Henry's First Day of Kindergarten!

How can it be?  My sweet little pre-schooler is already in Kindergarten!!!  Oh, Henry!  I can't believe it!  Having 2 kids at one school is a luxury that I have never known.  The past 3 years I've had 3 kids at 3 schools and it wasn't easy.  Having 2 at one school is just a dream!

Henry is THRILLED to be in school!

When Henry grows up he wants to be a Dad!  Way to go, Neil for showing just how awesome being a dad is!

Our Baby Bulldog

2 boys at 1 school!  

So happy!

Henry and Truett...t-ball buds

It was a family affair!  Being PTA prez, I had to speak at the Tears and Cheers breakfast for all of the K parents.

Mrs. F and Henry

Not too sure about sitting down and getting busy.  Poor baby!  It's so scary to be in a brand new school!

Bennett's First Day of 3rd Grade!

Not sure how my tiny, newborn baby is in 3rd grade now!  I just cannot believe it!  Bennett is such a go-getter and great at school.  He is so sweet and we couldn't be more proud!

3rd and he wants to be a baseball player when he grows up!

How cute!  Happy first day of 3rd grade, Bennett!

Mom kept SK and Henry overnight so that we could take Bennett to school. What a treat to be with our big boy!

Bennett and Logan

Principal Graham and Bennett

Look at that cute photo bomber in the background! :)

Bennett has gateway this year for homeroom.  One you get to 3rd grade gateway is no longer an enrichment, but a grade!  This is his wonderful teacher, Ms. Miller!

Back to School Breakfast!

One of my favorite traditions!  Our Back to School Breakfast is so much fun.  I've learned to not do it on the actual day that school starts because we are always in too big of a rush to have our fun breakfast AND get to school on time.  This year we had it before church so it worked out perfectly.

I usually get each child a book about their year of school.  I didn't find a 3rd grade book this year.  and it was tough finding a 2nd grade one last year. Anyway, they had fun and I guess that's all that matters!

Sister got new markers and crayons and glitter glue for all the homework she will be doing! :)

Bennett got Saints socks AND Tech socks.

Can't believe we only have 2 schools now!

It was also promotion Sunday!  The kids moved up to their new Sunday School rooms.  This means Henry is no longer in the pre-school building.  Henry's group was the first set of babies to ever be in the baby room in our new building and now they are in Kindergarten!  Tear.

We had our Bulldog Bash after church.  Neil had to work the DADS Club table and I spoke at each of the 3 meetings.  I wasn't even nervous!    Amy called me to see what she should wear to the meetings.  I was already dressed and said "what about a royal blue top and white jeans?"  She said "oh yeah, that's cute!"

hahahaha!  Twinning is winning!

Henry is 6!

We love to celebrate 'round here and we are pretty darn good at it.  Henry is 6.  I just can't get over how fast these 6 years have flown by.  Henry is such a joy and is happiest at home.  He LOVES home.  

Henry is thriving in Kindergarten and loving school.  He is making new friends and gets great reports from his teacher.  We are so proud of this BIG 6 year old!

The kids wake up and come to the table on a birthday morning.  That's where their 3 gifts are located and they LOVE it.  A couple months ago I had a couple gifts on the table to take to a birthday party the next day and Henry woke up and said "Who's birthday!???"  He thought it was one of our celebrations!

Instead of making birthday pancakes, we opted for donuts spelling out H-E-N-R-Y!  

Emoji loving boy!

He received "Toilet Trouble" a game that squirts you in the face when you lose.  He had been asking for it for weeks.

Toilet Trouble!

Super Mario 3D World! His Fave!

Neil's idea: a BB gun.

Happy Birthday!

 We lounged around at home playing toilet trouble and Super Mario 3D world and then met Neil for lunch.  Henry only wanted fruit.

After lunch, we headed to see the Emoji Movie and got to sit in the fancy recliners!

Yes, popcorn candle for the win!

 Henry really wanted to have his birthday party at Party Central.  That place is a total rip off.  Just sayin'. We opted to just take 2 friends on his actual birthday so that we could do all the fun things they had there.  They have bumper boats, go-karts, batting cages, swings, slide, and even putt-putt!  So much fun!  It started to rain during our first activity (go-karts) so we couldn't do any of the other outdoor things.  They reimbursed us with tokens for each thing giving each kid like 80 extra tokens!  Nuts!  They each left with a handful of trinkets!

