Silly Kids

This morning I was finally able to go on a run and not get drenched. But then it started right when I got home. So....no swimming, no yard work, no playing outside. I did get my sharing time  done  and some other things that needed to be done. We then went over to cousin Amy's house to visit with them and Aunt Becky before they left.

Aaron had an EQ activity so I taught the boys a valuable thing...and they were so proud.


Thursday night we had a girls night out, so what did we do, we went out to dinner. The boys...what do they do for guys night out...they play whirlyball. It's a thing around here that is big. I hadn't heard of it until we moved here.

Today the news reported that we had the wettest month in May in recorded history. It also said that the rain should stop by Sunday. Perfect since this is the last week of school and we can't be stuck in the house.

Rain and Fun

Friday morning we got another huge storm. It started about 3am and I didn't go back to sleep. We got 6 inches of rain in under 2 hours. When we moved into the house we discovered that there was an overflow drain. I never thought we would use it. Remember, we have been in a crazy drought and serious watering restrictions. Well, our drain did its job great...but it took some time because there was soooooo much water in such a short time.

Dylan and I went to Blake's school for lunch because it was going to be maybe the last chance to do that this school year. We ran into Beckett and Kelsey at school. They had to finished registering Kelsey because her vaccines weren't current. Just like Blake who came from another state, other states have a different schedule than Texas. Anyway, it was fun to see them.

 Then we headed to the library. We went inside and saw Amy..Aaron's cousin who just moved here. This was in the parking lot...you will have to zoom in, but this is what things were like.....hours after the rain stopped. I should also mention that our city is hilly...you don't think that anywhere in Texas is, but I run here every day... trust me...there are hills (I didn't say mountains) and they have designed the city pretty well so when storms come the water can drain fairly easily. Well, when you have massive amounts of rain for days it takes longer for  things to drain.

And perfect timing....the boys got new rain boots from Grandma and Grandpa Bass. Thanks...the boys love them. Except now they have to jump in EVERY puddle.

Last Day of Preschool

Thursday was Dylan's last day of preschool for the school year and his last day at preschool at Ms. Shannon's because he will be going to a new preschool that is super close to our house next year. We love Ms. Shannon. I wish she was closer and would hold preschool more hours and more days. Sigh. It's okay, we will still be doing play dates with her daughter Lacie.

Andrew, Dylan, Lacie, Aimann, Graham, and Austin. Sophie wasn't there because they moved about a month ago. I talked to her mom the next day because she was freaking out about the storms we were having here that she saw the news and wanted to make sure we were okay. So sweet...miss them so much...and I  told them that we missed Sophie at preschool graduation.



Dylan sang all the songs and did all the counting, etc for the program although he takes after his dad and likes to be funny.


Dylan with Ms. Shannon. Dylan wrote a thank you card for Ms. Shannon and wrote his name in it by himself.

After we picked up Blake from school, we went swimming again.

Dry Day at the Park

Wednesday morning it was beautiful. No rain, blue sky and mild heat...it was lovely. So I took care of the things that had to get done and forgot about the things that I should get done and took off to the park.

We were there for awhile, but then the whole city realized there wasn't going to be rain and came to the park so we were kind of done at that point. But I needed to make a quick trip to Costco, then we headed over to our HOA's beach club. The water was cool, but it was super fun. Then we came home and picked up Blake from school. We got home from school and were hot from the walk to school, so we went swimming in our pool.

If you haven't heard, we have had crazy amounts of rain. It was so wonderful to have a break from that weather...even if it was only a day.

Wet Day at the Park

Tuesday morning we woke up and it wasn't pouring rain, so we called some friends and headed to the park. On our drive there it started to sprinkle, but it was only sprinkling...we have been dealing with down pours so we could handle  this. We played for about 2 hours and then we went and played somewhere else..indoors because it started to rain more.

Memorial Day

Yesterday morning, Aaron went to church to set up for the ward Memorial Day party. We met him there later for fun and food. As everything has been going lately, it was scheduled to be outside with lots of sporting events but it was raining so we had the party inside. They had a couple Minute to Win It games for the kids (and adults).

They also had face painting, but my kids strongly oppose face painting. But we got to chat lots with people. We then went home and did some yard work because it wasn't raining. While we did that the boys played outside...they had lots of energy. We came in to eat some lunch and it started to pour...again. We played inside and then there was a break, so we decided to take a walk to get a free Redbox movie. Well, it started to pour again so we were drenched.

We were home for a little bit and then we had some family over for dinner. So, Aaron's cousin, Amy moved to the same city that we live in a week ago. She is 6 minutes from our house. Her parents, Becky and Kent came to help them move, so we invited them all over for a BBQ. WE had great plans for swimming and some S'mores. Instead the kids played upstairs while the adults chatted.

Amy's youngest, Landon, was home sick with his dad. The boys still had fun with Madison.

The Connells were in the same ward in Chicago with a family in our ward, so I invited that family over for a visit. I didn't get a picture of them, but it was fun for them to see one another. It was a lot of fun to see Amy and her family and for Becky and Kent to come over. After they left our house, they took Kent to the airport to head back home. Thanks for coming to visit with us. We are excited to have some family close by now and the kids are pretty excited about having a new friend.

Blake's Character Award

Late last night I received an email from Mrs. Robinson, Blake's teacher. She apologized several times for forgetting to send the email sooner, but wanted to invite me to the school rally the next day to recognize the kids who were nominated from each class for a good character award. The tricky thing was that it was a surprise for Blake, but it was raining this morning so we drove Blake to school but we had to park the car to get into the school for the rally because it started at 8am. I told Blake that his teacher asked me to help out at the rally so sent him off to his class while I went to check in at the office and then went into the gym to be there as the kids arrived.

