Wednesday School

It's that rare time in Texas again, that small window of perfect weather!! Regan's school has park day after the 4th Wednesday of the month, and Riley has yearbook for an extra hour after school, so we spent some time at the playground by the Dell Diamond. They have a nice sized lake that we walked around and Regan played with her school friends a bit before we had to go get Riley. It was just nice to be outside!

And Riley's school does a community service project once a month. He had to write up a proposal on what to do with the funds they've raised so far (about $35.00) and pitch it to the class. One of his suggestions was chosen also! So they used the money to make sandwich bags for the homeless. He called me with the good news, and to ask if I would be available to help pass them out. I said sure, how can I say no after it was his choice, right? So they made up peanut butter sandwiches, bags of chips, candy and a water bottle, and they wrote on the bags, "God loves you" and "We're praying for you!" and we drove around and passed them out. We prayed that God would lead us to the people that needed them the most and one guy was so thankful, and he was eating his sandwich before we drove off!

Outdoor School

The weather is so nice today and we just had to come out and enjoy!

Sent from my G1 phone

Are You Ready for Some Football?!

I love this picture. Riley is in the center, #28. He's not the smallest kid on his team, which is good, but there aren't many his size! He took a hard hit in the game and was down on the field for a bit. It was *really* hard as momma not to go running out on the field to check on my baby boy! I didn't think he would appreciate it. But he was okay, he landed on his arm wrong and bent his elbow the wrong way. I will be glad when football is over though, he comes home from every practice with a new bruise, and as much as he loves it, I hate it!

And this was our 17th wedding anniversary! I remember the first few kidless years where we would go to a nice dinner, or a movie, maybe a play or a trip. Now we're sitting in the sweltering heat watching football, followed by a victory brunch of breakfast tacos at Juan in a Million. I'm not complaining, I just think it's fun to see where life takes you!

Boy's Club

Riley's new school has a boy's club, where all the boys in the school meet up once a month outside of school and do something fun together. This is in addition to fun night once a month, and pizza party once a month (he is LOVING his school!) This month they met at the Georgetown Rec Center and played basketball and swam for the afternoon. He had a blast! But while he was playing, Regan and I killed some time at one of our favorite parks, and then drove around and saw some of the area that was still flooded. Georgetown got hit pretty hard with the rain a couple of weeks ago, and it was still pretty high in a lot of places. Anyway, I thought this was a cute picture of her on the tire swing, which is the one thing she just LOVES about this park!

UFC Fight Night

My gift to David for our anniversary was tickets to UFC Fight Night Live at the Frank Erwin Center. It was awesome! I love anything loud and crazy and this was definitely loud and crazy! The fighters weren't anyone major, but they were all really good fights, very entertaining, and we had a great time. I was excited to see Joe Rogan, Dana White, Bruce Buffer, and even MC Hammer was there! I told David next year is his year to plan something for our anniversary, but I don't know if he can top this :)

'Stache Bash

The church youth group was having a back to school mustache bash and told everyone to wear a fake mustache (or grow a real one) and we couldn't find a fake one, so Riley had me draw his on him. Doesn't he look cute?

Pajama Party!

I know I say this often, but I *love* our church! This week was a back to school pajama party and all the kids wore their pajamas (although Regan was afraid EVERYONE would forget and she would be the ONLY person wearing pajamas!) that was not the case! It wasn't my week to serve, but they needed help and I wouldn't have missed it for the world!

We had a waffle toss, where the kids tossed around frozen waffles (and boo-yah 2-3 won!) and then a relay where they had to pass an air mattress over their heads, put a sheet on it, pass it back, load it up with stuffed animals and pass it back and then top it with a pillow. It was fun to see them try to work that out! And then candy and Popsicles. See why I love our church? It's FUN!!

Young Chef's Academy

We had THE busiest day! It started off with a garage sale, our whole neighborhood was having a garage sale so I thought it would be a good time to clean things out and make some money for my trip to Romania. The kids wanted to help out, so we all got up before 6am and started getting things set up, and as usual, as soon as we open the garage door, we have customers. It was so funny because Riley didn't want to sell much, until he got some money from stuff, then he made several more trips inside to find things he really could live without! I let the kids keep any money from toys they sold, Riley made around $30 or $40 and Regan would only sell 3 things because she can't BEAR to part with any of her stuffed animals. She didn't care about the money at all, so she ended up only making about 5 bucks.

