From K to 5

Today was a milestone. This little girl who was so tiny on her first day of kindergarten is now done with elementary school.

She finished 5th grade today. She has grown so much and I am so proud of the young women she is becoming.

What have we learned in the last 6 years. C is very smart and school comes easily for her. She likes cursive more than print. Her favorite subject is writing or language arts....just exclude spelling which she does not like. She enjoyed writing a book this year about the school mascot, the Coyote.

She also has a passion for art ...winning a few contest along the way....and looks forward to taking art in school next year. She enjoys crafts and creating things whether from fabric, clay, beads, whatever. She is very creative.

She is also a good friend and loves spending time with her girl friends whenever possible (Can you blame her living with all brothers!!) She enjoys the outdoors including camping, swimming, and soccer.

She is just one awesome kid and I'm so proud of her and look forward to what lies ahead in her promising future.

Swimming in May

The warm weather is here so we are at the pool! Swim team is upon us once again. All 3 older kids are on the team again and continue to improve. A is now learning all the strokes and doing great. To learn breaststroke in 2 weeks time and not DQ is pretty impressive. His butterfly is super close as well.


C is in the age group where she must swim 2 laps for races. It is tough but she is getting stronger all the time.


T is after the most improved award. He won it last year and wants it again. All my kids favorite stroke is my favorite, breast stroke and that makes a mama proud.

The twins are also swimming finally. I hope to have them learn this year so I can stress a little less when at the pool. We started swim lessons with me last week. I create a little contract with them as I have all my kids. It has 5 boxes or and after each lesson they mark off a box, when all 5 are marked they earn a prize. Then 5 more and another prize. That is how I motivate them to work with me during lesson time. The biggest motivation is when they can swim accross Mema's pool they get to go to MacDonalds. After 10 lessons my older kids got the big prize. We are at 7 lessons done now. As soon as they figure out the breathing they both could make the distance.

I'm really proud of them. S has great confidence from the beginning of lessons, but R was so scared to put his face in the water. R has come so far that he is as confident as S. Both are having lots of fun and ask to go swimming every day. I need to get some pics of them, Mema has some but so far I have stayed in the water with them and not had my camera ready.

Hot Dog Sticks

After our last camping trip, we learned we did not have enough hot dog sticks. Everyone needs there own now. So I started looking to buy some new ones. I want the kind that extend longer so my kids can be back a little further from the fire. I priced some out and online seemed better choices than most of the stores near me.

One of our hot dog sticks is hot pink with my name on it that I painted when I was at Girls Camp many years ago as a teenager. I thought before I ordered any I would ask my Mom (who was in charge of girls camp back then) where she got mine. Maybe I could get more like mine. I asked her and she told me that someone made them for her, but she might have some extras. We went digging in the closet at her house where she stores all the camping gear and found enough for all my kids to each have one and still leave some for grandma. 3 were unfinished and 1 was plain blue and one had my name on it. I guess I made more than one back then.

So for a family activity my kids enjoyed painting their own hot dog stick. They will get their first hot dogs and marshmallows cooked on them this weekend while we go camping. Fun family times!

Zoo Day

Spring weather makes me want to be outside, especially after this cold winter. Yesterday we went with our little preschool group to the zoo. The kids had lots of fun and most of the big animals were surprisingly active. Giraffes were all outside near the fences. The elephant was scratching himself on his scratch post. The bears, monkeys, and leapards were all up and moving in their cages. That made it more fun for the kids to watch them.

I must mention that the giraffes were S favorite because he has a Webkinz Jr giraffe named Moonga which he loves and sleeps with every night. R likes elephants best just like his Webkinz Jr elephant Mirror who love to watch him play games and Mirror talks to me all the time.

It did feel a little strange only having 2 kids with me and not all 5, but school just gets in the way sometimes. But there were 100s of school kids there that day on field trips from lots of school districts, but not ours. Another neat thing for me was this was the first time I did the zoo without bringing a stroller or wagon. My boys were big enough to walk it all and really did well for almost 5 hours, they complained only a bit in the last hour, but then they saw something else cool and were fine again. They even had energy to feed the ducks before we left and chase more birds (which they did whenever they saw a bird!) It was a fun day!

