Last One Left

It's been an interesting first week of school with the kids gone so long and only Hayley left here at home.

She's actually done pretty good at keeping herself entertained and tagging along with Mom everywhere, although she has asked several times when the kids will be home.

She gets to do fun things like take the local turtle for a "walk":

Tag along on a stop at the apartments (and find a kitty roaming around the parking lot):

Color lots of pictures:

Go to library storytime (a favorite for her!):

(In case you're wondering, the subject for storytime was frogs and they brought in a little inflatable wading pool for the kids to sit in while they listened to the frog stories.)

But she is so excited when her sisters get home and they can all go play together! I loved this picture (actually taken before school started) of the girls running down the hill behind the house to see the neighbor's cows that were out feeding in that area.

The School Journey Begins

And a journey indeed it is! (maybe a "trek" is more like it...)

School started this past Monday. I've been wanting to put up this blog about it before now, but I'm still adjusting to this new schedule myself. I spent the first night up late filling out a stack of forms in triplicate and then last night trying to get a head start on lunches, etc. Whew! I think it's going to take a little while for all of us to get into the routine of things.

Back to the first day - the kids were so excited. Hannah told me the night before that she was going to have "visions of math problems" dancing in her head. We drove them to school the first morning (because McKay had all his supplies and we hadn't heard yet on the bus situation). Even Dad came along, so it was a family affair.

When we first went outside to take pictures before leaving, there wasn't quite enough light yet so I had to use the flash. The flash makes it seem like it was really dark outside, but it wasn't. But these are the only ones I ended up with showing the "full outfit" look (which is very important on the first day, you know).

Then we took a few more just before we left when there was just enough light for no flash.


We dropped Courtney off in Kindergarten first. Here she is with her teacher during "Meet and Greet" a few days earlier.


Then we took the older kids over to the pep rally they had on the middle school field (the middle school is right next door to the elementary). Hannah kept asking what a "pepper rally" was and why did we have to go and couldn't we just go right to the room? She went up to the front of the rope and ended up being completely enthralled with the short pep rally (featuring a mascot and everything!).

The elementary and middle school have the same mascot (these are the middle school cheerleaders).


When it was over, she came back to find us just beaming about how incredibly cool that pep rally was. Maybe she's destined to be a cheerleader herself someday...

We dropped McKay off in his 4th grade classroom. He has a friend from church in his class, so he was glad about that. His class didn't have a "meet and greet" before school started, so I'll still have to get a picture of him with his teacher. But here he is at the pep rally:


Then we took Hannah to 2nd grade. I imagine she had 20 new friends by the end of the day. :-) Here she is with her teacher during "meet and greet":


Then there's the bus. We didn't know how close the bus would come to our house because the dirt road coming up here is not county maintained. The head of the bus barn finally drove out to our house over the weekend (in a van) to check it out. When I talked to him on Monday, he told me that even though the official policy is that buses only go on county-maintained roads, that the bus would come up to our house (and use the little side road by our shop to turn around). That means I don't have to drive the kids anywhere to meet the bus, which is nice. It was great to see the bus headed up the driveway that first afternoon!


The bus driver told me she should be by the next morning about 7:15am to pick them up. We were rushing around and at about 7:00 I told McKay to open up the front door so we could watch through the storm door. He did, just in time to see the bus headed back down the driveway (she said she had honked twice but we obviously didn't hear it, and even if we had we weren't ready). The kids were very upset they missed the bus, but I drove them to school a second day and they made it just fine. This morning (Day 3), we all got up even earlier and were waiting at the end of the driveway by 6:50am (the bus came at 6:55).

The biggest problem with the bus is that is a LONG ride, especially coming home. Our kids are almost the last ones off (the bus carries kids from the elementary, middle and high school). It has been almost 5:00pm when they get home (school gets out at 3:20pm). That makes for a really long day for these kiddos! We'll see how it all works out.

So far, they all seem to like this new school and their teachers. I think Courtney has complained the most (no big surprise there) -- about "rest time" being too boring and the playground being too small and the bus ride being too long. But I've also overheard her telling Hannah about the fun things she's done in her class (for some reason, all I get are the complaints!).

Hayley has done okay at home by herself -- we've done a couple little outings so far (Discovery Center and library), but she does ask several times during the day when the kids will be getting home.

Here's hoping we all have a great school year!

Let's Get Truckin'

We finally added a second vehicle to our family on Friday. Well, we really haven't been without a second vehicle, we've just been borrowing one from Brian's sister since last January when we sold Brian's Infiniti. They've been very kind to let us keep it this long.

Brian has wanted a truck (for hauling apartment supplies, etc.) but has also hesitated some because of the cost of fuel these days. But we got a pretty good deal and are the proud owners of this "used" beauty:

It's a 2008 Toyota Tundra 4WD. It only had about 4500 miles on it, so it still has factory warranty left and everything. Brian wanted a 4WD and I was really hoping for something that would fit the whole family if needed. We found it at a Suzuki dealership in their used car section. This is a "double cab" (there is also a "crew cab" option that is slightly bigger where the back doors have a regular handle instead of the side handle). The unique thing about it is that it has a front bench seat with a fold-down center console, so it can seat 6 people if needed. Brian had looked before and has done some research since we bought this, and he said it is very rare to find a double/crew cab with a bench seat -- they almost always have bucket seats (and only 5 seatbelts). So I say this must be the truck meant for us!

The kids are way excited about it! This picture was taken while we were waiting for Brian at the apartments so they were playing around in the bed.

Happy Truckin'!

Toothless

Our soon-to-be Kindergartner has now lost her second tooth!

