First Day of School 2016-2017

Today was Blake's first day of 6th grade.

This will be his last year in elementary school.

We are going to savor our last year of having him with us!

 Barrett's first day of 3rd grade.

Brynn's first day of 2nd grade.

 Kaleb's first day of pre-k.

  6th, 3rd, 2nd, Pre-K, and 14th year of teaching... bring it on!!

We are pumped and ready for a good school year!

Meet the Teacher

After a fun summer and lots of prayer over a new school year... the evening to find out who their teachers would be and which friends would be in their classes had finally arrived.

Blake's homeroom teacher is Mrs. Lane.

 Mrs. Langley is Barrett's teacher.

 Mrs. Pacot is Brynn's teacher.

 I always love when they come by my room to tell me all about their teachers and classes!

Pre-K

Kaleb is attending full-day Pre-K this year in our school district.

We had Meet the Teacher and orientation the week before school started.

We dropped off his supplies, saw his classroom, and met his teacher.

 We are so thankful that Mrs. Eilts will be teaching and taking good care of our boy.  She teaches Mission Friends at our church, and we are thankful that God has put her in our lives in this capacity too.  It is comforting to know that he is in loving hands while he is away from us.

 We are looking forward to a fun year filled with new things for Kaleb!

Last Weekend of Summer

The kids and I had a great last official weekend of summer together.  We spent the afternoon at the pool, got Slurpees, and enjoyed every second together!

We had a very relaxing and wonderful summer this year.  The last two summers we have experienced big, life changing situations, that left us feeling less than recharged.  We truly felt recharged and ready for a new school year this year!  We camped, swam, went to the library, and had lazy days at home.  It was a perfect summer!

Snugly

We've been super lazy and snugly since the Olympics started.  We all want to watch as many events as we can!

 The summer Olympics is our favorite!

Rio 2016

We had fun celebrating opening night of the 2016 Summer Olympics!  We made torches, had a photo booth, ate pizza, and watched the opening ceremonies.

 Team USA!!

Rio 2016

Gymnastics

Brynn decided to take a break from ballet this school year in order to give gymnastics a try.

 So far she is loving it!

She practices at home everyday and looks forward to her official practice at the gym each week. 

She is such a hard worker and so fun to watch!

Summer Livin'

We've enjoyed our fun days spent with friends.

But, new school shoes are evidence that summer will be ending soon...

Preteen Camp

It's one of those times in life where we had to let one of our babies take a step toward growing up and becoming more independent.
Blake went to preteen camp with our church for the first time.

We all went to bid him farewell the morning they departed from the church.

Off he goes for a full week of church camp!

We were so thankful for social media!  We followed along with their days as we stalked the church page looking for pictures of our boy!

Blake will narrate from here:

 After a 2 hour bus ride we finally got there.

Then we got to our camping loop, chose our cabins, got our bunks made up, hung clotheslines up and then we took our church picture (also i fell out of a tree on the first day and cut my ankle).

 Every night we had church group time and did ridiculous challenges like this one where we had to blow off all the cards except for one.

There was a magician who did our nightly Bible Study.  He used "magic" tricks to entertain us and then he taught us more about God's Word.

This night was about Jonah and the Whale.

A sunrise at Camp Riverbend.

Everyday we did fun games in rec.

We also went on hikes with Jake and Savannah.

Morning Worship.

The armpit posse.

Time to come home!

We had to get up at 7 a.m. every morning and went to bed at 11 p.m.

I was so tired when I got home!

I had a fun week!  I learned about team work and got to know my friends better.

I learned about the importance of daily devotionals and time spent reading my Bible.