Update time!

I know. I know. Once again it's long overdue. I feel like I have less time now than when the kids were little. How is that even possible? It's crazy!

We celebrated Easter, but I seriously can't believe the Easter Bunny is still stopping at our house. But, hey, it's always good to have our family together.

 

Addison changed jobs and is now working at a preschool. She spent the first month or so being sick from all of the germs the kids bring with them. I'm thinking she likes the old people better.

We welcomed a new nephew, Zane.  It took a couple of months for us to finally be able to go see him. Like I said, Addison was for a long time. I finally made her go to the doctor and it looks like she got there just shy of pneumonia. Well, Dax caught what she had and spent some time being sick himself. Then I had shingles so couldn't be around the baby either. But, finally, we got well and got to meet Zane. It was wonderful!

 

After tax season (grateful that we survived) Dax and I took a few days off and spent a long weekend in San Antonio. This time we stayed right on the Riverwalk and had a wonderful and relaxing time. Every day should be like that.

Abigail has been off at school, training to be a flight attendant. She was sick when we dropped her at the airport and for her first week or two of training (see Addison was sick and sharing above). But, she managed to make it through and has done really well. She will be graduating as Valedictorian of her class. We are so proud of her. 

She will be based out of Houston so will be crashing at her grandparents' houses. I think she'll bounce back and forth between the two sets of grandparents so that she doesn't wear out her welcome.

Wyatt finished his first year of college. Since he's thinking law school, he'll be spending some time this summer interning for an attorney here in town. He's pretty excited about that.

Kirsten is still working with graphic designs. She has a number of items for sale in her online shop at The Messy Bun. Go check out her stuff. I have a couple of clothing items and get lots of compliments on them.

We can't figure out why none of them want to go into accounting. I'm sure it has nothing to do with their Dad sleeping at the office during tax season.....

So, I think that gets us caught up on the big things. I'm sure I've left out a whole host of little things, but they always come to me later.

Too long again

I know. I know. It's been a really long time. But in my own defense, we got new phones and I had to get anything off my old phone. Then I had an update all typed in and I can't seem to get back to it. The drafted post is there, but I can't open it. Me and technology....get outta here.

The school year ended successfully. Wyatt was inducted into the National Honor Society. We are just so proud of all of our kids.

Still no new drivers. There has only been a little bit of interest with the other three, but hey, they have Addison to chauffeur them around.

Once more, my kindness was not repaid the way I wanted. Another of our cats had kittens!! That gives us a total of 11 cats around here. I've become the crazy cat lady without even trying.

Abigail went to spend most of July in Nova Scotia with her boyfriend, Avery, and his family. She really enjoyed it, but doesn't think she could live there. It was good for her to see what it might be like to live in other places. When she left there, she and Avery and his mom Jen, met us in Florida where we spent a week at Disney.

The rest of us took a few days driving to Florida.

We did a little high fashion shopping on the way.

We stopped at an alligator farm.

We also did a swamp tour in an air boat and saw a whole lot of alligators. The tour was with Swamp Fever and they were fantastic.

We finally made it to our destination and got to see Abigail again.....but we sure missed her on the way.

Not my fault....

I know it's been forever, but this time it's actually not my fault. lol My computer contracted a couple of really nasty viruses. There were two different ones that are new that each did a lot of damage in completely different ways. We tried for a couple of days to make repairs to no avail. Then we took it to the computer doctor and after he spent a week trying to save it, we had to concede defeat and wipe the hard drive clean and start from square one. Not only did we have to reload all of the programs for work, we had to go back and retrieve (thank goodness we had carbonite) all of the files and pictures that were specific to my computer. At this point we've spent roughly three weeks trying to get things back to regular working order again, and I'm still finding little things here and there that we missed. It's just crazy.


So, let's see. Where did we leave off?


For Halloween, since none of our kids want to dress up anymore, Kirsten and Addison went to the square in town and watched the little trick-or-treaters there. Dax and I love to go watch them each year, and I think that the girls had fun too. At first they told us that we were kind of creepy for doing it, but then they realized that it's fun to watch the little kids so excited in their costumes.

Here are two of my favorites:

How cute are they?!