S'more fishing fun

Spring Break ended much better than it began (see last post). The weather for camping was ideal. Our camp was just steps away from the lake where Daddy and the kids caught lots of fish. A caught the biggest one and we had it with dinner one night. Both R and S have learned to cast now. Daddy is proud.

We had a great time. The twins really discovered s'mores this time and were excited to make them....and not just eat marshmallows, crackers and chocolate separately. It was fun to have R tell me how to make it. He wanted his chocolate on top of the cracker. I cannot tell you how many marshmallows S ate, but he had the most!

C and T became little fire bugs. C was so proud of herself starting her own fire one morning.

T is feeling better. It is still tender, but he is not in pain. He sat more this trip than in trips past. But he wanted to go, we all did and the Dr OK'd the trip. Glad we went and built these memories.

Appendectomy

What a way to start Spring Break! On Saturday, T started complaining that his tummy hurt. I was gone all day and he was telling Dad. The next morning I go wake T for church. His tummy still hurt. It hurt to walk. I ask all the mommy nurse questions, take his temperature, feel his tummy and determine that this is something that cannot wait.

I send Daddy to church with 4 kids and I take T to the urgent care clinic....hoping that we would get some antibiotics and head home. It was not that simple.

During the initial exam they suspect that it is his appendix. After blood work and a cat scan, it was confirmed that his appendix was the problem and it needed to come out TODAY. The doctors at the clinic suspected they had seen a hole in the appendix so they wanted to send us to the hospital by ambulance just in case. I was not thrilled with that idea. I could drive him, but Daddy said how often does a boy get to ride in an ambulance. Maybe we should if that is the dr's recommendation. So we did. All I can say is ambulances are bumpy.

During all this T is doing pretty good. He never had a fever and he could walk OK, but it hurt. Laying down he really did not complain of much but being bored.

Texas Children's ER went smoothly, they had called ahead and were expecting us. So after a short time we were upstairs in surgery preop, then the waiting room. After 1 1/2hours the surgeon came out with the good news, that yes the appendix was inflamed and swollen but it had not ruptured. That means we stayed one night and if no fever or ill side effects we get to go home. Had it burst we could have been in the hospital for several days.

T said hospitals are not much fun. They wake you up lots at night and they are a bit noisy. They are also boring, you lay around without much to do. The playroom was closed while we were there. He did enjoy eating in bed and watching TV. That was his favorite part. My favorite part was coming home. I am glad he is going to get better and that he is a strong healthy boy.

Bunk Beds

This year the twins got lots for their birthday....starting in October I began making them new quilts, big enough for a twin size bed. R picked his favorite color-black and I found fabrics to make this finishing right before Christmas.

S wanted yellow...not exactly masculine, but I found a combination that made him and me happy. I started after Christmas vacation and finished just the night before we celebrated their birthday. Finding time to sew is hard with so many other things on my plate to do.

Then last week, I decided if I was going to put new beds in their room I wanted to freshen it up. Little S has a habit of writing on walls and his room showed a great deal of his artwork (if you can call the scribbles that). So I scrubbed walls and used a few Mr Clean magic erasers (they usually work good), but nothing was getting the permament marker or the dry erase marker off of the walls. So I decided to paint. No special colors, just the same off white to cover the art work. It took 5 coats of paint (4 Kilz coats just over marks and one final coat) to cover those marks.

So I painted, bought the bunk beds, mattresses, matress pads, bed sheets, and pillows. Daddy assembled the beds while I washed the sheets and made 2 birthday cakes (each had to have his own!). All in a fews days time we got it done. After a little birthday dinner at MacDonalds (birthday boys chose the resturant) we came home and they climbed in. They were very happy boys.


No more cribs or toddler beds at my house. Should I be happy or sad?