Tears and Cheers!

School is back is session! I didn't know whether to cry or shout for joy - so I did both. Well, I really didn't cry but if Lauren would have started to cry I would have had to exit quickly before she saw me break down. Cole had a great first day - he is in class with his best friend so all is well in his world. Well, that is until the spelling tests start up and the homework gets going full force. His teacher is new to the school and pretty new to teaching. She is young and energetic, Cole seems to like her already. The big thing this year is that the lockers are in the hallway! Cole was bummed that he didn't get locker #41 - but he felt good about the fact that he was one locker over from Jack, his best friend.

I was a little worried about how Lauren would do because she is a bit of a homebody. Even though she went to preschool 4x a week last year she still wasn't entirely ready to go all day, every day. It is a long day - we leave the house at 7:30 and she gets done at 2:45 but, Cole isn't done until 3:45 so will stay at the school and help Lauren and Cole's teachers with whatever they may need. So, by the time we got home today it was 4:15.

Lauren has the same teacher that Cole had and she is WONDERFUL. They started off the day doing an experiment with sprite and mentos. Mrs. Jammal asks the kids what their prediction was before she put the mentos in the pop and then she questioned them afterwards to see why they thought it exploded. Several kids thought it may have been b/c of the sugar in the pop - so tomorrow she is bringing diet pop - imagine their surprise when the explosion is even bigger! Lauren had a fun day - she was very excited to see Cole in the lunchroom. When I asked her how her day was she said that it was good and she felt really good because she helped out a little boy in her class that was really sad and missed his mom. She said she was able to cheer him up. That's my Lauren - always a helper!!

August 19, 2006

I can't believe that I am posting pictures of one of my kids baptism! Am I really that OLD? Cole's baptism went well, he had a great experience and best of all, he actually went through with it!! Those of you who I don't talk to on a regular basis probably don't know that for a while there I wasn't sure that Cole would choose to be baptized. About the time a good friend of ours got baptized, he started to say that he wasn't sure the church was true and that he wasn't sure that Joseph Smith was real, etc. He prayed about it for a long time and finally said that he knew it was true. I thought we had laid it all to rest until a few weeks before his baptism it all started to come up again. We didn't want to push him into getting baptized and wanted him to come to the decision on his own. Long story short, the church has a new little boy on the records. We really appreciated all our family that came into town, family in the area, friends that came into town and friends in the area who re-arranged busy schedules to be there for Cole. It meant a lot to us and to Cole as well.

Grandparents are Great!

Its virtually impossible to get a picture with everyone looking good and smiling at the same time but.....you would think that the older children would have an easier time. Clearly this is not the case with these pictures. Nonetheless, it was great having our parents in town and we appreciated them supporting Cole on the day of his baptism.

Gulf Shores, Alabama

We took a little trip down to Gulf Shores, we had heard the beaches were beautiful and we found out it was true. We had fun swimming, playing in the sand, collecting sea shells, kayaking, sail boating, riding bikes and relaxing (well as much relaxing as you can do with 3 small children).

Seriously?

One wrong turn is all it took and we were stuck in the sand. A lot of the roads on the island were still covered with sand from the storm, the road we took dead ended into a sand drift. Of course it was my brilliant idea to try and take a short cut to the other road through a strip of land that used to be a house. BAD IDEA. We sunk immediately. Needless to say Ty was not happy about the situation. I wish I had taken a picture when he was trying to dig out the back tire with the kids sand shovel. It was comical but I didn't dare laugh until I was out of ear shot otherwise I am sure he would have handed me the shovel. Luckily there were some really nice men who finally came to our rescue and got us out of there!

Photo Op

While we were stuck I decided to make the most of the senery and take a few pictures.......

Hurricane Katrina

This was on a small island, you could literally see from side to side. In the first picture you can see empty beach, a resident there told me that used to be all houses there and they all got wiped out from the storm. Of course this only solidified the kids concerns about a hurricane, luckily we saw this when we were driving home.

Land Ho!

Lily is a pointer. Anything of any interest to her gets pointed at. I tried to tell her that it is a very rude habit but my words seemed to fall on deaf ears. :)

Ferry ride

We drove our car onto the ferry and went across Mobile Bay, we saw some really interesting huge white jelly fish in the water on the way.

The underlying theme of the trip was hurricanes and tsunami's. So every time we did something we had to go through a barrage of questions regarding what we would do if a one were to hit at that moment.

If you notice the sky in this picture there is obvioulsy no threat of a hurricane suddenly descending. That didn't seem to bring the kids any comfort. Cole stayed in the car on the ferry for most of the trip in fear of a storm coming. I think the heat in the car finally drove him beyond his fears. It was very strange because Cole is typically the LAST one to be scared of anything.

It didn't help matters that the hotel we stayed at was basically devastated by the hurricane and had before and after pictures posted. With so much talk of the hurricane (Lauren was constantly saying Tsunami) I started to get a little paranoid and found myself looking for the hurricane evacuation routes wherever we went.

Shark Attack!

After all of the worry about sharks being in the ocean we had to stop and take a picture inside the shark that served as the entrance to a local souvenir shop.

Relaxing...

Cole really enjoyed the warm water and especially enjoyed catching all the sea creatures. We had a small collection of crabs and jelly fish that we set free when we left.

Water Baby

Anytime water was near Lily was clamoring to get down and get to it. She got more and more brave with her walking until finally she was able to stand and touch the water on her own.

Pool Time

The hotel had such a fun pool, this is only part of it. There was a big slide, fountains, hot tubs and adult pools (which of course we only looked at longingly from a distance).

Crab Walk.

Lily is frustrated by the fact that she isn't walking yet but she doesn't let that stop her from anything. She tried and tried again to make it down to the water until finally we took her in and that's where she wanted to stay until we left the beach!

Buried Treasure!

The kids finally talked Ty into letting them bury him in the sand even though he really HATES sand. They sure had a fun time and it sure took Ty a long time to get all that sand off of himself.

Finishing Touches...

Lauren is a clearly a girl after my own heart. While Ty and Cole were building the sandcastle, Lauren was busy finding places to decorate the castle with the shells she was collecting. In the end there was probably more shells than castle...

Surf and Sand

The kids had a great time at the beach. Lauren collected more shells than we knew what to do with, we had to put a stop to it when she was going on to the 3rd bucketfull. At first Cole was really worried about sharks (maybe that was due to the fact that I read an article, and for some unknown reason re-told it in the kids presence, about people fishing for sharks off of the beach). He was able to overcome the fear when he saw that there were many people in the water who were not being attacked. He rode several waves in on the boogie board and loved it!

Circus

We went to the circus on Cole's birthday. I hadn't been to the circus in forever and was quite impressed. The elephants were my favorite, they did some amazing tricks. I was experiencing technical difficulties during this picture so it doesn't do them justice but it was cool.

Cool Cake

Being that I am not a professional (and that from start to finish I did the cake in 2 hours) I was pretty proud of myself but the best part was that Cole loved it!

Great to be Eight!

This month is such a special one, it's birthday time for Cole....

It has been several years since Cole has wanted to have a party with his friends. (That could be due to the strong suggestion that if he didn't have a party he would get a bigger gift from us) We went to Main Event and went Cosmic Bowling and played Lazer Tag. Everyone had a great time.

In case you are wondering - Orange is not his favorite color (I am just re-living the days of the Pinto, JK) - but basketball is his favorite sport.