Addison's concussion is all healed now. She was terribly disappointed at having to miss the final two games of the fall season. She's decided to go ahead and try out for the high school team, although there are apparently only 4 open positions. It appears that returning players have to go through the motions of trying out, but their team positions are reserved for them. Not sure I agree with doing it that way, but I'm not the coach so I don't get a say.

Abigail has started the skating class in order to play hockey. Not crazy about that idea, but she really wants to play. *sigh*

I looked at this picture that Kirsten took recently, and I can't believe how grown-up my babies are getting.

Hold on to them while you can!! They grow up much too quickly and long before you're ready to handle it. Heed my advise on this one, people.

Weekend Review

It seems like it's been our usual kind of crazy around here.

Late last week I had gone to pick Wyatt up from a friends house and on the way home the car just died. I got it restarted and got the rest of the way home (some times at only 20 mph). I followed Dax to the mechanic. Long story short, the car will be with them for the next 2-3 weeks. Gaah!!!

Dax had guard duty over the weekend so I had to drop him off on Friday night and pick him up late Sunday morning.

I was lucky enough to get to see the newest Bucee's gas station. If you have never been to a Bucee's, it is a gas station like no other.

Yes, that giant building that looks like the entrance to a shopping mall is the store for the gas station. And yes, all of that parking lot you see is solely for this gas station. I wish I had taken pictures of the inside. They even have shopping carts for in the store. It's just crazy....I'm telling you.

Then on Saturday I met my parents to get Abigail. She had spent the week with them. I had the other kids with me and on the way back home we stopped and did a little shopping at an antique store I like. We couldn't find anything that we couldn't live without, but it's fun for us to look.

Sunday I picked Dax up, we stopped for lunch since all the kids were still asleep when I left, and then headed home. We had a relaxing afternoon and had a good time celebrating Father's Day. (The battery on my camera was dead so I used my phone to take pictures. I'll upload those later.) I hope all the other father's out there had a great day as well.

We're done!!

Wyatt had another appointment on Monday with the orthopedic surgeon. He said that everything looks good and released him. We're all done with that!

Woohoo!!

I don't want to sound mean, but I hope we never see him again.

Addison and Abigail also started cheer practice on Monday. They were pretty tired when they got home (it's 8 hours a day) but they said that they had fun.

Kirsten is visiting her grandparents and loving being an only child. Well, she probably was until yesterday when she shut her finger in the car door. It's not broken but there's a pretty good chance the nail is going to come off.

I have to go on Friday morning and have a little procedure done. Because it has been scheduled so early  in the morning, Wyatt told me that by the time he "rolls out of bed" I should already be back home. Kinda' touching, isn't it?

Even though it's summer, I feel like we're even busier than we were before.

What's happening....

It's been pretty busy around here, which is always what happens at the end of the school year.

Wyatt and Abigail went to a band competition in Austin last week. The 7th grade band got 1's all across the board and also was awarded 'Best in Show' for all of the schools competing. Woohoo! I guess all of that practice paid off. After the competition, the band stopped for pizza and games for the rest of the day. The kids had a great time, but still not enough to change their minds about being in band again next year. I tried.

Kirsten has played in tennis tournaments for the last two weekends. She's played doubles in both tournaments. Unfortunately, she hasn't progressed in these matches. We can't complain, though, because she doesn't have any prior experience in tennis. I'm proud of her for being willing to get out there and play against girls who have been playing for years.

Kirsten is off today at a party for the students that participated in UIL this year. She was really excited about it and looking forward to it.

There's all of the usual running that gets thrown in on top of it too. Fortunately, we are now done with golf practice after school three days a week and tennis practice after school four days a week.

I guess sometimes I get a little more overwhelmed by it all than I realize. For example, yesterday after I picked the kids up from school Addison asked what was wrong with me when I was packing their lunches earlier that morning. Apparently, I gave the two kids that want mustard on their sandwiches the ones with mayonnaise and the two that prefer mayonnaise got mustard. That's not really that big of a deal, right? But, she went on to tell me that the wrapper was still on the slice of cheese on her sandwich. Oops!

Only a few more weeks left......