First Day of Second Grade

Welcome to Second Grade!! I can't believe Kylee is in 2nd grade. She is on day 3 and loves it and is doing great. I felt like this year was so easy she just went in and we all smiled took pics and were out the door. No tears, no sadness from anyone. It just felt routine. Kylee got a terrific teacher this year, Mrs. Buce. I have heard she is amazing so I was very excited. She has 5 kids from her 1st grade class with her and a couple from Kindergarten. Her classroom is also in the 5th grade hall which would have been a big deal a year or two ago but this year it seemed normal. They have 8 second grade class and are the biggest grade in the school. All in all we are excited about this year and ready for the routine of school. After I dropped Kylee off I went across the hall to the library to attend the Kindergarten Tears and Cheers Breakfast that I organize. It was the biggest turnout we have ever had and I thought it went great!! I will be attending this breakfast next year as a Kindergarten parent. That is hard to believe and I am going to enjoy the next 365 days with my Katie. We are getting back into our school year routine and I think my favorite part is all the hugs I get from Katie. She also wants to be by my side every second which is something I have to get used to but I enjoy the special talks we have. She is a talker!!

Summer Wrap Up

Just wrapping up our busy, fun, tiring, hilarious, relaxing, and great summer! That sums up most moments of the summer. We tried a couple new things and enjoyed them all. One thing we added to our Make it Monday was having a theme week/or two of showing kindness to others (totally stole this idea from a blog I read). The concept was to show others kindness through random acts and so we made cards that we drove around one day and the girls hunted coke machines, carousels, and newspaper holders and we taped the cards they had made with a dollar or two in them. The loved this and still every time we see a coke machine they want to take something to it. We also did our make it Monday crafts and our slip in slide. We didn't have a tons of free time or down time this summer but when we did we had a couple PJ days and a couple read all kinds of book days and a few play on the WII Mario Kart till we are sick of it kind of days but it was great!

NRH2O

This summer we had the best time going to NRH2O each week. This was our first summer to go and the girls loved it. It is a big water park so I was always with them keeping an eye on them. They loved the lazy river and the beach pool. Katie loved the little slides and Kylee loved the excelerator slide and bigger slides. We met our friends the ORears up there a lot so the girls loved having friends to play with also. I don't know if we will do it again but we had a great summer there.

Super Summer Challenge 2010

This summer we did the Super Summer Challenge. One of my friends had done it the summer before and her family really enjoyed it so we did our own version of it this summer. My girls loved it. It gave us a plan for the summer and for the most part we learned a lot, mastered some challenges, and had fun! One of the fun things for the girls was working on the challenges and earning chips and once your earned however many chips you got some sort of reward. They had poker chips and Kylee's color was white and Katie's was blue. When they did something on the chart they earned a chip that went in the bowl. When they got to said number reward we did something fun. So for the first 15 chips we got snow cones, at 25 chips we had a camp out in the living room with mommy (usually dad does this so it was huge for me to do it), at 50 chips there was a gift (Kylee got silly bandz and a book and Katie a Bee Pillow Pet), at 75 chips a surprise which was a trip to Chuck e Cheese, and last was 100 chips was a special outing as a family. It took us all summer to get to 100 chips so it worked out great to finish up the summer with one of our already in place traditions of doing a last chance fun hotel stay before school starts. We stayed in Downtown Fort Worth at a hotel in the middle of all the action with a pool on the roof. The girls spent most the time swimming but we worked in a trip to Barnes and Noble, yummy Mi Cocina dinner, and a chocolate fondue for dessert. It was great all around. Charley and I actually got to sit on the pool deck and talk while we watched the girls swim. Katie has become quite the swimmer this summer and she and Kylee were able to goof around and play together. It was really fun to watch. On Sunday morning we really enjoyed just walking around downtown Fort Worth and grabbed breakfast at a little cafe. It was so quiet that morning but nice! This was a great way to end our Super Summer Challenge and pretty close to ending summer.