The Last Time...

We've had lots of "lasts" lately. In addition to Courtney's last day of preschool, Brian had his last day of work at HP yesterday. He said it was really strange to leave knowing that he wasn't coming back. He's had 12 great years there and I know he has been a very valued employee and will be missed.

McKay had his last Cub Scout Pack Meeting. They held this one at a local park instead of at the church.

McKay finally earned a couple of beads towards his Bear rank (he obviously didn't know I was taking pictures!).

Now we just need to get busy and work on the rest of his Bear over the summer.

Courtney took her new jump rope to the park for Pack Meeting and had fun jumping.

This next shot turned out pretty blurry, but I thought it would have been a great shot if I had known the right setting to use on my camera!

I am excited to be taking an online photography class this summer and hopefully learn a lot more about how to use my new camera (it starts in July, so I'm sure I'll be telilng you more about it!)

Tomorrow is our last Sunday here in this ward -- that will be sad and hard to say goodbye to all of our friends. But next week will be a start of "firsts" for us and we are excited about that!

Preschool Graduate

Hayley and I were able to attend Courtney's preschool graduation yesterday. Her last day of preschool -- and we're on to Kindergarten! I think it's kind of funny how they make such a big deal out of "graduation" for these kids with the whole cap & tassle and pomp & circumstance and such. But it's a fun and exciting time for them.

Courtney's preschool is held at a local Methodist church and they had their graduation in the chapel. Here she is walking in:

And sitting with her class before the ceremony started:

Her class sang a couple of songs for the parents. I was thinking I maybe should have dressed her in a little nicer clothes for the big day, seeing as how most of the other girls are wearing dresses. :-) But she did pick out her outfit that day, so she was happy about it. For some reason, she had it in her head that blue was a graduation color so she had to wear all blue clothes.

They had asked all the kids what they wanted to be when they grow up and announced it when they called their name for their diploma. Courtney said she wanted to be a ballerina. Here she is with both of her teachers, Miss Jennifer (on the left) and Miss Lisa (on the right).

After the ceremony there was cake and punch in the classroom.

Then she was done! She had a good year in preschool, despite her period of crying about not wanting to go in the morning. Kindergarten, here we come!

Sign of the Times

Just had to put up a picture of the sign in front of the house. It says a lot about what the inside of the house looks like right now! I liked our house better when it was showing since it was always neat and clean. But I certainly didn't like the stress of that! Now we have boxes everywhere and bare walls and the clock is ticking, but we are very thankful to have a contract on the house. It is such a huge relief (and will be even more so when everything has actually closed and been finalized).

Next week at this time we will have picked up my dad from the airport, picked up the truck and started loading! (And hope that all of our stuff fits in the truck and trailer...)

Mini Makeovers

On Sunday, everybody except me got a haircut. I figured I needed to get them all done before we move so that's one less thing to worry about for a while (plus, McKay really needed his cut). McKay did offer to cut my hair, but I had to decline. :-)

I still feel very inadequate when it comes to cutting hair -- that I'm just snipping away sometimes and don't really know what I'm doing. Hayley's hair is the hardest -- not only is she the wiggliest and the least patient, her hair is pretty fine so it slides around and the back ends up not looking very even. Oh well -- she doesn't seem to care!

So here are some "Before" and "After" pictures of the kids!

McKay Before:

McKay After:

Hannah Before:

Hannah After:

Courtney Before:

Courtney After:

Hayley Before:

Hayley After:

(At least you can't see the back!)

A Boy and His Glasses

So I mentioned how McKay's regular glasses broke while we were in the IMAX theater waiting for the movie to start. He has done okay at taking care of them, but he is a 9-year-old boy and he frequently leaves them lying where they shouldn't be, etc. He has tried to bend them to make them fit better, etc. and was "working" on them in the theater when they broke. They came apart where the ear piece joins the circular frame front, so the lens piece fell out on one side.

Brian didn't see an easy way to fix them at first, so we checked into the warranty, since they are less than a year old. Turns out it's not much of a warranty -- we would need to pay 50% of any repair cost. We didn't want to put a lot of money into fixing these glasses, because we know he'll probably need a new pair before school starts anyway. He has complained about these glasses not working as well (he can't see things at a distance anymore, like the hymn numbers at the front of the chapel during Sacrament Meeting). So we think he needs a new prescription anyway.

In the end, Brian worked on them some more and with some glue and some crossed fingers that they hold, got the lens piece back in.

As you can see, you can definitely tell they've been worked on! McKay was a little unsure about wearing them because of how they look, but we hope they just get him through the end of school. He really shouldn't need them much over the summer and we'll get his eyes re-tested and get a new pair before school starts!

Butterflies and Dinosaurs

Yesterday we took the kids down to the Houston Museum of Natural Science for the morning. We had a couple of reasons for making the trip. First, I had been planning to take the kids last summer, but the day we had planned on going we heard about a lot of flooded roads in the downtown area, so we decided to play it safe and stay home. I told the kids we'd go back another time (we never did make it last summer -- something McKay reminded me of several times). Second, McKay has watched some educational programs about IMAX movies and has really wanted to see one. Since there are no IMAX theaters in Amarillo, we figured it's about our last chance to take advantage of some of what downtown Houston has to offer.

