Updates...

I haven't posted much lately, we've been pretty busy. Thought I would do a big update post.

Riley is nearing the end of his 9th grade year. He's in Sylvan for some extra help 2 nights a week. So far it seems to be working well, he's learning to study better and take good notes, and we are hoping it will help him with his AP Human Geography test that he has coming up. He is in study sessions 2 or 3 times a week, before or after school, for that, and ROTC keeps him busy with PT tests and different drill and marksmanship challenges. Add in football, and a pretty rigorous AP biology and AP English class, and then Sea Cadets, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and church, he's a busy guy. But he's a good kid, and has a great attitude, and he keeps us laughing.

Regan is nearing the end of 5th grade, elementary school, my baby!! She's in the middle of the dreaded STAAR testing and so afraid that she won't pass the STAAR tests and they will hold her back! I hate the fear they put in these kids. She makes all A's and B's so she has nothing to worry about, but she's also been in tutoring at 7am every morning for about a month, to work on math. They have one more to go, and then we might just have to take a mental health day! She's getting excited to go to middle school though, even if I'm not. I just can't believe my baby will be going to middle school.

And other than that, we've just been getting stuff done around the house. Finally worked on the downstairs bathroom, needed to fix the light in there and change out the curtain, then decided to switch out the toilet, but hey, why don't we change the floor too, it just kind of snowballed on us! But, now that it's done, it looks great, and we're ready to tackle other parts of the house now. It seems like every room needs SOMETHING. I guess that's the price of being a homeowner! No complaints here though.

David and I are great. In fact, our church asked us to go to Africa on a missions trip in December, and David said yes! He's never had any desire to go to Africa, but he knows I have always wanted to go. Our church has a campus in Xai-Xai, Mozambique, and in December, they host Christmas parties for the kids there, and we will be going with a team of mostly married couples to help with the Christmas parties. I can't wait, I'm so incredibly excited about it! Just have to get those dreaded shots first, ugh!!!

So, we would appreciate your prayers as we get ready, and of course, I will be updating along the way, and I'm sure I am going to have tons of pictures when we get back. I can't wait!!

 

Radiant Conference

The Radiant Conference this year was AMAZING!! I really enjoyed it, and was so happy that we managed to sell out of our cookies right before the conference started, so I could go and not worry about anything but volunteering! It started Thursday night with Priscilla Shirer, who is one of my absolute favorite speakers, and then Friday morning, Friday evening, and Saturday morning, with Lisa Bevere, and our Pastors, Joe and Lori Champion. The music was great, the specials were awesome, it was just really top-notch. I really enjoyed it, and getting to spend time with friends and have lunch and just have a kind of "girls weekend"!  (David did campus support)  Here's a recap video:
 http://celebrationtx.smugmug.com/Events/Radiant-Conference-2014/Videos/i-sWtTzzF

Happy Valentine's Day!

Regan told me the other day, "Mom, no more homemade Valentine's, okay?" Ugh, shot to the heart! It was bad enough that this was my very last school Valentine party to go to, now I can't even make fun Valentine's!? So, I bought her some Fun Dip and called it a day. She signed up to bring Ranch Dip (the good kind, she said) and David had the day off work, so I figured we would both go.

First, David made surprise lunch reservations for us at Fogo de Chau! The kids have separate things tonight (Riley and David are off to Ft. Hood, Regan and I have a cookie booth) so we figured we would celebrate early. It was nice! After lunch, we ran to the store to get the good dip, then went to Regan's school, where David surprised her with flowers.

I think she liked having her daddy come and bring them to her too! Then we came home and took a nap before we had to run pick up kids, get cookies, and go our separate directions. Ah, true love. It's not all hearts and flowers, it's the day to day commitment of being there for each other through thick and thin and still being able to have a conversation over the lunch table (that's not about the kids!)

Daddy Daughter Dance

Our church hosted a Daddy Daughter Dance Friday night, and Regan was SO excited! She loves to go get a new dress, and make David get a matching shirt so they can go not-dance together!

Of course, it's hard to find a dress for a girl who's not a little girl anymore, and not a hoochie mama! Junior departments at the mall are crazy! Dresses are so short or so low cut, it was very hard to find something appropriate. And, Regan was home from school for 2 days this week with strep, so I was out shopping, texting her pictures of outfits, buying and returning things she decided didn't look as great in person as in the picture. Busy week!

But, we finally found the perfect dress, David (I) bought her a corsage, and she had me crimp her hair, put a little glitter on the eyes, and she wore her tiara. They looked so cute together! I hear they had a great time, even though she didn't want to dance, and David didn't want to enter the dad's break dancing competition. She had a sleepover birthday party to go to afterward, so David took her to dinner and then dropped her off at her friends.

