Summer 2013

Once again, I haven't blogged for a really long time. I thought I better put some summer pictures in before I have two "first day of school" posts right by each other. Katie has turned horse-crazy as I think all little girls do. I still am. She's watched every episode of "The Saddle Club" 50 times or so. We took the kids riding at the Air Force Academy stables. They loved it! The ride was in the beautiful woods around the academy. It was so peaceful and relaxing. None of us can wait to go back!

 Every year, my Reserve Wing has a family day. They let the kids see all the jobs their parents may do. They have all sorts of fun things for the kids to do too, like a Velcro wall and bungee trampolines. The kids had a great time.

 This summer we also had the Black Forest Fire. I took this picture on my way home from work the day it started. It was so sad to see so many people lose their homes. The way the community rallied together, though, was awesome. The folks who endured the Waldo Canyon last year were especially quick to offer help. The Flying W Ranch was burned last year but they offered to put up at least 100 horses this year. We used to drive into the Black Forest a lot to look at the beautiful landscape and homes. We spent a lot of time hiking there as well. What a terrible loss.

 This  one is from my front porch. It looks like the fire is in our neighborhood but it is actually about 9 miles North.

 What would summer be without playing in the fountain?

 We spent a couple of weeks in Utah with family. We went to the Leonardo Museum and the Treehouse Museum in Ogden which is the best children's museum I have ever been to.

Riding the train back from Ogden. The kids are tired!

 

 Katie got her first pedicure with me, my sister, and my mom. Now if I ever go again, I will either have to take her, or sneek out because she loved it!

 

I was able to work all of June. We brought my nephew, Zach out to be our Manny. He was amazing. He played with the kids every day and I loved coming home to a clean house! We hated to send him back home.

 Well we still have a couple of weeks until school starts so hopefully we'll do something blog-worthy.

First Day of School

Well, to look at my blog you would think we didn't do anything this summer. Just straight from Kindergarten graduation to the first day of school. I'll have to put our summer pictures up sometime. Especially since I have the whole day to do it while these guys are at school. Since I homeschooled Tommy last year and Katie was in half-day kindergarten, I am really missing them today. They were excited for school though so that is a good thing. I went to help Tommy check his blood and do his shot before lunch. I was afraid he would ask me to take him home but he seemed to be having a great day and couldn't get me out the door fast enough. I met with Tommy's teacher, the school nurse, the principal, the assistant principal and the office staff this week to discuss his Diabetes plan. They were awesome. He is the only student in school with Diabetes. He also has a peanut allergy so when I dropped him off at the cafeteria after his shot, I saw that he has to sit alone at the peanut free table. That kind of breaks my heart. When he was in first grade, a lot of his friends started sitting with him so he is optimistic that will be the case again. I guess I could have stayed with him but would that make him get beat up at recess? Probably. I hope Katie's day is going well too. Now I have to find a new excuse to not clean the house. I know, I'll go into work.

Katie's Graduation

Our little Katie-bug graduated from Kindergarten today. She and Tommy had the same teacher and she was wonderful!

 BFFs

Proud brother

And now for the video portion of our presentation:



April stuff

I usually take a lot more pictures for Easter. I was a slacker this year. The kids had fun dyeing eggs. They get more creative every year.

 Mostly dead...still beautiful

 Tommy ordered a praying mantis egg from our favorite insect website. It took a few weeks for it to hatch. There were at least 100 babies. They were surprisingly very cute. Tommy's original plan was to sell them for $1 each. I thought that was quite entrepreneurial of him. I had to let a few go in the backyard because someone forgot to close the habitat all the way and they were all over the top of it one day. Then, inexplicably, Tommy just let all but one of them go in the backyard one day. We wish he would have consulted us so we could tell him it was going to snow the next day. It was his project though so we tried not to second guess him too much. The sole mantis died a few days later. Tommy was pretty sad. Insectlore should really not sell anything to us anymore.

 My sister and her family came to visit the weekend after Easter.  The kids had a great time playing together. Mike and I had to work the weekend but that was part of the plan. My sister watched the kids for us while we worked. She did a great job of managing Tommy's diabetes. It's nice to expand the list of folks we can trust to watch him. She took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese's, Lowe's kids workshop, a Pokemon tournament, basically more than we do with them in a month. I was so happy to have time to talk to her. She is awesome and I wish I could see her more. She braided Katie's hair which is not easy. Katie keeps asking me why it is that my sister can braid hair but I can't. I just don't want to. When she went back to school after Kathy had gone home, Katie said, "I wish Aunt Kathy was here to braid my hair today".

 Here they are. Those two little curly headed ones are trouble when they get together.

 We were all very sad to see them go.



Tommy & Katie's cinematic debut

Tommy and Katie made this video to showcase Tommy's new megablok set. You can look forward to many more. Until they get bored.