The museum offers several different attractions (each with their own separate entrance fee -- yeah for coupons!). We saw two. First up was the Cockrell Butterfly Center. This is a big enclosed rainforest-type setting that has lots of different butterflies in it. The butterflies fly everywhere!



We came in at the top and walked down past the waterfall.



They have a few feeders around that the butterflies come to.


The museum worker who took our tickets told the kids about the most important rule (DON'T touch the butterflies), but he told them if they wanted a butterfly to land on them, to try sitting on a bench and being as still as a statue. The girls really wanted a butterfly to land on them, so they sat as still as they could on the bench. Lots of butterflies flew around them, but sadly, we had no actual landings. Here are a couple of pictures where you can see the butterflies by the girls:



McKay, on the other hand, had no great desire for the butterflies to land on him!

A few more pictures exploring the butterfly center:




Part of the butterfly center was also a bug exploration area geared towards the kids (separate from the live exhibit). They had some fun bug exhibits and games.


Here is Courtney by the bugs that give me the most creeps -- cockroaches (YUCK!):


In the bug exhibit is also where they have the butterflies in chrysalis form. This is how they receive the butterflies for the center (from all over the world). A museum worker pulled us over to point out one that had just come out a few seconds earlier. They stay in these cases until their wings dry and then they are released into the main center.


And here's a big giant bug!


After we saw the butterfly center, we went to see one of the IMAX movies they are now showing -- Dinosaurs 3D.


As I mentioned, McKay has heard about IMAX films and has really been wanting to go see one. They give everyone the big 3D glasses:


This is how Hayley first put hers on:


I was a little worried about the girls and the whole dinosaurs and 3D thing. While the movie was partly showing research and talking about exploration, of course, there were scenes with dinosaurs jumping out at you. Hayley got pretty scared and ended up taking her glasses off about halfway through the movie (and sitting on my lap with her face buried in my neck) for a good part of it. Hannah and Courtney kept their glasses on for most of the movie, and got scared at parts, but did pretty good overall (I think McKay also got scared in a few parts, but I wasn't sitting next to him, so I don't know how scared he was).

(McKay's regular glasses also broke while we were in the theater, but I'll write about that more in another post coming soon.)

After the movie, we walked outside around the museum a bit, which is located in the large Hermann Park (where the Houston Zoo is also located). Just outside the museum was this large stone globe, which you could spin on its base in some shallow water:



We also saw this big statue of Sam Houston:

and the reflecting pool:


We all said goodbye to downtown Houston as we drove home. Who knows if we'll ever be back! I'm glad we took the time to go -- sometimes it takes a deadline (like moving) to get us to set aside the time to do little day trips like this.

Author's Tea

This afternoon I had the pleasure of attending McKay's 3rd Grade Author's Tea. This was a time for parents to come to the classroom and have their 3rd grader share their portfolio from the year (plus get served a little snack too!).

The portfolio contained various assignments from throughout the year that the kids kept (some writing, some science, some math, etc.) to show what they learned and see the progress they've made. McKay read several of his stories to me.

(Sorry this picture looks a little funny -- I was leaning back since he was so close to me.)

McKay has done great this year in 3rd grade. His teacher responded to an e-mail I sent a month or so ago and added this comment at the bottom:

On another note...You have such a great kid. He is so sweet and thoughtful. You are a very lucky mom!

I couldn't agree more!

Sister Salon

Hannah came home from school last week all excited with her treats from the classroom "treasure box" where the kids can redeem their accumulated behavior "tickets" for different trinkets. One of the things she chose was a little container of pink face paint (she told me she had asked the teacher what it was -- it looked like a little Play-Doh container to me).

The girls couldn't wait to try it out on each other. Courtney went first painting on Hannah.

The problem was the pink was so light you really couldn't even see it! I think she's supposed to have some kind of butterfly on her cheek -- maybe you can make out a glossy reflective glare!

In the end, it didn't matter that you couldn't see their handiwork -- we washed it off shortly afterward. The important thing was that they were having some great sister fun!

Break Out the Boxes

It's time to start packing! Or trying to pack at least. I've decided it's hard to pack when you're not moving for a few more weeks because you still need a lot of your stuff. So I've been packing what I can and hoping that I don't end up needing anything that finds its way into a box. (For example, today I packed up all my craft stuff -- ribbon scraps, yarn, construction paper, etc. -- and I'm crossing my fingers that we don't have a school project come up that requires any of it!)

This afternoon, Brian got up in the attic to get down the boxes we have stored up there and anything else that needs to come down. The kids always want to go up in the attic when he's up there ("just for a quick peek," as Hannah says).

We brought down a bunch of computer and monitor boxes...

...then had the kids help carry them downstairs and out of the way for now.

This scene reminded me of when we moved four years ago into this house (from another house just a couple of miles away). At that time, we saved about any box that found its way to our house up in the attic (just to have a variety of sizes when you needed to mail something), so they all got tossed down from the attic into the hallway and made a great pile of fun for the kids!

Look how little Courtney is in this picture!

The big difference between that move and this one is that back then, we were just moving across town, so we could make several trips in the van with small or awkward stuff and then just bring the big stuff in the van. This time we're moving far away (and not using a moving company), so we have to fit everything in at once. That means I have to pack well! (Definitely one of Brian's strong points ... not so sure about me!)