School Life

We are in the groove of school these days and I have to say that Willow has had the best start to the school year than she's had for the past 3! It usually takes a good month for her to have friends developed in class and be in the groove but high school has been amazing for her so far! She's loving the performing arts program that she's part of. It's been a great way for her to make friends from different grades and different schools that all have this interest in common. She's also been attending open gyms for basketball and is excited to try out later this fall. Starting middle school is A LOT! Owen isn't as thrilled about school as he used to be. He doesn't have much to say about his teachers or classmates. The cafeteria is loud... Thankfully he's enjoying band and will find his people through that. 

Here's Willow's performing arts group!

Willow has loved attending a few football games with friends (and a few with me!!). They have dress up themes and she loves being part of the "Dog Pound" (aka student section). We're also grateful for these "no drama" friends!

My school got a book vending machine and the kids LOVE it! These cute kindergartners couldn't wait to read their book while they waited for their peers to pick theirs!

Here's our staff picture:

I always love when these trees bloom outside of my windows in the fall!

Owen's librarian coordinated a reading incentive for them and Owen is ALL ABOUT IT! He reads with a timer and is diligent about coloring his bookmark! He's so incredibly honest about it too :)

These sweet 1st graders practiced my name while spelling words with digraphs :)

Willow has enjoyed having semi-regular baking dates with a friend who moved away after 7th grade. They love it...and we love it too!

Willow and Owen both attend Youth Group on Sunday nights now. Willow loves being part of the high school group and Owen is tolerating it ;) He doesn't seem to talk to other kids but thankfully is noticed by a few of the leaders who have gone out of their way to hook up the video games or talk with him. I'm praying it's a fruitful time for him soon! 

Our sweet PE teacher gave me these flowers after being a great listener as I told her my list of bodily woes....Accutane, pulled hamstring, bee stings, cysts in my chest... It was incredibly thoughtful of her and made me feel noticed!

I love being in the county with the kids because we can email each other (they can't email anyone outside of the school system). The teachers didn't show the kids how to do email so I did and LOVED seeing this subject come through on my email!!

Owen is getting into band more so we thought he'd enjoy seeing the marching band in the halftime show of a football game. He was excited to go but wasn't interested in the game much. They recognized veterans and Gramps was able to stand up!

Owen holding out for halftime...

Do you recognize this song? It's amazing what Owen's learned on the clarinet in two short months!

Willow got these matching shirts for her and a friend. :)

Random (Owen reading and art, puzzle progress, haircuts)

In case you're curious about the puzzle progress...

Alli's getting pretty particular in her old age. She doesn't like the chicken chunks in her food and will set them outside of her bowl!! Maybe she's vegetarian??

Willow and I got our hair trimmed by the neighbor this week. Her granddaughter, Riley, was on Willow's softball team and they've enjoyed playing together as much as possible after school. It's been very sweet and such an answered prayer for the kids to have friends to play with in the neighborhood (even though Riley just stays with her grandma until 4:30). When we got our hair trimmed, Riley washed Willow's hair, combed it, and put in the mousse. =)

Owen's been coming home with a book from school to read at night. I asked if he wanted to read it to Alli, who was sitting at the back door. She actually sat while he read it! 

Looks like we might have two artists in our house!! Here's Owen's picture of escape routes if our house was on fire (fire safety lesson at school). I love his apple tree!!

He's come home with a lot of pictures like this lately. Apple trees, robots, and ships. I've encouraged him to not have blaster fire in all of his pictures (says the mom who didn't grow up with any brothers).

Owen hasn't been too excited about reading books on his level at night (or anytime really). I was super excited when he asked if we'd listen to him read this book and he did great! 

300 books!

Owen has gone through phases of interest and disinterest in reading on his own. He's been stuck at 75 books for multiple months but was remotivated to finish it when he realized how far away Christmas is, combined with his constant desire for more Lego sets. He read some level I and J books to finish off his chart making it 300 documented books that he's read before Kindergarten! Good job buddy!!

Beach!

Growing up in Colorado, you never heard of people going on a "beach week" for vacation. Living on the east coast, though, we've heard it for 12 years! We've been to the beach occasionally over those 12 years and stayed at a hotel with Nana and Grandpa on the beach for a week before, but this was our first time renting a beach house for a week. It was fun to go to Nags Head, NC with the Caldwells!

Chris is always the super packer!!

It was fun to hear Owen enjoy reading books in the car for a bit!

The drive/lunch took us about 7 hours. The kids did well thanks to a basket and bag of entertainment and the DVD player. We were there about 20 minutes before we could get into the house, so we went straight to the beach. We hadn't set out bathing suits but I warned the kids to stay dry. Haha!! 

Owen wasn't used to the ocean waves and got "sucked in"/off balance with every wave! It didn't deter him and gave us a good laugh! Best video here, but this one cracks me up too. 

So much for dry clothes!!

 Owen says, "Bring it on!!" and Willow does cartwheels.

The kids did great playing together all week!! It was fun to eavesdrop on them to make sure they were playing nicely and to hear what they were talking about. Owen fell in love with playing Battleship. He played by the rules for a while then created his own versions of the game. 

"The beach is THAT WAY!!"

8 going on 18!!

The beach was just across the street!

