The Bright Eyed Brunette

I really cannot believe that I just typed 9th Birthday!! It seems like only yesterday that I found out I was having a boy! I sure had no idea how much one little boy could change our girl world! He is a pretty awesome kid that loves to have fun and lives life to the fullest everyday! I gave him the option of going to school or not on his birthday (they all have that option) and can you believe he actually wanted to go?! He said he needed to go because their teacher gave them $10 in a card! So Carl brought pizza in for lunch and we had a little family pizza party at school. He also wanted to have a bonfire that night and the weather was perfect. My sister and her kids got to come over and play for a little while, & that made him happy too!! Saturday we had his party at the bowling alley and he had his cousins and some of his school & church friends come. He had a lot of fun. Sunday we sang "Happy Birthday" to him one last time at church. He also got two ...

It was a very different first day of school. I don't think I ever remember it raining on our first day! We barely made it through pictures before it started pouring. For the record, my parents also stopped by the house this morning to take pictures (which they never posted anywhere) but I didn't get any pictures of the kids with them. It was a great first day. I changed the days I work this year to Monday's, Tuesday's, and Friday's. It seems to work out well. On Wednesday Trey had a toothache at school and ended up missing all day Thursday. His tooth was abscessed so they put him on antibiotics and gave him something for pain. We go next week to have it pulled! I am praying that he does well :) They let him have the remote so he could change the channel. So he watched Dinosaur Train! Our first week back to school was a success!

The first thing this morning Trey's Sunday School teacher (aka Aunt Becky) called and said that she would be giving Trey an award for doing all of his homework, all summer long. She wanted to let me know, but we weren't telling Trey until she called him up. I wish I had gotten a picture of his face when she did because he was so surprised and had no idea what was going on! I handed Carl my phone to take some pictures (remember Carl is no photographer) since he was sitting on the aisle. This is what he got: Now back to the back-to-school stuff! Sunday was spent not only going to church, but also picking out the perfect outfits, deciding what we wanted for lunch, painting fingernails....all that important stuff :) Of course they were all in bed BY 9:00 and hardly sleeping because of their excitement. I am just praying that we all have a great school year!

We had a pretty good last weekend before school starts! On Friday we went to Open House at the school. All three of my kids have a new teacher, but the girls are in the same room this year. Carlie used to throw a fit when this happened, but they were both okay with it this year :) Trey finally moved upstairs with the "big kids", and I am having a hard time with that! Saturday was spent planting food plots and cooking the pork butts for our Back to School BBQ we were having. It was a fun, busy weekend that was full of anticipation for a great new school year!

Well, it was time for our annual Back to School photo shoot and as you can see from above, my kids are getting so big! I can't believe how much they have grown over the summer. One thing that doesn't seem to change from year to year is that Makena hates doing this!! She cooperated but said only one outfit :( My kids are all counting down the days until we go back!

On Saturday we took our TeamKid/Teen Discovery groups to the bowling alley for some back to school bowling! We had a good turnout and afterwards we walked over to Larry's Pizza! After we got home we were lounging around watching TV and I noticed Trey felt really warm. When I took his temp he had 102! All he complained of was a tummyache. When he got up Sunday morning he puked, so Carl and the girls went to church without me. By that evening he was feeling fine and not running any fever....it was very strange. Anyway, we had a great weekend for the most part and now we are heading into our last week of summer :)

We broke one of Pop's pool rules and had a coke in the pool! He figured out that he could make a bigger splash by jumping with the ring on.    I caught her by surprise!    Pop and Trey...two cool dudes! Lydia and Makena Carlie didn't want her picture taken    Carlie and Trey were having a noodle fight on the boats (upside down). Carlie fell off first!    Makena was trying to avoid me now!    Trey was being a frog on the diving board.  I think he's a pretty cute one :) And there he goes! She thought she was hiding, but I got her anyway!   Just hanging out!   Well, finally at the end of summer (summer break) it starts to actually feel like summer again!  It's just no fun trying to swim when its warmer in the water than it is outside!  So, even though we are excited about fall (at least a season change) and starting back to school, we are embracing this warm we...