Christmas Flashback

We were looking at old pictures and video over the Christmas season and happened across this video. We had forgotten about it, but it's one of our favorites.

These kids are so funny......then and now!

A Very Merry Christmas!

I hope that you all had a great Christmas season! We've been crazy busy, but it's all been a good kind of busy.

We started off our Christmas time off with Addison volunteering again at the Ronald McDonald house in Austin. This time we were making stew for lunch. This is part of the charity work that comes with one of the pageant organizations that she participates in. I think it's a great thing that they require something so good from these girls. Unfortunately, it's usually the same handful of girls that show up for the charity work.

I did lots of cookie baking for the boxes of cookies that we deliver to our monthly clients. As usual, we ended up with a lot of leftover cookies so we've all gained weight and are also sick of cookies, but I'm sure we'll get over that!

We had a wonderful Christmas spent with family with lots of thoughtful gifts, food, and laughter.

I hope your Christmas was merry as well.

Fifteen!

I  can't believe how quickly time passes. Or how busy we are, but I feel like we weren't really doing anything interesting.

Anyway, I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that my babies turned 15 last month. That's just crazy!! It seems like just yesterday that I was finally coming to terms with the fact that we had four babies at once. Now they're practically grown.

We celebrated their birthday in the morning before school. We had to do it that way because Kirsten had asked for concert tickets to see Hunter Hayes. The concert was in Dallas on Friday night, so right after school on Thursday I took her to meet her Poppy (he met us half way) to go back home with him. Her Aunt 'Manda took her to the concert and they had a fun 'girls' day out.

 

They had a good day for the most part. They were all upset that they had to go to school on their birthday because they've never had to before, but they survived it.

It's show time!

Kirsten is in show choir (think Glee) this year. They preformed at the Veteran's Day program on Monday and are scheduled to preform at the pep rally tomorrow morning. But, as luck would have it, Kirsten got sick last weekend. By Sunday night she had all but lost her voice. She still sounds terrible and doesn't have much voice at all. But the show must go on so she's just mouthing the words.

An interesting idea

I was contacted by someone from Kairos Life about their website. It's basically like a digital time capsule online. You store your digital images and memories with them and they deliver them to the designated person on the designated date. It sounds like a really interesting concept.

Anyway, they contacted me because they are going to be testing the process soon and are looking for people to sign up (at no charge) to help them beta test.

Here is what they have to say about their site:

 "KairosLife.com is a place for families to save digital memories and heirlooms for kids and loved ones. Then digitally deliver those keepsakes to them at a predetermined date in the future, kind of like a digital time capsule or gift.

Our founder recently lost a close friend who passed suddenly without warning and was again reminded of how quickly life can be taken away, at any age.

 

He woke up one night with the idea of this site.  He is a father of three and was thinking about the memories we want to keep forever - and how could they be stored, kept for the future, and delivered at just the right moment to have the greatest impact.

 

How does it work?

1. Upload photos, videos or letters from your PC or mobile device to a “KairosMoment” which is the album or capsule that will be delivered to your loved one on a future date.
2. Tag your loved ones to that KairosMoment and set a reveal date when it will be delivered.
3. As the reveal date approaches, if desired, other family members and friends can share their thoughts on that KairosMoment to add to the memories for that loved one.
4. Then on the reveal date, the loved one will get an email notifying them of a KairosMoment that has been unlocked.

We are still polishing up the site and are giving complimentary memberships to people who can help us. Just visit www.KairosLife.com and enter your email address.

 

 

 If you think it sounds interesting and you would like to help, click on over and give them your email address.

Annual trek

We made our annual trek to the Renaissance Festival over the weekend. We all look forward to it each year.

This is the group that we took. It takes two cars to make the trip since they bring friends along.

We really couldn't have asked for better weather while we were there either. I think everyone had a good time. I know the ride home was pretty quiet because the girls were all tired. Already looking forward to next year's trip!

Halloween

First of all, I took Addison back to see the doctor about her knee. We were hoping he would release her to go ahead and get back to soccer and out of rehab, but, sadly, that wasn't what he said at all. She's still doing physical therapy until things are better healed. So we wait.

In the meantime, Dax and the kids had fun carving pumpkins.

Wyatt's:

Kirsten's (It's the Hunter Hayes logo)

Dax's

 Abigail's (Her's is a Rottweiler)

 

Addison got frustrated with hers so just taped some pictures to it.

 

We weren't sure there would be any Halloween festivities at all. The night before we had heavy rains all night long (about 14 inches) which caused flooding and quite a bit of damage. Here's a part of the road out to our house that got washed off it's base and into the ditch.

 

But, the water around us receded pretty quickly. The kids got lucky and school was cancelled due to the flooding, so they had a day off.

Addison and her friend Alex volunteered in the haunted house at a local nursing home. Kirsten was the only one that went trick-or-treating. She was a flapper.

 

All in all it was good.

