School Days

Today was Owen's last day of school for the year. A sad day for sure although when I told him this morning that today's the last day he wasn't at all upset. I don't think he understands. But give him a week and I'm sure he'll get it. I can already hear the "What can we do today???" question being asked day after day after day.

So here he is on the first day of school:

And today, the last day of school (Can you see how much he's grown?):

Here he is getting his certificate of completion from his teacher. She was so sweet and said a little something special about each student. For Owen she was talking about how smart he is :-D and how one of the high school girls who teach the class said, "I think he might be smarter than me!" I also learned today that his favorite number is 105! Where did that come from?

And here's the whole class except for Nolan who was being camera shy. I guess I need to photoshop him in. Do you notice something about the students? There actually is a girl in the class but she didn't come very often and I haven't seen her there in weeks. Quick story about her...one day Owen told me he was going to marry Jenny "because she has pretty clothes." I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that she's the ONLY girl in class! L-R: Kelli Demott, Wyatt, Camden, Levi, Sammy, Owen, Will

Recent Scrappin'

I'm fortunate to have a few friends I can get together with once a month to scrapbook. The thing is the kids always want to be "helping" us, so we decided to have a kids' scrapbooking night. I let Owen scrap about the MOMS Club Easter Egg Hunt we'd had. He picked everything himself (some very interesting choices to be sure!) and did all the cutting and taping himself. The left page is the one he did, then I used the same "color scheme" to do a quick page about the night with a pic of all the kid scrappers.


Last week they had Field Day at Owen's school. All us moms went and watched (along with our little ones) and had a great time. My camera wasn't, um, working (It was NOT operator error. No, it wasn't!!! *blush*) so Rachelle was kind enough to take pics of Owen for me and she was even sweet enough to print them out for me too! So here's the spread on that.



And this last is a two page spread to go in Owen's First Year album. Yeah, he just turned 4 and I STILL haven't finished his first year. **blush again** I did stamp the date on this after I took the pic. It's from April '05 about 2 weeks before he turned 1.

More INK

This is a follow up to another post I did earlier today so you may want to check it out first then come back to this one.
These are some more pics from the Interactive Neighborhood for Kids. They're from Will's birthday party. INK is so much fun that I just had to share it with the rest of the world. Can you tell why we love it here so much? There's really not much to do in our little town beyond going to the library and the park, but there's SOOOO much we can get to in 30 minutes or less. Of course with gas prices being the way they are, it's not quite so nice, but you gotta do what you gotta do, right?

They have a stage and lots of dress up clothes for the kids. In the above pic, Owen is pretending to be one of the Village People!

Making an appt for someone at the beauty parlor.

Shopping at the grocery store.

The train playhouse. Where's Waldo?

Cop car.

Model trains.

Dentist's office.

Will and Owen at the train table with the Dentist's office in the background. Boy have they grown in the past 10 months!

Strawberry Patch

I guess I'm making up for lost time today by posting about a bunch of our recent happenings. I think it's greatly because I have a headache and don't feel like doing much beyond just sitting here, so I'm sitting here typing.

Down near Athens is a farm that does pumpkin, strawberry, and blueberry picking. The pumpkin picking last fall was the best (maybe I'll dig up those photos in a minute and post them too) because they have all sorts of activities for the kiddos. The problem was that they're only open for field trips during the day so we had to wait until 3 pm. I think we stayed until 6 or so and there were several things we never got around to doing!

Anyway, back to the strawberries...We went this past Monday and picked about a gallon. I could NOT stop Riley from eating them straight off the bush (there was at least one he bit into while it was still attached), so instead of heaping the bucket full like they recommended, I just got it almost full. It's still more strawberries than we can eat, so we're good. The boys had a great time and they did let us go take a look at the goats before we left.


It was a cool, windy day and we weren't totally dressed for it, but I always have a jacket in the van for the boys (and even had one for one of the other mommas who went with us). Owen kept it on his head most of the day. If you know Owen, then you understand.


Riley playing with the flag that's supposed to mark where we stopped picking. He thought it was great fun and, believe it or not, he didn't poke anyone with it!!


This is Owen and his best bud, Will, and they are SOOOO proud of their stash! I told them to look at the camera and this is the best I could get!