Then we loaded up the rest and dropped it off at Salvation Army and David took Riley to his football game, and I took Regan to a birthday party at Young Chef's Academy. We have always wanted to try it, but had not had a chance yet, so we were both excited to go to the party! Regan LOVED it! She always loves helping out in the kitchen, so she had a great time.

First, they designed their very own chef hat, and then they got to mix up some pasta dough. They each got a dough ball to knead for a while:


Then they each got a turn on the pasta machine. One would crank, one would lead the dough in, the other would catch the noodles. Then they would switch off so everyone had a turn at each job. This was the favorite part, watching the small dough ball turn into a long, thin sheet of dough, and then into long, flat noodles.


Then each kid got another job, some would tear up herbs, one chopped an onion, one mashed up some butter, and Regan got to chop garlic (which is now her permanent job in MY kitchen!)


And finally, while the noodles were boiling and the sauce was simmering, they got to decorate a giant cupcake!


Regan loved every minute of it, and wants to take cooking lessons now! I'm all for it, the sooner she gets INTO the kitchen, the sooner I can get OUT of it!!

And then we had to rush back home to get Riley to his school fun night out, and we met up with Joe and Mark and went swimming to cool off from our hot, busy day.

Mud Puddles

We had a lot of rain (a lot) from Hurricane Hermione, or whoever she was, and the kids were just aching to go play in the rain and mud. So, they had a great time, Riley had a mud facial, the threw mud on the front door and then hosed it off, and just enjoyed being messy kids for a bit.

Happy Labor Day

We had a low key day off, we went to Pam and Dave's with the whole family for burgers and chips and just hung out and visited and played with the kids. David got a call from a friend that he was getting rid of his smoker, so David and Matt made a mad dash to Cedar Park to pick it up. Now we have an extra smoker in our jungle of a backyard! Didn't take a lot of pictures, but haven't taken any of Stinky Sydney in a while so here she is!

Hawks vs. Eagles

(He's #28, on the end, this is before game prayer)

Riley had his first football game of the season, in Houston. We weren't too thrilled with the whole idea of it. The game was scheduled for 2:00, he had to be there by 12:30, and the refs ended up getting lost and pushing ALL the games back by about 2 hours. So we spent a lot of time sitting in the bleachers, waiting. Then Riley's team played, and Riley didn't get to play much. I would have understood if the team was making winning play after winning play, yeah, don't mess with a good thing. But we got creamed by the Eagles, 23 to 0. The Hawks kept using the same team, making the same plays over and over and over. It was so frustrating to watch, and especially knowing that we just wasted a whole day, and Riley was wanting to play so bad! When he did get to go play, he did great, tackled the people he was supposed to and all that. It was just a frustrating day. Reinforcing my dislike for football.

Press Play

We had a free concert at church, Press Play and Matthew Barnett from the Dream Center. It was awesome! We were hesitant to go at first, we had been at Pioneer Farm all day and were tired and had been rained on, and just kind of blah. But then Riley said he didn't want to go, he just wanted to play on the computer all night and I yanked him up and we left. We're not gonna sit around on our computer when there's an opportunity to be at church! And the kids had a blast, we were all so glad we went. Riley used his own money to buy cd's and a hat, and I caught a shirt for Regan out of the shirt shooter gun! They got to meet the band, get all their autographs and we heard an awesome message from Matthew Barnett and learned more about the Dream Center. What an incredible ministry they have out there. His stories were just crazy! But it was a fun concert, Regan's first, and it was so cute to see her with her friends, standing on a chair in church and jumping up and down praising God! Riley was up front with his friends in the mosh pit. I love our church!!

Celebration Home School Small Group

Pioneer Farm

It's Small Group time at Celebration Church! This time around, David and I both signed up to be Small Group Leaders. David's is a father/son disc golf group, and mine is a home school group. Our first outing was to Pioneer Farm for home school day. Admission was cheap, we brought a picnic lunch and met some new friends!

We watched Little House on the Prairie for the kid's first time ever before we went, so they had a good idea about what life was like back then. We got to watch the blacksmith pounding iron into different shapes and telling us about what all a blacksmith would do back then. And the girls got to make corn husk dolls with scrap material. And they loved the outhouses. They couldn't get over having to walk across the yard to go to the bathroom!

The weather was nice too, it rained a bit when we first got there, but then it was nice and cool the rest of the day. And at the end of our tour the kids got a snow cone (which I don't know how that fits in with pioneer days, but they enjoyed it). Overall I think my first small group meeting was a success.