First Day Interviews

ava's interview from Emma Montandon on Vimeo.

What I Did Today

Levi and I made our traditional 1st day of school cookies for when the girls get home.

I cleaned and purged the kitchen island of all the games and puzzles that the kids are too old for, and put away all the games that have been littering my living room for the past three months.

I finished laundry....in one sitting....uninterrupted.

I finally cleaned the inside and the outside of the kitchen window, the glass of my shower and the inside of all the windows of the van.  Every single thing had 7,000 greasy fingerprints on it. It's nice to know that my eyesight isn't going bad, the windows just needed to be cleaned.

I organized the last three months of photos and they are now ready to be put in the photo album...but I'm saving that for tomorrow.

 We did have a few fails from this summer.  One of our goals had been to walk/run 26 miles over the course of the summer.  We did great until we got back from camp.  The weather wasn't pleasant and the kids were sleeping later so that meant if we did it, we had to do it in high heat....no thanks.  We did get 12 miles done though.  We didn't work on our USA project that we were halfway through last summer...didn't do a single page of it.  Really wanted to finish that.  I don't like unfinished projects...I'm thinking winter break and spring break we'll forge ahead and finish it.  We did however swim a whole lot, which was a goal since I bought a summer swim pass.  We also read A LOT.  Elle read 4 chapter books and Ava read or was read about 40 picture books and 3-4 short chapter books.  Levi was read about 50 books this summer!  Elle also retained her multiplication facts over the summer!  That was a relief!

I think I washed the beach towels for the last time...we might have one more swim during Labor Day....but I'm sure ready to put those things away and start Autumn dreaming...

It was a very productive first day of school.  I still have about 45 minutes until the girls come home.  I'm thinking seriously about doing nothing but watching TV and eating my third a chocolate chip cookie.

Last Taste of Summer

On the last Friday of Summer, Shawn and I took the kids for a fun day.  We started at Bartholomew Pool in Austin.  It was worth the drive and $12 entrance fee.

The girls got to jump off a diving board for the first time ever and both loved it.  I even did it a few times.  After spending so much time at pools that don't go over 5 feet deep, it was nice to dive way down!  Ava prefers to cannonball.  Elle does what I call "The Pencil."

They had a wonderful area for pre-swimmers and Levi spent a lot of time on the frog slide. 

They had floating lily pads and wood discs that you could walk across one of the pools on.  Both girls really loved doing this.

They also had two great long waterslides that we went down over and over.

After spending a few hours at the pool, we wanted to take the kids to one of our favorite date night places, Gordough's.  Everyone got to get the donut of their dreams. 

The kids liked them, but not nearly as much as Shawn and I do.  Obviously their palette isn't as refined as ours. 

Summer 2014 is in the books!  

School's In, School's In!

Our traditional first-day-of-school pictures:

Ava is in 2nd grade....and that means she's in the last of the "easy" grades....

Elle is in 5th grade....and that means I almost have a MIDDLE SCHOOLER!

All three of my sweeties together.  Levi will go to a 2 day a week Mother's Day Out program that starts next week.

Let's be realistic...this is really what most of the pictures I take of my kids look like.  

Ava's teacher :)

And I'm guessing this is the last time I'll be taking pictures of Elle and her teacher.  I didn't even have to beg her to.  She was perfectly fine doing it.  :)

Being really realistic.

As I write this, the house is 98% silent.  I am letting Levi watch a few cartoons so that is the only noise I hear other than my fingers typing.  It is glorious.  Happy First Day of School to me!

One week to go....

This summer just flew right by....up until about a week ago.  Then things started turning nasty real quick.  If the kids even get a scent of any of the others in their personal area, fights break out.  It's getting crazy in here and school needs to hurry up....and then at the same time, I don't want it to get here.  I love having all my chicks under my wing, but the fighting makes me want to push them out of the nest real fast.  We do have lots of fun times, lots of laughter, and their imaginations are awesome...but seriously is it time for school yet?  I had posted on facebook a few days ago about needing to bake and needing ice cream so I took care of that yesterday.   This is a Molten Lava Cookie with a scoop of good ol' vanilla ice cream on top.  

 I also bought some pumpkin pie mix and some pie shells and started melting my Scentsy Baked Apple Pie wax, so I'm willing Fall to arrive. 