They did the awards by grade so the Kindergartners started things off. These are all the Kinder teachers. They are all awesome, but Blake does have the best.

As everything is nowadays, this event was sponsored by someone....this event was sponsored by the local martial arts place but the PE coaches were also involved which is kind of fun for Blake because PE is his favorite and Coach Brent (lady in light blue shirt) passed out the awards.

Here is Blake walking up to get his award.

Then their teachers put a special shirt on them and gave them their certificate.

The event was fun because they are obviously awarding students who have good character so Mrs. Robinson had some great things to say about Blake. The other fun thing to see was a couple kids in our ward who were nominated. We have 3 elementary schools in our ward and not a ton go to our elementary school,  but there were 4 kids from our Primary who got the award. 2 of them are in Kindergarten (the short one is Reese).

Dylan and I were having a battle with my phone because he wanted to play games...it kind of took awhile to get through it all, but we managed to get some pictures. I have more that I will need to post later. After Blake got his award, he came over to me and gave me his certificate. After it was done I got this picture of him and then Cooper decided to pop his head in...then he decided that he wanted the certificate back so that he could show his friends.

Yesterday he came home with another award. It was an award for finishing a reading program. Him and one other kid in his class actually did it. Crazy right? It wasn't hard to do.

Good job Blake. He's actually had some interesting experiences lately with being a good friend at school that I have heard about from either Blake, his friends or his friends' parents, so it is fun to see that his teacher recognizes this. She tells me a lot that he is a great kid and really an easy kid to like.

Since we are saying nice things about Blake today, I will tell a story (mostly so I have for future reference). A few days ago Blake walked out of school with a birthday invitation. I got all excited and asked who it was for. He replied, "It is for Campbell. He couldn't decide whether to have the party on Saturday or Sunday. Mom, I hope it is on Saturday so I can go." So we open up the invite and I read that it is on May 31. I pull out my phone with the calendar and tell him that it is a Sunday. He then responded, "Well, I guess I can't go because we don't do that on Sundays." I was happy that he came to that conclusion on his own. Hopefully he will be able to continue to make those good choices.

The principal at the end mentioned that there are only 10 more days of school. I was sitting by a friend and we both looked at each other and might have freaked out a little...yicks!

Camping

Once again, when there was a break in the rain, we headed outside to jump.


It rained in the morning, but then it stopped. That night the Father's and Son's campout was scheduled, but the Bishopric canceled it because rain was in the forecast. The boys were really sad because they were really looking forward to it...like counting down the days. Blake had a field day at school that was scheduled to be outside and a super fun day with lots of water activities,  but because of the weather, they moved it inside and had no water activities, but still lots of fun. So, Blake was kind of over this rain business and ruining of the plans. Aaron decided to take them camping in the backyard.



They all helped.

The kids fell asleep around 9:30. It was a long night for Aaron. There was no rain, but the wind was terrible.

The kids still had so much fun. We had some breakfast and did lots of yard work. With all this rain, our grass is growing like crazy. We then helped someone in our ward move. We then headed over to Aaron's cousin, Amy's house. They just moved here from Arizona. When we got there, they had taken off to get a fridge. So we went home and played for awhile and I planned my sharing time and finished the plans for the Priesthood preview which we had Sunday night. We were all kind of tired so we tried this restaurant that is really close to our house that is kind of like Chipotle, but also has delicious ice cream. We saw a bunch of people from our ward too. The kids went to bed early that night because they were tired. Sunday was pretty normal. The Priesthood Preview went well. I had the Deacon Quorum President run a lot of it and he is pretty awesome. What makes him even more awesome is that his mom is at home fighting her 3rd round of cancer and his dad is busy taking her to chemo treatments and trying to manage everything. I must say though that these boys and YM are all pretty impressive. Glad it is done though.

Brexton's Birthday Party

After school on Wednesday, Brexton invited our family to his birthday party. He was allowed to invite 1 friend and he picked Blake and the rest of the family. He also wanted to go to Chuck E Cheese. My kids had never been and always wanted to go, so this made their day. We battled the rain again (do you get a sense of how much rain we have been getting?!) and arrived. The kids started by playing games.

Brexton, the birthday boy.



Blake, Brexton, Maci and Dylan.

Our friend, Jessica made the cake. Isn't it awesome. It is all edible and it was tasty.

Brexton was terrified of Chuck E

So Bart, his dad had to protect him from Chuck E.


Brexton thought he was up for the wind tunnel, but didn't like it.


Blake didn't want to do it, so of course Dylan went in. He didn't totally understand the concept of grabbing as many tickets as possible but still had fun.

The boys played some more games and opened presents and then we took off. It was a fun party and fun to be with our friends. They will be moving in a couple weeks. It is just the city next to us at least. The mom has been my interim chorister for Primary since our other one had a meltdown and couldn't handle it anymore and the dad teaches our 7 year olds. Thankfully this past Sunday we were able to get people to take their spots. Anyway, Happy Birthday Brexton.

Lacie

The beginning of last week was busy. We had Blake's friend Cooper over, Dylan and I went to a pot luck lunch for RS, I started working with a friend for Cambria's baby shower that will be at my house in a month, got the results from my physical from the previous week, and  got our car inspected and registered. This car thing reminds me that we have almost lived in Texas for 2 years. Crazy!

Anyway, then on Wednesday we had Lacie over. When it wasn't raining we snuck outside.

But then it started to rain again so we headed back inside.