Guess Who?

Pam found these two old pictures of David and realized how much they looked like Riley! So I had to look and find some to match. Can't believe how much they look alike!

One Big Update!

It's been busy lately, haven't had much chance to update things.

Riley's been doing PT for his knee injury. We got the all-clear this week so he's really enjoying being back on full workouts at school. He can run and lift weights again, so he's happy.  He got an invitation to a Naval Academy Admissions Forum in Houston last weekend, so he and David went for Friday night, spent the night with David's cousin Jimmy, and did the admissions forum on Saturday. It sounded like they got a lot of good information, and Riley came home with a renewed determination to keep those grades up!!

For Regan and I, cookie season is on in full force. I have done the big cookie lottery, the cookie mega-drop, and we've completed our first week of cookie sales. I think we've sold around 300 boxes so far, but I need to do a good count.  Her science fair is over, and I couldn't be happier. I hate science fairs almost as much as I hate spiders. There's no need for either, really.

Today we had a SNOW DAY! Really, an ice day. It's been hilarious watching everyone on Facebook make fun of us wussy Austinites, but really, there were over 250 car accidents in the last 2 days with all the ice on the roads. So, we've just stayed home, eaten soup, and slept in. Can't complain! (Well, I can, because David keeps the house so cold, I have taken to wearing my jacket and scarf, and ear wrap, and gloves, INSIDE!) I'm a true Texan. I am ready for summer!

Tonight, David is at a men's conference at church, Riley is at Sea Cadets, Regan has 2 friends over, I have people coming to pick up cookies, Hunter ate a bag of powdered sugar, and it looks like a cocaine bust gone bad in my living room!!

Finally!

Riley and David's gifts finally came (a day late). Riley got a new G Shock watch, it can do a bunch of cool things, but I don't remember. It's glow in the dark, and it's some fancy schmancy military type watch. He likes it a lot. David of course, got his favorite pears. I get these for him every year because he loves them so much. And Regan got a crimper from Santa, and so we had to play around with it.

Happy Birthday David!

Typical night at our house, everyone headed in different directions! Regan had a Christmas party with the neighbor kids, and she was spending the night after. They had a White Elephant gift exchange and she brought an Uncle Si Chia Head, from Duck Dynasty! Riley spent the night with his friend Yash, so he got to drive over there and let dad be the passenger for a while (he didn't like it). Then David and I had dinner with his parents for his birthday. It was a nice night out and relaxing and no bickering kids, very enjoyable! The kids and I got David a fancy lighter for his birthday since he complains about the one we have every time he has to light the grill. Not a very fun gift, but practical, and he's hard to buy for!

My First Ink

And my last! I've always heard tattoos are addictive but nope, they're just painful! Well, I've always wanted a tattoo but I couldn't decide what exactly I wanted. I mean, I haven't even painted my bedroom because I can't settle on a paint color! How will I live with something forever!

Well, today is mine and David's 20th anniversary, and what better way to commemorate it than with a tattoo? David was surprised, he didn't think I would really do it. I met him for lunch at Mandola's Italian Deli and it was really good, and then I went to the tattoo place. Talk about out of my element! But they were super nice and it was pretty easy. I was surprised that it hurt as bad as it did, I'm Ms. Natural Childbirth and all, but wow, ouch! The outlining was bad, the filling in wasn't too bad, or I was just numb by then!

So, what do you think? I told David he's been a figurative pain in the neck for the last 20 years, now he's literally a pain in my neck! But, no matter what, he's stuck with me now. I figure if we can make it for the first 20 years, the rest of our lives will be easy!

I like it, the kids were shocked, Riley thinks it's cool, Regan wasn't too happy, but glad my hair covers it. 

Now it's David's turn. Maybe my name in big fancy letters across his chest?

US Naval Academy

I know I'm late posting about the boys trip, but David just gave me the pictures to post! David took Riley over Labor Day weekend to Baltimore/Annapolis/DC for a boy's weekend.  Riley has always wanted to go to the Naval Academy, so we figured letting him go see the place right as he's starting off his high school "career" might light a fire under him to do well in school.

They left on Friday afternoon, flew to Baltimore, I think that's where their hotel was. They went on Saturday morning to Annapolis and met up with one of Riley's old motocross buddies who goes to the Naval Academy now.  Jordan gave them a tour of the place, and it was nice because they got to go a lot of places that aren't open for "public". They got to see the dorms, meet Jordan's roommate as he was preparing to go run with a 40 pound weighted vest, and just got a really personalized behind the scenes look at things. I asked David to take a lot of pictures, but I meant with Riley in them, and I got a LOT of pictures of buildings and cannons. Lots of cannons.