I love working puzzles and pulled out one I'd bought a while back and started it.  In my entire life I've never worked a harder puzzle or taken so long to finish it...I probably spent 8 hours working on that puzzle and I'd say that at least 4 of those hours were spent solely on the tops of the trees.  This puzzle was a nightmare, but the more angry I got about how hard it was, the more determined I was to not let that thing conquer me.  Hopefully my girls saw some GRIT and will take that with them as school starts!  (As for me, I'll be a bit wiser in picking puzzles to do.)

We took this picture before church this morning.  I told them to act like how they felt about 7 days till school starting. lol

A Pain in the Neck

Shawn's dad had major neck surgery last Friday in Dallas.  We decided to go for a very quick visit and see him Sunday and Monday.  We also decided that since we were going to be so close to Greenville, that we'd worship with our old congregation Sunday night and see some friends.  It was absolutely wonderful to see some many people we hold so dear.  We took the kids on a tour of the building and showed the girls where I rocked them during church, where their bible classes were and where we had so many sweet memories.  We also took them on a tour of the town, showing them the house we lived in and the hospital Ava was born at.  That place will always be dear to me.  

On Monday morning, when we were leaving Greenville, we went by Colin Street Bakery and took the kids for the first time.  We have now joined the thousands that make it a tradition to stop there while on a trip.  Luckily, there is also one on the way to Tyler from our house, so we will stop there during Thanksgiving!  The Cherry Icebox cookies are so so good.

We got to see Paul on Sunday afternoon and Monday morning. He made some drastic improvements just in one day! 

Levi took this picture of Carolyn and the girls

And Elle took this one....she's getting better at it!

 

After visiting Paul and Carolyn, we headed home by way of Waxahachie and decided to spend just a tiny bit of extra time there exploring a small part of the city.  We started at a wonderful hole-in-the-wall restaurant that's been there for over 40 years.  The burgers truly were so good!

Then we drove through downtown and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a scrapbook store. Those types of stores are a rarity now.  They have all gone out of business, but not this one!  I got to browse around for at least 30 minutes and bought a few fun papers to take home.

We also went ahead and let all the kids have a second round of cookies from CSB.  So yummy.

With full tummies and  happy momma that got some scrapbook stuff, we made our way back to home sweet home and said goodbye to our last summer trip.  

The Vacation Where No One Died

We have been planning for at least a year or two, to go on a beach vacation with our friends the Valdez's.  It finally came to fruition this week!  We dubbed it the Mondez Beach Vaca of 2014 and it was awesome! Early Monday morning, we headed south and were sinking our toes into the sand by 11:30.  We spent two full days on the beach.  I am so very thankful to say that no one was stung by a jellyfish, no one was eaten by a shark and no one drowned.  (Good grief, the beach is a dangerous place!)  We soaked up a years worth of Vitamin D, laughed a whole lot, relaxed in the sun, and ate ice cream twice!  Hopefully we can make a Mondez Vaca a yearly thing!

Mustang Island...$5 per adult and kids are free and well worth the money.  There are no cars allowed on the beach, there are covered picnic tables, it's not crowded, there are giant changing room porta-potties that aren't disgusting and there are two rinse off showers!

Finally made it!!!!

Elle in the Ocean (I like this picture :)

This picture makes me laugh because I'm attempting to ride the "waves" which were minuscule.

Our buddies showed up and the fun level got turned up 100 notches!

Time to prepare some lunch

After getting cleaned up, the kids played some games for a while.  It was nice to have rooms that adjoined.  The kids loved knocking on the other door and immediately having friends on the other side.

That night we ate at Fin's and it was nice food and good weather for sitting outdoors.

After getting back to the hotel, we headed to the game room with the kids and let them play ping pong and Foosball while we played Phase 10.

The next morning after breakfast it was back to the beach to conquer all the things we didn't do the day before.  We spotted these odd jellyfish floating in the water.  We didn't see too many more of these thank goodness even though I have no idea if they sting.  

Shawn and Izzy made Valerie and I some sand seats.  

After the beach, we headed back into town for pizza and the traditional photo in the shark's mouth.

Then we headed to one of the public beaches for family photos.

The official Mondez Vaca Photo!

Friends for Life!

We had ice cream after that at a fun little place in town and took some funny pictures too.

Then we headed back to our hotel and all crashed to watch some good ol' Full House.  It was over at 9pm and all the adults were exhausted, but the kids were ready for another night of games.  So, we dragged ourselves up off the beds and headed back down to the game room.

Wednesday morning we woke up and ate breakfast and then headed out.  We all decided to ride the very short ferry ride and the kids loved it.  We got to watch dolphins swimming!  

What an awesome vacation.  We can't wait to see where the next one will be!