This nice beach umbrella was lent to us by a friend. The kids enjoyed the water and finding shells most of the time and rarely sat to play in the sand very long. We set out our umbrellas and the Caldwell's beach tent the first day, left them there during our trip back to the house for lunch/rest, then came back in the afternoon. They were still there but the tide had changed and was coming up within a foot of where they were, so the guys moved them back up the beach a bit. A while later, though, the wind caught our umbrella wrong and sent it FLYing down the beach! I chased after it as fast as my 30-something-nonrunner self could (meanwhile Kim was laughing hysterically and Chris and Owen were jumping waves, oblivious to the chaos unfolding!!) but it stayed consistently 25 yards in front of me. Thankfully a woman 75 yards down the beach (on her phone!!) reached her hand out and grabbed it for me. Unfortunately in the process of tumbling down the beach, it had inverted and broke a spoke! Thankfully Amazon was able to replace the umbrella for our friends and we'll opt for a cheap umbrella of our own next time, or just forego it!!

Hunter enjoyed the beach too!

Sitting on the beach seemed relaxing and refreshing at the time. The shower later revealed a sandy mess though!!

Willow and Owen both really enjoyed collecting the seashells that came ashore (collection pic later):

Hannah loved using the body board to surf!!

Pelicans!

Both kids enjoyed going into the ocean to jump waves. Here's Owen and Chris, and here's Willow and Chris. (I went out in the waves with them too, but those moments never get captured...) Willow got a bit of a scare falling down once and didn't go out in the waves past her knees after that and even had a couple of bad dreams. We assured her that one of us was always just a step or two away while she was in the water and that she was safe. 

Loving Owen just wanted to give the ocean a big hug!!

I didn't know at the time that this would be our "beach pic" or else I'd have written 2017 in the sand.

Chad filled up some water balloons for the kids and made a game of tossing them off the balcony into  a bucket:

Check them out!

 After-quite-time Snapchat fun:

 Reading on his own again!!

We walked out to the pier and enjoyed seeing the fishermen and little fish tanks inside:

Can you tell it was windy?? I had to hold my shirt down!

Too much wind => Monster tangle!!

Trash TV and Bold Rock make tangles easier to deal with though!

 We enjoyed super yummy Duck Donuts one morning!

On a cool morning we enjoyed a new playground nearby:

This video might make you dizzy!!

 A snuck picture of the cousins enjoying their time together. Owen was on the floor reading to the girls (in the beds):

Another cool day we enjoyed the sand dunes. The kids felt VERY comfortable about running far far away! Eeek!

The closest the kids got to hang gliding!

A local light house:

The stairwell inside!! We didn't get to climb to the top due to the wait but were able to look up from the base.

 More Snapchat fun!

A rainy afternoon movie!

We enjoyed the aquarium on a rainy morning. Apparently we had the same idea as many families vacationing that week so it was a bit crowded but still fun to see the animals and hear a few presentations!

A 500 piece puzzle Willow got for her birthday was a fun project during the week!

Yep...our after nap routine daily...

Hunter loves going up and down the stairs independently and is really good at it for his age considering he doesn't have stairs at home that he uses multiple times a day! He did fall once later in the week, so Owen was right by his side. 

We went on a Dolphin Watch in the Roanoke Sound (feeds into the ocean). It was a 2 hour trip and we didn't see a dolphin for 1.75 hours. We'd about given up hope and knew that we'd even lose out on the opportunity to reschedule (they guarantee a dolphin sighting) since we were leaving the next morning. They'd stopped the boat for the grad intern to collect some water samples, check the wind speed/air temp, etc and CHRIS spotted some dolphins while everyone else was listening to the intern (pays not to be listening??? haha). It was a large pod of dolphins! The intern thought there were about 50 in the pod and knew based on their fins, coloring, and pod size that they were not the dolphin pod that lives in the sound but were a pod traveling down the ocean that made their way into the sound. We were glad they did!! The size of the pod gave us a ton to watch all around the boat. The kids loved it too!! Taking pictures of dolphins can sure be tricky though!! We took a ton of pictures and videos so here are our best (thankful we're in the digital age and can delete pics instead of having them all developed just to be disappointed, like when we'd go whale watching when I was a kid!):

Owen did a great job of spotting the dolphins, saying "THERE!!" each time (best video) and even naming the dolphins. One dolphin slapped its tail probably 6 times in a row. I pulled my camera back out figuring it would stop by the time I got it ready, but I did catch the final tail slap. Here are some other videos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 

Owen (and I) enjoyed the Caldwell's electric Simon game too!

We enjoyed quite a few trips to the neighborhood's pool too. I didn't get too many pictures since I was enjoying the water with the kids, except for the last day when the water felt too cool after a couple cloudy/rainy days. The kids enjoyed it until we pulled them out due to their blue lips!!

Hannah enjoyed squirting her mom!!

Cheers to ice cream treats on vacation!!

Willow sorted through her shell collection to "narrow down" what made the trip back home.

It was a great, relaxing week!

It was a successful 2017 beach trip!!

After we left the beach, we drove up to Corolla to see the wild horses. It was for 4-wheel drive vehicles only and I got a bit anxious as we slid around (even while in 4-wheel drive) and other drivers passed around us quickly. If I felt more comfortable driving, we would've gone farther but I quickly announced that after we saw the first horses that we were going to turn around. We saw them just about a mile down the beach (thankfully!!).

(Pics off Chris' phone coming "soon"....I was driving and very distracted without pictures to worry about!!)

We then headed to Water Country and a few days with the Murrays, which we always enjoy!!  

Celebrating the success of Morgan's awesome blog! Check it out here and follow her to get her weekly emails!

Check out how well Chris' sunflower is doing! It grew probably 2 feet while we were gone!