More of the Same

I think we're finally starting to get into the routine of school.

The kids all have a lot of homework everyday. We've already gotten projects for science finished and turned in and books picked out for the papers due in December. We've even been geocaching for extra credit points.

We did get good news on Addison. She did not tear her meniscus. The doctor says that she sprained her LCL and has tendinitis. She's on a single crutch for now, doing a lot of rehab type exercises at school, and keeping it iced down as needed. She still has a lot of pain, but it is a wait-for-it-to-heal kind of injury.

Last Saturday she and I were supposed to work the merchandise stand during the football game (it was the soccer teams night to work) but it was raining and we were supposed to be selling shirts and such and they didn't have any awning to cover us so our services weren't needed. Instead, we sat in the rain and watched the first half of the game.

Addison got sick the first week of school and it has spread through the house and now all the kids have had it. Wyatt and Abigail are holding onto it longer than the other two did. Can't seem to shake those coughs yet. But, hopefully, this means we've taken care of sickness for the year. Hopefully.

Last weekend, Addison had to go to a mall in San Antonio as one of her duties as pageant queen to help out at a Disney Radio event. They were working with young (2-5 years old) kids showing them how to be royalty. It was cute. But because of her knee, the pageant director wouldn't let her do anything but sit at a table and take the raffle tickets that people turned in.

In other breaking news, Kirsten has signed up for show choir at school (think Glee) and is really excited about it. I don't know if they will just perform or if there will actually be competitions. I guess we'll wait and see.

It's been really busy and I'm kind of hoping for a quiet weekend. Since the science projects have been turned in, there shouldn't be a lot of extra kids at my house this weekend so maybe it will happen. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Maybe back to school isn't so great......

As parents we usually love back to school time. I know I'm guilty of it. But we're only a couple weeks into the school year and I'm already shaking my head.

Last week during her athletic period, Addison twisted her knee running up the bleachers. She iced it down, wore a brace, and took it easy over the weekend. Well, yesterday the Athletic Trainer took a look at it and it appears that she has torn her meniscus (the cartilage in her knee). We'll see the doctor on Saturday morning to find out for sure and to find out what we do from there. In the meantime, the coach is giving her some exercises to do so that she can strengthen it without doing more harm.

What's the deal with my kids and their knees?

Over the weekend, I took Kirsten and a classmate to do some geocache searches as part of a project for World Geography. They're learning to use longitude and latitude coordinates. It now appears that we got into chiggers so we are both scratching fools. The other three will still have to do this work and Kirsten and her friend still have five more searches to do. Hopefully we won't keep finding the chiggers with each search day.

Over the summer Addison did quite a bit of volunteering at the nursing home in town. She absolutely loved it! Now that she's back in school, she misses it. She even got up early on Labor Day to go volunteer again so that she could see the residents. But, I guess that gives her something to look forward to on days when she doesn't have school.

Abigail has decided that she would like to be a veterinarian. We have a couple of clients that are vets and they have been kind enough to invite Abigail to go to their offices and shadow them for the day. She had the chance to do it one day during the week before school started. This vet was even nice enough to make sure he had some surgeries scheduled for that day so that she could be part of the 'fun stuff.' She had a great time so now we'll have to see if we can work around school days to keep her going back.

We are so very fortunate to have people in our lives that are so willing to expose our children to these great opportunities. We are also fortunate to have children that are willing to take part when the opportunity is presented.

But, as for school, things are going nicely. The kids have a lot of homework, but so far they are staying on top of it. And they seem to be enjoying their classes, which is a big plus!!

Back to the Real World

We've been pretty busy since we got back from vacation. I guess that's sort of obvious since it took me over a month to get the vacation posted about.


Since we've gotten home, the kids did go and spend a couple of weeks in Houston with their grandparents, which is always a lot of fun for them.

We've done some geocache searches, there has been some golf and tennis played, and we've had a few trips for ice cream or sno-cones.

(Wyatt is looking more and more like his dad.)

Addison was in another pageant and won her age division. For this one she will compete in a State Pageant next year in May or June.

Dax and I got invited to attend an event for retired Texas Rangers law officers. We had a nice time. It was on a beautiful ranch along the river, with good food and good company.

 This was my date for the evening. Isn't he handsome?

 

 Then, the very next week, we attended an awards luncheon where Dax received an award for all the volunteer work that he does in connection with the Hays County Sheriff's Department. He had received a regional award earlier, but this one was a state level award. We are all so proud of him and all that he does.

I took the girls to do some back to school shopping. Even though their grandparents had taken them already.

 

A little touch of glamour on her eyes.....

But, I guess the biggest (and most traumatic for me) thing that has happened is that school started. And I have high schoolers!!!

(Addison, Abigail, Wyatt, & Kirsten)

 

I am just not ready for them to be this grown up. I had to fight back the tears when they got out of the car on the first day of school. They all have pretty tough schedules this year because their mean parents made them take the harder classes, but they're off to a good start.