Our Life in Bulletpoints

I haven't posted much of anything since Spring Break. I hope to think that I'll go back and fill in the gaps sometime over the summer break, but I still have trips and major events from two summers ago that have yet to be posted, so I'm not holding my breath. For the moment, I'll just do what I can and take a couple minutes before I hit the shower and then the sheets to sum up all that's been going on lately (in no particular order).

- Today was the last day of school for the kids. Hello, summer! I'm pretty excited, though the summer routine (or lack of) typically seems to wreak havoc on my work schedule and the very few other (minimally) organized things in my life. I have quite a few fun things planned, and I'm just really enjoying the ages Abby and Carson are now. There are quite a few things they have the interest/attention span for that they didn't possess a year or two ago. Good times.

- Speaking of the kids ages, in May we celebrated both of the kids' birthdays. Abby turned EIGHT, and Carson turned SIX. Wait, can that be right? Five and seven sounded better, don't you think?? But really... while their childhood seems to be flying by, I do love this stage in life. We celebrated Abby's birthday at home with a spa party and what seemed like about a million kids. Whoa. She loved every minute of it though, so that made me happy. We had a little party for Carson at the bowling alley last weekend that he thoroughly enjoyed. It's been fun celebrating these two amazing kids!

- I'm looking forward to NOT getting up at 6:20 tomorrow morning.

- You've seen the garden. That's been fun!

- Lots of parties. In addition to our two, it seems we were invited to about a million other celebrations. We went to several and had to say no to others. Looking forward to a slower paced summer (though I'm working all but one weekend in June). Even though June is looking to be quite busy, we're finding time for a little three day family camping trip, and then the kids and I are going to spend a week in Howe with my parents. Looking forward to opportunities to relax and really hang out with my family.

- We're teaching Financial Peace University at the NW campus, which has been fun and inspiring. While we'd already worked our way through the first two "Baby Steps" in D.R.'s plan, it's cool being re-inspired to get on the same page and make smart money choices. We're starting to really teach our kids about money too, and it's great seeing them start to get it. Abby asked the other day when she could start saving for retirement because she wants to have a million dollars.

- AT&T made me mad this week and I think they're dumb.

- My sister called me up a couple of weeks ago and asked if I wanted to run a 5k with her and my mom. For some reason I said yes. I guess it was her charm and adorableness. She made it sound so fun and easy. It's not. I'm about a week into training though, and truth be told, it's not that awful. Having a goal definitely helps me stick to it a little more. I don't want to be embarrassed on race day! I treated myself to a set of running clothes today. Shoes are my incentive to keep it up. That and having the chance to reach this goal alongside my mom and sister. That'll be cool. Pray for me.

- Our room got clean. I can take no credit for this. It was my husband. He's amazing. I never clean our room. I'm not sure why this is, since I'm happiest when our room (above all others) is clean. It rarely is because that's the room where all the laundry ends up when we get the rest of the house clean. I think if I had the money, I wouldn't worry about getting a housekeeper, but I'd love having someone take care of laundry. It's a monster and I hate it.

- My office got cleaned too! Real good! I know you don't care, but with as crazy as life has felt lately, I take joy in these little things, and am resolving to try and keep it up better.

That's all I can think of for now, but I'll work on keeping the blog up a little better. Happy summer!

Garden Update

This is our second year of having a raised garden in our back yard. Last year was alright in the spring, but before we could harvest much, summer (and our dog) came and wiped out pretty much everything but the cherry tomatoes. We tried again this year (and started a little earlier since our winter was so mild), and it's taken off! So far I haven't killed anything, and we've really enjoyed the past couple of weeks as we've been able to start harvesting quite a bit of food! We also planted some extra cucumber seeds I had over in the corner by our blackberry bush, so here in a month or so, we're going to have TONS of cucumbers. So if you like cucumbers, tomatoes, or pumpkins, we've got you covered!

The pumpkins are the big feature this year since we didn't actually mean to grow them! I began composting last year, so when I was prepping the garden in February, I went and mixed in all the compost with the soil -- not thinking about the fact that we'd put October's jack-o-lantern in the pile along with everything else. Come March, I realized there were plants growing where I hadn't planted them, and it turns out they were pumpkins! We harvested our first ones this week and have more coming. I'm planning to take seeds from these and plant a couple in July so we'll have some ready for fall. (Though I've read that these may keep that long.)

Not only have I enjoyed keeping a garden, but the kids love going out to check it, especially Carson! They've been learning about plants at school, so he loves telling me all about how they grow as we're out there tending to it.

Easter/Birthdays/Mother's Day

At the end of April, we took advantage of some vacation days that Aaron and the kids had, and headed north to visit my family. Since we weren't able to make it up for Easter, or Andre's birthday, and we'd be missing Mother's Day, we made it a weekend full of celebrations! Friday was the big birthday party. We were celebrating Andre, Aaron, Dad, Abby, and Carson, so we went out and spent the day at the zoo in Gainesville, complete with bears, a picnic, and a birthday cake.

Saturday we went to visit Nanny and Pawpaw for a while at their house since we were all in town and hadn't seen them in a while, then we headed to Scurry for the annual Hot Dog Cookout and Treasure Hunt in celebration of Easter. (I think there was an egg hunt in there too.) As always, we loved visiting with Grandma, Grandpa, and GanGan. The kids, of course, loved being able to run around and explore and getting spoiled to death!

This year's treasure hunt was over the top wonderful. Each year, Grandpa tells the tale of the old pirate Whitebeard who used to live on his piece of land. This year, the tale continued with the story of No Beard the Teenage Pirate, and led the kids to a buried treasure at the foot of a real headstone. Impressive!

New Floors

As of April 9th, we have officially lived in our house for two years. We've done a fair bit to make it feel like home and to fit our family, but one thing we've always wanted to do is change the flooring. I mean really really wanted to change the flooring. The once new carpet looked good for all of three months and then life happened. It was the one thing we always joked about going back into debt for -- we hated the carpet that much. Gladly, we did not fall into temptation, and finally saved up (with the help of a tax return) enough to go buy new floors! So Aaron spent almost his entire week off of work installing floors and being awesome. We love it! We also (with the help of the ever-fabulous Natalie Powers) rearranged the room and it works so much better than any previous arrangement. I love being in our living room now! Buying the floors...

Carson loves helping his Daddy!!

The finished product!

Kindergarten Field Trip

All year, Carson has been super excited about the idea of going on a class field trip, so when the big day arrived, and his Kindergarten class got to go to the San Antonio Children's Museum, he was naturally thrilled! He let me know that it was very important that I come as a chaperone, so even though I woke up sick that morning and was not feeling very much like keeping track of five kindergarteners all day at a museum, I was happy to go along. When I arrived, his teacher informed me that it would just be me and Carson hanging out for the day at the museum. The rest of the kids were set in other groups. Woo hoo! He and I had a great day checking out the museum and having fun, just the two of us.

This is Carson playing with his sweet teacher, Ms. Chestnut.

Silly picture time!

Losing Teeth

Seems like teeth have been falling out left and right around here the past year or so, and last week Carson joined in on the action when he lost his first tooth! He had been a little apprehensive about the whole tooth-pulling thing, but I picked him up from school last Monday to discover that it had come out on its own during PE (like Abby's first tooth). He was so excited!

I thought it was cute that Jackson lost his first tooth just a few days before. Aren't they cute?!

Another Favorite Photo (08/13/06)