September Thing

Reagan entered the hula-hoop contest at the 3rd Grade Olympics!!! I am hear to tell you that 3rd grade girls are hula-hoop masters!!! They can do it all day long. After 15ish minutes the teachers had to make it more challenging....walk around, jump, eyes closed, etc. I think Reagan made it to about the last 5. A little friend from our neighborhood won. The best part of my day was watching all the girls surround her, cheering so excited when she won. They were genuinely thrilled for her and I got teary watching.

Walking down the halls to Reagan's second event, I passed this picture on Gracyn's teacher's door. She has all the class pictured, holding this sign. I love it. We hit the teacher jackpot.

Then I ran into this girl on her way back from the nurse's office. She lost her 2nd tooth at school that morning and had finally gotten the coveted treasure box. I was so happy that I was there to see it. I was feeling so warm-fuzzy, happy and thankful for our great school on this day.

Reagan's second event was a game like Scattergories. They were assigned a letter of the alphabet and had 60 seconds to fill in all the categories with a word beginning with that letter. She did great and made it to the final round. 

I had picked this up earlier in the day, so we all had Olympic cookie cake for dessert after the bus. I am always looking for any reason to buy a cookie cake. 

Silly barn days. We spend SO much time out there handing out and waiting for Addison.

Getting on board?? It's hard to fit in around here on Saturdays without your HOGS shirt. WOO PIG SOIEE??? I think that's how it goes. :)

And the day we got that special treasure box, we lost our tooth down the drain, while washing it. Gracyn was heartbroken. The tooth fairy was very understanding about the "incidend"

My adopted, "outside" kitty. On my kitchen table, in the middle of somebody's Uno game. I LOVE her!

Gracyn won the "Head of the Herd" award for her class the first month of school. So proud of her hardwork and leadership. 

Gracyn with Mrs. Gunter, first grade teacher extraordinaire!!!

I went with her class to a field trip at the Amazeum, our new children's museum. It was tons of fun, but so crowded. I must have counted that group of red shirts every 45 seconds. I only lost 1 girl, for about 3 minutes when she wondered out of the bathroom. It nearly gave me a heart attack!!!

Love special field trip days. Bonus....this was indoors, far away from chiggars. 

More afternoon barn time. This group of little sisters is lucky to have each other. They play and play while they wait.

Reagan reading to the little guy in a doctors waiting room. LOVE.

This girl is a nut. She constantly makes us laugh. It is impossible to be around her and not be joyful.

It was the first chilly night of fall softball. We snuggled under blankets and drank hot chocolate. It was late game. We had lots of softball night at the field until 9am. Not easy when the bus comes at 6:50am.

And, this was at the bus stop the next morning. 50 degrees, 7:20am, the bus was 30 minutes late. We were tired and freezing. Ready for the weekend.

Jumper Jackpot

Addison had a jumping competition at her barn back in September. She and Zee did a great job!!! She works so hard at her love for riding all year long and it is nice to have the days to see her hard work pay off at competitions. I am thankful our local riding stable does these occasionally, so she gets the experience. It was a long day....around 9 hours at the barn. She did her events later in the day, but loved helping some of the younger kids tack up and warm up for their events earlier. I lost count, but I think she ended up with 2 firsts place events, 4 seconds and 1 third. Those earned her a Grand Champion and 2 Reserve Grand Champion awards.

It really is amazing to watch. She didn't pick an easy sport. She had to see the competition pattern written out, walk it once on foot and then memorize and be able to ride it within about 30 minutes. Jumping is hard....it combines lots of balance, footing, command of the horse and timing. It would scare me to death! All that and she takes care of a 1000 pound animal and all her tack in between. Thankful she loves it so much and that we are able to watch her do it.

Ozark National Science Center

I chaperoned the mother of all field trips for Addison's class back in September. We headed out around 8am, for a 12 hour day at a science center about 1 1/2 hours away. 

First stop.....long, windy, twisty, bumpy bus ride through the Ozark mountains. These girls sat in the back. I went back for a picture and then moved to the front, where smart adults sit. I wore an armband for nausea, keep my eyes straight ahead and sucked on peppermint all the way there. The bus ride turned out to be the easy part!

Shortly after our arrival, we split into our groups for the next 9 hours of exploring, hiking and field work. This is where I found out that the science center (not our teachers) doesn't allow parents to supervise their own child's group. So, after pulling many strings and spending a week arranging my 3 other children's schedules, to go on this trip with Addison, I was assigned a group of 10 children I have never met. I didn't know a single child in the group. I said a quick good-bye to Addison and off we went.

Now, I am all for hiking, trails and exploring. I enjoy it, but I like to stay on the move!!! Unfortunately, our guide was more of a sit and talk girl. Here we are on the porch of a 150 year old farmhouse. The house was very cool (think Fixer Upper)....sitting on the porch talking about it for an hour, was not!!! I wore my Fitbit and in a 4 hour hike, I had less than 3000 steps. We would walk for 10-15 minutes and then sit down in the woods to talk for 45 minutes.

It was already driving me crazy before the kids started noticing the ticks. It was seed tick season, and every time we sat down in the woods, we would be crawling with them. The guide was unconcerned and would just pass out duct tape for us to pull them off with.

Around hour 3 when I thought I couldn't get more bored, one of the girls in my group started feeling bad. She proceeds to tell me how she had fever that morning, but she took Motrin and came to school anyway. Now, 6 hours later, she is burning up with fever, miserable, 2 hours from home and in the middle of the woods. I ended up going back with her to sit in the "infirmary" for the last 2 hours. No books, no TV, no cell service. Just her and I in an empty room with a cot and a chair.