Here's the guilty party. He knows he LOVES strawberries.


This is the old fashioned water pumps that they race ducks down in the fall. They had so much fun pumping away.


Feeding grass to the goats.

Interactive Neighborhood for Kids

We have this wonderful "children's museum" about 30 minutes up the road from us. It's set up like a small town main street with a grocery, beauty parlor, post office, bank, vet's office, dentist office, diner, etc. They also have an old firetruck the kids can climb in, a police car, and now even an airplane. The boys LOVE it and Owen asks about once a week if we can go there. We went last Friday and here's a few of the pics.
Nolan and Owen at the grocery.


Riley playing with Thomas. This is where the boys spend about half the day...playing with Thomas. There's also a model train they can watch go round and a big train playhouse type thing.


Is it just me, or does this plane remind you of Wonder Bread?


Ready for take off!


Watch where you're flying buddy!

My Mother's Day gift...

...from LAST year (or was it the year before?).
It's the gift that keeps on giving.

These roses are from the 2 rose bushes I got for a previous Mother's Day. Aren't they pretty? I love having roses just outside the door!

A little reminder from God...

...not to take a single day for granted. Here's why...

We went camping this weekend up at Tallulah Gorge State Park. It's a nice park and we camped there once last year with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and brother-in-law. This year they all came back to join us for the trip. Friday night after we got set up and ate dinner, Eric decided to take the boys up to the playground right behind the bathhouse. My brother-in-law, Nathan, decided to go with them. When they get there, Riley wants to go down the slide so Eric helps him do that and had just picked him back up when Owen starts fussing and backing up. Nathan goes over to him to see what's wrong and the next thing Eric saw was Nathan jumping with both feet like he was jumping over a log and there was a SNAKE flying through the air. They weren't sure what kind of snake it was at that point but it had a triangular head which is indicative of a pit viper. Mother-in-law and sister-in-law rushed Nathan to the hospital (after he CARRIED Owen back to the campsite!!) and I went to get Riley from Eric so he could kill the snake.

Turns out it was "only" about 10 inches long and a baby copperhead. I heard from a couple of people who say that the babies can be more dangerous because they don't know how much venom to release so they release it all. Anyway, they gave him the antivenin treatments at the hospital, he was admitted and stayed about 36 hours. He's doing much better now and is (hopefully) resting at home.

So as a result, I spent my Mother's Day being thankful that both my boys were okay and able to be running around and playing. I'm not GLAD Nathan got bit, but I am glad my boys didn't get bit. I think Nathan's 6'5" body can handle the venom a lot better than my boys could have.

Here's the snake. Sorry it's a little blurry but Eric took it with his phone. You can kind of see in the middle of it's body where Eric beat it to a pulp, but being the smart person he is, he made sure not to hit it in the head so we would be able to identify it.

Easter

I don't know what has gotten into me recently, but apparently I've been very busy. So busy I still haven't posted pics from Easter baskets. I made cute little hooded towels for the boys. It was actualy supposed to be Christmas gifts, but I had too much else going on so these got set aside for a while and I decided Easter was a good time for them. Each boy got a bear and a duck towel. There were supposed to be frog ones too, but I didn't get around to that.


The bear towel was easy since all it needed was ears. The boys' faces are supposed to be the bear's face so nothing extra was needed for that. In case you can't tell, they LOVE their new towels.


The duck was a little tougher to make than the bear. I didn't have anything to actually go by so I just made it up as I went along...and then had to rip a few seams and try it again. That beak was NOT easy and I had to go to plan C, I think, before it worked right.


But in the end it turned out cute (IMO) and Riley knew that the duck was a duck immediately (that's always a good thing) and loves it the most. Owen prefers the bear but for some reason I took the pics with Ry in the bear and O wearing the duck.

So there I am. One step closer to being up to date on my blog. Both the boys got older last month, so I'll have to post some pics from their specials days and party...when I find the time.

Another new craft blog...this time for the kiddos!

This is a new kids craft blog, but it's already full of great ideas. Some of them are really simple while others are a little more involved, but I think there's probably something there for everyone. Maybe you can find something to do with your little ones.