Vacation Part 2

On Thursday, we did a boating day. Caleb, Carter, and I tried kneeboarding for the first time. Carter got up on his 2nd try and stayed up really well. Caleb struggled more but did get up. I got up on my first try--not easily, and succeeded in going in and out of the wake as well as turning backwards. I was nervous though and flipped right back around. However, I struggled on my next two turns to get my knees up to the right position. Everyone else enjoyed tubing. We rented a pontoon boat in order to fit more people on the boat, so that made it difficult to do tight turns and thus throw the older boys off the tube. It was a great time though!

Austin's first time on the tube all by himself! He was very brave and loved it.

Me kneeboarding

Austin and Benson taking another turn together. We were worried about them knocking their heads together so it was a gentle ride.

Those not on the boat played at the water trampoline park! My boys loved making up Ninja Warrior courses.

We went swimming almost every day.

Clayton mid-air

Caleb mid-air

That's my almost 4-year-old swimming without floaties to his dad! He has been my youngest most confident swimmer. Yay!

Lindsey provided a fun activity at the end of the week of making some rockets. My boys loved it!

Bubbles on the back porch

The kids all wanted to help Grandpa let the air out of the blow-up boat!

Packing up in our room and Austin decided to entertain himself. 

We had plenty of space on this trip! The rooms were separate from the main house, which helped with those that needed to do nap times, and everyone had their own bathroom. :) 

Family picture before traveling home.

Coming home from vacation was a bit of a mess. We arrived home on a Sunday just after 11am for 1pm church. It is my month to play the organ (I switch off with someone else) so I had to be to church early, and I had a few things to prep for primary as the music leader. We came in the door to our house smelling like roadkill. The freezer was ajar and all the juices from the meats had leaked out all over the tile and some on the carpet that connects to the tile. It was not pleasant. We obviously lost everything in the freezer and the freezer itself. The freezer either died while we were gone (only 6 years old), or someone opened the freezer to grab something right before we left on vacation and didn't shut the freezer all the way. It is likely the 2nd scenario, but no one claims to have done that. Our freezer beeps if it is not shut all the way after about a minute, which I would have noticed since I was the last one out of the house. Not sure the cause, but the end result is still the same. Matt tackled that job while I unloaded the car, got the kids lunch, and got ready for church. 

Later that evening while Matt was at a seminary meeting, I noticed that the younger boys' bathroom sink was overflowed and underneath the sink was flooded and leaking. The boys hadn't noticed it and had not used that sink since being home. The drain was open and no water had been left on. Turns out that the overflow of the AC units is attached to this sink. It's important to run the water in that sink morning and night to prevent algae growth and back-up. Over the last 6 years since we've lived in the house, algae has been slowly growing in the pipes. With being gone a week, and the condensation of the AC units with the hot temperatures, the algae blocked the pipes and water slowly started backing up over the week. The particle board is a little warped underneath--we may need to replace it. But just another surprise from vacation that we initially thought was going to be another expensive fix (something wrong with the AC unit).

Nacogdoches Vacation 2019

Our family vacations are all about being together! We had a great week of tennis, swimming, fishing, games, food, and talking!

Sleeping Queens

One Word

Ticket to Ride

Wingspan--I played this almost every day. So fun!

Carter has a current obsession with fishing so having a pond right outside the house was perfect! Matt took him every morning as well as in the evenings many times. Others joined in when they wanted.

Unfortunately one morning both Carter and Austin got stung by a bee. Carter on the cheek and Austin on his back through his shirt.

Carter watching "Boss Baby" with the littles.

Summer Days

We spent one week dog-sitting this very old but cute Chihuahua. The boys love a chance to earn money.

Bubble fun with friends (my temple swap buddy--she has 4 boys as well)

Austin showing off a snail

4th of July neighborhood parade

This guy's "leg hurt" quite often during the parade so I ended up pushing from behind on my rollerblades. It was effective although we probably looked silly. I had run earlier that morning and showered before the parade...no point. I came home drenched again.

We did two zoo days this summer with cousins both times.

I've spent time this summer gearing up for teaching preschool starting mid-August. One of my projects was re-staining our play gym outside. I had the boys help me one of the days for an hour. I probably spent a total of 7 hours on it, doing second coats in most areas. This picture is after the first day.

Summer is quickly coming to a close! My boys are excited for a family vacation still coming up.

This has entertained the boys for a good chunk of time on a few days. They catch these baby lizards in our yard and then hold them up to each other's ear lobes where the lizards bite and hang on!

End of School

Carter's Gifted and Talented (GT) project that he worked on with a few other classmates throughout the year. They had to create a new city and do corresponding research.

Carter won an award for running the most laps in PE in the entire school! He ran the equivalent of 28 miles throughout the school year!! Crazy impressive. When it is time to run laps in PE, most kids run/walk and socialize with friends. Not my boy. He's out there to get it done and get some exercise. He won a toy prize and a $5 gift card to Chick Fil A. 

(Caleb won in his years in elementary too. Their parents' competitive side has rubbed off on them!)

Carter also finished up the year with excellent conduct marks all year long and all As. His lowest score on his report card for his final averages was a 95!

Carter's All Star baseball season just wrapped up. 8 teams total competed in the district and their team ended up in 2nd place. Painful loss in the grand championship though. Their team was up by 3 runs in the last game, last inning, 2 outs, but two errors by one of the best players on the team (missed fly ball and error in a ground ball) cost them the game. Frustrating way to lose, but Carter enjoyed playing with some of the best players in his league. Matt did a great job coaching the All Star team; it was an honor to be selected as the coach. Carter had the highest on-base percentage and highest batting average of anyone on his team!

Grandma and Grandpa at one of his tournament games.

Papa, Matt's dad, loves coming to his baseball games and didn't miss a single one!

Carter's All Star baseball team

No pictures of Caleb, but he finished up his school year with a bang as well. He played in his school talent show again, this year accompanying a friend who did a live art display. He also received excellent conduct marks all year and all As. His lowest final average for all his classes was also a 95. Impressive! Language Arts and Writing are his weakest classes and some 9 weeks he scraped by with a low A.

The day after school got out, Caleb participated in guild for the 4th time where he played 10 memorized pieces in front of a judge who critiqued on little details. He had a tougher judge this year, so he did not score as well as years past but still played very well. His songs were obviously more challenging than previous years, one was a memorized 7-page Sonata! Since 3 or so of his songs were lengthy, when he needed to run through them, he had a tendency to do so as fast as he could to get it done with. I told him many times that you perform the way you practice. Sure enough, most of Caleb's negative marks were due to the speed of many of his songs which led to more mistakes than he might have had if he had pulled back on the tempo some. Hopefully the judges' comments will be a good learning experience for him, and he will be more cognizant of slowing down. Despite his fast speed, he had beautiful scale runs, musicality, and other small nuances that his piano teacher taught him. His score this year was 36 Cs (special commendation) and 5 As (needs attention).

Caleb is gearing up and practicing for his All Star baseball season. We were grateful that they didn't overlap this year!