Very serious!

Sister!

Henry has been wanting this Air Patroller for a year!  Thanks Aunt B and Uncle D!

Happy 6th birthday!  

Worn. Slap. Out.

Beach Trip 2017

What a treat! We were so happy that we got to take a beach trip this summer!  After last summer, we decided to not go a summer without a vacation.  We loved going at the end of the summer so we had something to look forward to all summer.  

We were excited that Rebecca and Daniel joined us for a few days.  They had a brilliant idea to take Sarah Kathryn down to FL with them!  ha!  Suckers!  It's no secret that she is no fun in the car. Turns out...she was great for them!  Rebecca and Daniel are great travel partners.   Daniel even brought his drone and took some sweet pics of us out in the water.  They took care of the kids one night so that we could have a date night, too!  So thoughtful!

Disclaimer: Sarah Kathryn somehow deleted most all my pictures of us at the beach from my phone.  Thankfully I had a few on my camera!

We got to Blue Mountain and unloaded all of our stuff and then headed to the grocery store.  The boys were not happy about that!  We bought an ice cream maker at the store so we had to stop at the Mexican grocery store for Mexican vanilla... this is the secret ingredient thanks to Anna for telling me!

I took this and sent to Anna!  haha!

When Rebecca and Daniel arrived they unloaded and immediately helped us blow up the floats!  Bennett had a baseball glove, Henry had emoji poop, SK had a unicorn, and Rebecca had an engagement ring float!  So much fun!

First day on the beach!

Henry saw some 13 year old girl and kept trying to get their attention.  So he would walk over to them and put sand on his head to "impress" them!  Such a cutie!

The boys went fishing so Rebecca, SK, and I went to Tommy Bahama for their special lemonade.  It was so tart we kept watching SK take sips and then pucker after every sip! Hilarious!

Sadly, my only beach pic of all 3!

Evening Swim time

This girl was in heaven!

She made a sweet friend names Ella.  They played the whole trip!  How sweet!

Sure hope I can find more pictures from the beach.  Maybe Neil or Rebecca have some on their phones.  We took my camera out to the beach to take family pics.  It kept getting foggy due to the humidity.  Daniel made it work!

The best we got!

Crazy pic!

 We went to Destin for the day on our last full day at the beach.  We road a pirate ship!  It was such a fun little outing!  It was SO HOT, but the kids were entertained the whole time and had a lot of fun for 2 hours!  I thought were were going to melt it was so hot.  At one point we had to go down under the boat to hear how to find the treasure and it was just one parent allowed to go.  I went with the kids and there was A/C in the bottom of the boat!  Highlight!

Poor sweaty thing!

The boys had to mop the deck while the girls got their faces painted.

Swabbing the deck!

Henry was not trying to clean the deck.

She chose scars all over her face for the face painting.

Henry chose a mustache. 

Bennett too!

"hula hula" as SK calls it

There was a dad hula hooping contest and guess who won?

NEIL!  I was so proud!

We found the treasure!  Neil said they threw it out in the ocean when we were under trying to find out where the treasure was!  They each got 2 things.

She wanted her picture with the "girl pirates!"

Pirate fun!

 We went to Old Florida Fish House for our last night in FL dinner.  It was delish!  And we even matched!

Handsome boys in their blue linen

We had so much fun on our trip.  We just LOVED it!  We tried so hard to find another place to stay for 1 more night and couldn't.  We were so sad to leave because this was our first vacation that actually felt like a vacation!  

Since all 5 of us would be in the car on the way home, I wrapped up some presents for the kids to open while we drove 9 hours to get home.  They had to earn them and it couldn't have gone better!  I was patting myself on my back the whole time because there were almost no melt-downs or fighting.   The gist was they had to earn starbursts as a team and if they were nice or quiet or happy I added starbursts to a jar.  If there was fighting or screaming or crying I would take them away.  Once they got 10 they were able to earn a present!  They weren't all that great...candy...coloring books...bubbles...random toys...really just a bunch of leftover festive favors! :)

Worked amazingly!!!  I will def do it again!

So much fun to open presents!