's debut role was as a blue alien!  He loved it.  He smiled the whole time he was on stage!

Sydney was a princess!

 Jane was cast as a robot. She didn't love her costume, but I thought it was pretty cute!

Clare was one of the yahoos....a group of kids who weren't the smartest!

They all did such a great job, and they had fun week together!

Summer Fun!

We've had so much fun this summer since our New Braunfels trip!  I think we've had a good balance of organized activities combined with plenty of lazy days at home.

Last week the girls did Pine Cove in the City!  It is always such a fun week for them.

Jane pulled this together for safari day...she had to borrow Graham's shirt! Pretty cute safari hunter, if I do say so myself.

 This was Clare's last year to be able to do this camp because she's getting too old. 

While the girls were at camp, Graham and I had some big fun of our own.  We went to the movies, went bowling, took a friend to the ninja place, swam and played games.  We called it Graham Camp, and it was a good time!

After all the camps were over, we headed to Deedee and Papaw's lake for a night! We packed in tons of fun activities while we were there. 

We fished from the boat house and from the boat, and the kids did awesome! They caught a ton!

 

We rode on the boat!

We swam in the lake!

We solved the world's problems! 😉

And thanks to Papaw's skills, we had one heck of a firework show.  Graham thoroughly enjoyed setting off his own fireworks!

We've had a ton of fun this summer!  Can't wait to see what the rest of the summer has in store!