When dinner rolled around, she and I headed up to the cafeteria for "camp dinner". I did at least get to eat my sloppy joes with Addison. At this point all the kids are celebrating that they made it through the all day hike without having to go to the bathroom or laughing that they survived going behind a tree. All of us are happily guzzling water that we were too nervous to drink before and during the hike, due to the lack of facilities. We survived dinner took a few group shots, found an enormous tarantula on the way back to the bus (best part of the science center) and loaded up.

We drove about 30 minutes when 1 girls starts crying that she has to go to the bathroom NOW. The poor girl is hysterical and we are in the middle of nowhere!!! The bus driver kept an eye out and about 15 minutes later he spies a porta-potty on the side of the road in front of an abandoned gas station. He lets the teacher make the call and since the poor girl in beyond miserable she says stop. Well, then, of course SIX girls then decide they need to go. At a single porta-potty. On the side of the road. In the middle of nowhere. The potty crisis slows us down 20 minutes, but we get back on the road safely, laughing with the bus driver about how he has only had to stop for bathroom emergencies a few times in his 25 years of driving. We move along nicely for about 30 minutes and then one of the boys starts in. We are at least back in the city now with options and our bus pulls into a gas station. This time 5 boys have to go and they unload with the teacher!!!! The bus driver tells me this is the first time in his career that he has ever stopped twice for emergency bathroom trips on a field trip. It turns out all that water we drank after surviving our hikes, came back to haunt us.

The cherry on top of this field trip came the next day. I woke up itching like crazy and COVERED in chigger bites. I probably had 100 bites on me. 50 of them on my feet. I have never been so miserable and itchy in my life. Chiggers are EVIL!!! It took 3 weeks for those to clear up. Thankfully I can laugh about it now, but I promise I'm not going back in 2 years when Reagan's class goes. 

Pappy and Melissa Visit

Pappy and Melissa came to visit for the weekend, just a few weeks after school started.

We took them to our favorite local food trucks and we spent a day hiking the trails around our museum and downtown.

We got to browse the Farmer's Market. Tommy and my dad played a morning round of golf and we even got to go on a date, while they watched the kids. Perfect, as War Room had started that weekend and we were anxious to see it.

After a few hours of hiking, we wondered in to the museum to cool off. The kids told Pappy, "It's just alot of naked people!". They have yet to develop an appreciation for fine art. They do love this little area, though. They always have different still life stations set up to practice drawing. Gracyn is hard at work in this picture. Her left hand is all balled up because she has a cricket in there!!! She found him on our hike and carried him ALL DAY! She even some how managed to go to the bathroom with it. He came home with us, hours and hours later, but I'm not sure he "made" it.

Here they all are hard at work on their drawings. My dad joked later that they she got to bring in her cricket, but the museum workers made him throw his empty water bottle away. We had a great time showing them around NWA and can't wait for their next visit.

August Things

We discovered the perfect place to hunt for crawdads. They could do it for hours! We collect them in buckets and turn them all loose before we go home.

After the first day of school. These girls were tired.

Reagan's sweet friend Mallory came over to play. We walked her home and she way dying to walk Maggie.

A little Sunday lunch. The other side of the table was equally as cute, but I'm not supposed to post pictures of the guy on that side. This was at a new little place here called Joe's Italian. It's dark, quiet and fancy-ish. The little guy calls it, "The place where everyone is quiet except us"!!!

I sprung Reagan from school to get a spring fixed on her braces. She was teaching me where to look for a selfie, while we waited.

Leaving the orthodontist, the school nurse called for this girl. She went to the nurse, said, "My head hurts, my stomach hurts, my throat hurts and I have strep". And, she did. The nurse was skeptical to send her home, since she didn't have fever, but she said, most kids don't walk in diagnosing themselves. We had a quiet afternoon watching Fixer Upper. 

The adopted outside cat. On my bed. We love her. She's in my lap right now.

Gracyn spent a good portion of her summer up the neighbors tree in front of our house. 

Our neighborhood is almost done with construction.
Praise the Lord!!! New neighbors are moving in all the time. There is always fun to be had outside. I LOVE when loads of kids and their Mamas are in my driveway all afternoon.

Hip Hop class. Poor girl, she hardly has any personality.

My girls love to read and that love just keeps growing!!! Our most recent read together book was "Wonder". It was amazing. I highly recommend reading it with your children. You will all learn some things about compassion. 

Screamers Softball. We have a tournament this weekend, which ends our 2nd season. They have grown so much and are such fun to watch!!! Reagan hits great, plays a pretty great outfield usually at first, shortstop or catcher. And, she manages to squeeze in a lot of dancing in the outfield in between balls, it nearly gives her Daddy a heart attack!!!

With the girls back in school, I squeezed in a little one on one time with this guy at the children's museum. We had a fun morning and he loved being able to call all the shots. This was our favorite part.

A little hammock time with Anna at our church tailgate party.

She finally lost her first tooth!!!Her teeth are so crowded I had to tie the floss around it to get it out. They are too bunched in there for me to grab and pull.

Just a Friday afternoon house full.

Whataburger came to Arkansas. It has been a BIG hit around here. It took some perseverance to eat there in the beginning, but things have settled down some now.

Reagan was home sick and had a little Scrabble challenge with me. She tried to use "Veds". She said it was how French people say beds with their accent.

I wasn't falling for that. She can beat me, without cheating!!!

And then, Addison got strep again. I had kids home sick for about 25% of the first few weeks of school. 

Gracyn's journal writing. I told you she spent all summer in the tree!