Her tooth had been loose for several days and she was starting to complain about it bugging her, but she didn't want anyone to pull it out. (She did actually get as far as letting Brian tie a string around it, but then she chickened out.)

Last night we went out to eat at Applebee's with Julie & John (and their daughter Ashley and her cute little boy) who were here for a couple of days. When we were almost done eating, I noticed that Courtney's tooth was gone. When I told her, she looked really surprised, then when she verified that it was indeed gone (apparently swallowed), she got SO excited.

I thought she might be upset that she didn't actually have the tooth, but she seemed to know that the Tooth Fairy wouldn't mind if she just wrote a note:

She was so excited to find a dollar under her pillow this morning! (And she is so excited to start Kindergarten on Monday -- she keeps asking me how many more days!)

The Big, Beautiful Texas Sky!

The longer we've been here, the more I am just in awe of this beautiful country. I am constantly looking out the windows and just being amazed at the beautiful sky and view. I LOVE the clouds, the sunrises and sunsets, the night views, the flowers, everything! (Well, maybe not the rattlesnakes so much...) It is all so incredibly beautiful!

I've taken quite a few sky pictures recently -- mostly because every time I look out the window I think "Wow! That is so beautiful! I have to take a picture!"



I've also been practicing taking moon pictures with the full moon we've had recently. My first night's attempt turned out okay (I was experimenting a lot with different shutter speeds trying to find what worked best)...



...then I asked my photography teacher for some suggestions and tried again last night. I decided to go just for the moon and not try to get the city lights. This is really cropped, but I was so excited to get it!


The stars at night are big and bright
Deep in the heart of Texas!

Plan B

Last night for FHE we planned to take a picnic dinner and go see Palo Duro Canyon. We've heard the canyon is quite beautiful and it's only about a half hour or so drive. McKay had a couple of Cub Scout requirements he could pass off (take a hike with your family and have a picnic with your family) and we've been wanting to go see it.

We've had some rain off and on this week (finally!) but the skies seemed clear and I even called the park (it's a state park) ahead of time and they told me they weren't expecting any rain. But, this is Texas weather, and as we got closer it started raining. We stopped at the admission gate (there is an entrance fee) and they told us the canyon road was closed at the first river crossing because of heavier rains the night before. (Apparently, the river crosses the road at 6 different points which can cause flash flooding conditions.)

So we decided to just come back another day -- we didn't want to eat a picnic in the rain and we wouldn't have been able to see most of the canyon due to the closed road. The kids were disappointed, of course, so we decided to drive back up into town and find a park to eat. We ended up at the park where the kids had their swimming lessons. It wasn't raining there and they had a nice big playground area that was "new" to us.

So I'm sharing playground pictures two posts in a row!

Here's a shot just showing part of the playground equipment (this was about the biggest playset I've ever seen on a playground):


The kids had fun running around playing "ship" for awhile (I figured out that Hannah was the captain and Mom and Dad were the "enemy"). Then they did monkey bars. McKay was a little bit tall for these:


Hayley was happy on the rings (they've all been inspired by the Olympics!):


And Courtney & Hannah are the best at monkey bars (I would say Courtney does them the best, with Hannah a close second). Check out the concentration!




Courtney even had to jump up to get on the bars:


And there were some big fun chair swings too:



Finally, more close-ups:




Hopefully we'll get another chance to go back and see the canyon soon when it's dried out a bit (it's raining again today, but we really need it). At least we got the picnic requirement signed off, so next time we go we don't have to worry about packing a full meal. :-)

Splash & Play

This afternoon I decided to take the kids and go check out one of the city parks that has a "splash pad" (water fountain play area). I think there are 4 parks in the city that have these, so we went to the closest one (and I've learned that there are a TON of parks in this town!). I'll admit that I was a just a little bit uneasy in the neighborhood -- it seemed more run-down, we were definitely the minority there and there were several older teens/young adults standing along the street with their rap music blaring, etc. But we were the only ones at the splash area initially, and we were fine.

Here's a picture where I tried to get the whole splash pad in the picture:


The different fountains would come on at various times so they weren't all on at once. You turn the water on by rubbing on top of the yellow pole. After a while, it turns off so if you still want to play, you just go rub it some more.

Of course I took what seemed like a bazillion pictures (experimeting with shutter speed for this week's photography lesson!). Here is just one of each of the kids.

I think this spray fountain was their favorite -- they liked to get underneath it.


Here's Hannah waiting for that fountain to turn on over her. Just a tidbit about her -- notice that she is wearing a bracelet. She has never been big into jewelry. She got this bracelet from a friend in her kindergarten class for her 6th birthday party (his mom had made it). She wore it that day and promptly broke it so the beads spilled everywhere. I tried to put it back together and then set it aside. A couple of days ago, she found it in my closet and wants to wear it all the time now. I guess she just needed to be a little older to appreciate it!


I had a real hard time getting Courtney to look at me for any pictures, so in this shot you also get the nice water drops going across her face (but they're frozen ever-so-nicely with my high shutter speed, don't you think?)


And I cracked up when I saw Hayley laying on the ground like this. Either she was really tired or cold and could feel some warmth from the pavement.


After the splashing fun was over, the kids wanted to go over to the neat looking playground:


Again, I tried taking a bunch more pictures but got lots of shadows because of the bright sun. A few still turned out okay, though, I thought.




(There's a boy who needs a hair cut!)

The girls were actually spinning around when I got this one:


And you have no idea how hard it was to get all four of them to come together for a minute for a picture! They all wanted to keep going different directions! Maybe they are starting to get tired of mom and all her pictures. But at least I got one!