It's finally over.....

Well, the school year is finally over. I can honestly say that I've never been so happy for a school year to end. Not even when I was in school.

It was a really rough year. Not only with Wyatt's problems with his knees, but there were teacher issues (and with more than one teacher) that we had to deal with that I didn't go into here. I'm afraid it might have earned us a reputation as 'those' parents. You know, the ones that are hard to deal with.

I'm hoping that next year will be better, but the kids will still be on the same campus and, like I said, I think we've earned a reputation.

Anyway, Kirsten received an award in Science which was a nice to surprise for her.

She also received an award for her participation in the Duke University TIP program.

They did a great job this year, even with all the other stuff going on and we're so very proud of them. They really are great kids!

It amazes me how much they grow up in just one school year too.

Here's the first day of school.

And the last.

Where, oh where, have our babies gone?!


Now, on to summer.....

Wowza!

Not quite done with the school year yet. Last week we attended an art show put on by this year's art students. Addison and Kirsten both had several items in the show. It was nice to go up to the school and for the kids to have a chance to show off some of their hard work.

We also attened the spring band concert to hear Wyatt and Abigail play. Both bands did a really good job. This was the last one we'll be attending (at least for the next school year) because they both decided not to continue with band. Oh well.

My wonderful parents spent the weekend at our house with the kids so that Dax and I could get away. We headed to San Antonio again and had a great time. It was very relaxing, but went by all too quickly.

On the way home we stopped to eat at Lulu's Cafe' and decided to bring a little sweet treat home for the kids. We went with a cinnamon roll (which Lulu's is famous for.)

 How's that for a little breakfast? The cinnamon rolls from Lulu's Cafe' weigh 3 pounds each!! Oh, and you can order them online.

Your welcome. lol

Mother's Day and so forth.....

I hope all the mothers out there had an enjoyable Mother's Day.

We went to dinner the night before to help avoid some of the crowds. It was a lot of fun and the food was good. It's always good when someone else cleans up after me.

On Mother's Day we took Addison to watch some of her friends play for the state championship in soccer. (They came in 2nd place.) Then we went and had doughnuts. Later in the day they also bought me an ice cream cake. Add that to the cupcakes that I had for breakfast and it was a pretty 'sweet' day.

As far as gifts go, Wyatt gave me some scents for my Scentsy. Addison made a pillow for me to use when I read at night. Kirsten made me a necklace and a bracelet. She did a great job on both. And Abigail made a jar with slips of paper in it for reasons that she loves me. I put it on the counter in the bathroom so that I can read one each morning. What a great way to start the day, right?

On Saturday I took Kirsten and Abigail up to the tennis courts to practice. Dax showed up a little later to play a little tennis with them.

Dax was trying to help them learn to return his power serve.

As you can see, Abigail isn't very impressed with his skills.

All in all it was a great weekend. I even got to take a nap on Mother's Day. That's almost a miracle...and I LOVED every minute of it!

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......

Round Two

Wyatt had his second knee surgery (on his left leg this time) on the 19th of April. Everything went well once again.

He went for his follow up appointment yesterday to see how things were healing and to get the stitches out.

The doctor said that things look good and that he's a fast healer. He gave Wyatt a smaller brace and gave him the okay to get back out to golf practice.

He goes back in three weeks and hopefully he'll get the final release and we can be done with this.

Pirate for a day

The kids have been reading Treasure Island at school. To go along with the story they've had activities that they could earn 'pirate bootie' for completing. There was a prize for the team with the most coins by the end of the story.

One of the activities was dressing like a pirate one day at school.

Here they are:

Kirsten:

Abigail:

Wyatt, who obviously did not participate:

and Addison, who was home sick in bed:

The girls did have fun deciding on what to wear. Even Addison had an outfit all picked out.

Training Day

During our busy tax season, Dax took some time out to train the next generation.

Here he is teaching Wyatt how to input a tax return.

It's great for your kids to know a little more about what you do for a living.


The down side of that is that he gave Wyatt a VERY simple return to input so now Wyatt thinks Dax's job is easy and doesn't understand why it takes him so long to get the returns done.

Back to Easter

It has been so crazy busy around here that I just haven't had time to keep up.

Since I never got around to posting about Easter, I guess I'll start there.

The kids dyed eggs again this year. Although, this year they weren't boiled. Since there are 4 dozen eggs to be dyed, I baked them. And it worked out great.

Here are Abigail and Kirsten still working on their eggs.

Even the cat couldn't resist helping.

Here's the group ready to hunt for eggs.

After finding all the eggs in the house they headed outside to look for more.

The Easter Bunny got them pretty far away from the house this year! We still found some in the trees a day or two later.

There is also still one dyed egg that has remained unaccounted for. I'm not sure if one of the dogs found it first and ate it or if we need to just keep waiting for the smell to alert us to its location.


Dax decided to go with a preppy look for this year's Easter dinner.

Unfortunately we were unable to find him a yacht or a yacht club. Hope he has better luck next year. It sounds like fun.


Addison borrowed my camera for a bit to take some pictures.

I made a collage of the pictures she took.

I'm feeling pretty good right about now that she isn't interested in a photography career.

Beautiful Texas Bluebonnets

This year I spread about 10 packets of bluebonnet seeds in our front yard.

I did it in the fall like I was supposed to. We had a lot of rain during the winter so I had high hopes for a bumper crop.

Beautiful, isn't it?


Only, that's not my field of bluebonnets.


Those bluebonnets are growing on a soccer field where I'm sure they're totally unwanted.


I, on the other hand, WANT a field of bluebonnets so that's why I put out all those seeds.


Here's my field.....

Yep!


ONE!


More than a hundred seeds, and I got one plant.


Abigail found it and she took the picture. I don't even know where it is because she won't tell anyone.


She's trying to protect it.


But she did tell me that when it is finished blooming and goes to seed then maybe we'll have more next year.


She's quite the optimist!

Laundry surprises....

My kids have been responsible for doing their own laundry for a couple of years now.


I remind them all the time about the precautions they need to take when doing laundry.


Things like:

- check your pockets, I don't want any more red pens in my dryer.
- don't wash all the blue jeans at once, the washer ties them in knots.
- don't wash new red clothes with your whites.
- make sure that you're only washing dirty clothes! (I've actually found a shirt still on the hanger in the washer!)

You know, the usual stuff.

The one I repeat the most often, though, is 'Don't just scoop the clothes up off your floor and throw them in the washer.'

And just the other night when the washer was off balance and I went to adjust the clothes I found a reminder of why I say that most often.

It's one of Kirsten's boots.

She assures me that she doesn't know how it got in there because her hamper and her shoes weren't even in the same place.

And of course she didn't just scoop clothes up off the floor because I've told them not to.

I'm sure Not Me did it. That bad little Not Me is always doing something he's not supposed to at our house.