They went to DC the next day, spent most of the day at the Air and Space Museum, and then went to see the Changing of the Guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (he didn't take ANY pictures there, GRR!) And all the pictures at the Air and Space Museum are of planes. (Boring)

Anyway, they went  back to the Academy on Monday, I think to take more pictures. They ate some crabs, and came home super late on Monday night. Here are the best pictures, the ones with people in them :)

Naval Academy Trip

The Day After

After a long trip like I just took, it's normal to come home and rest, relax, catch up on laundry, etc. but no, I can never be normal!  I had a load of laundry done by Sunday morning, Regan packed for church camp, and it was our week to serve at church!

I do nursery check in for the 2nd service, Regan works with toddlers, and David does campus support. So as soon as we were done, Regan and I rushed home and ate lunch, took Princess to her boarder (a friend of mine that grooms her) and picked up some food for Hunter, ran home so David could use my truck to get Hunter to his boarder (he loves Dog Boys!) and I took Regan to the church to drop her off for camp. 

She was so excited for her first year of youth camp! And so tired too, poor thing!

Then David and I hit the road for Port Aransas. We only have 2 nights here, but we are making the most of them! We got in Sunday night, rode the ferry (my favorite way to get to the island) and found a dinner place that was decent and not too crowded (service was terrible so they gave us free bread pudding to take back to he room)  Then we took a late night full moon stroll on the beach. It was perfect! 

Today we had breakfast at the same place we had dinner last night because they had really good looking cinnamon rolls! And they were! And then we hit the beach for a bit. There must be a storm or something out there cause that was the roughest water I've ever had at the beach! We didn't stay too long, came in, got cleaned up and went to lunch and a movie. Been a while since I've been to a movie in the middle of the day!

 Then we went to this place called Shells for dinner. I had heard great things about it from my sister, Wendy, and she was NOT wrong! There was an hour and a half wait last night, only 30 minutes tonight so we thought we would stay. And we are so glad we did! We both had farfalle with bacon, tomatoes and spicy garlic cream sauce for dinner, his with shrimp, mine with chicken. And a roasted garlic and grilled focaccia bread for an appetizer. Yum! Now we know why it's always so busy! And it's super small, 14 tables total, and that includes the 5 outside! We will definitely go back there next time. 

And another moonlight stroll on the beach (this time with a mojito for me, piña colada for David) and I am SO not ready to go home tomorrow! It's been a very busy few months for us and it has been nice to get away and reconnect and talk and just be 2 grown ups for a change, not mom and dad, aunt and uncle, or anything else. I really wish we could do this more often! And, I SO <3 the beach! This is totally my happy place!

iFly Austin

We decided to reward Riley for his good grades this year (he ended the school year with all A's and B's!) and with it being Father's Day weekend, we combined it, and did a father/son indoor skydiving trip! This place is new to Austin, and they've been wanting to check it out, and they had a father's day special. Riley was very excited to try it out.

You check in, and watch the experts do it, they make it look SO easy! Then you go to "flight school" where they teach you the basics. Then you get suited up and get ready for your turn. You each get a minute of air time (if you jump out of a plane, it's less than that I guess) and then you get 2 turns. So you end up with about 2:15 in the air, but you can always buy more air time (of course!)

Riley was first, and he did great. The first time you just get flat and get used to it, and learn to stay in place and in form. The second turn, they have an instructor come in and fly you up to the ceiling! That was Riley's favorite part. Now he wants to go back and learn how to do tricks and flips. I took video of them going up, and pictures of them flying. We got a free DVD of their flight too, but I haven't watched it yet.

And then we went to Kerbey Lane for lunch, yummy. It's been a while since we've been there, and the kids love it. By then, Little Bit was awfully tired, so we headed home for nap time!

iFly Weekend

Weekend Update

Well, we had a busy weekend! On Friday I had to get everything together for Regan's Girl Scout bridging/camping trip. She's bridging to Cadette now! I'm so proud of her for being so involved in Girl Scouts. I think they are such a great organization and she is learning so much. We found out today, the girls might get a Senate Resolution drafted to acknowledge their Bronze Award! How cool is that?!

Anyway, got her ready for camp, had to take Riley to what might be (we are praying) his new high school next year. He is supposed to go to Pflugerville, and we want him to go to Hendrickson. They have an award winning JROTC program, and if he sticks with it, he can get into the Naval Academy without a letter of recommendation from a Senator (but I know we can get that too). So, I took him up to the school to turn in paperwork to do a JROTC summer camp, and the guy in charge (I can't remember if he was a Sgt., Lt, or what. All those initials confuse me) anyway, he wanted to give us a tour of the ROTC wing of the school and show us everything. He was very nice and said if we needed any help with any of the transfer paperwork, he would do whatever he could to help us out! This is a HUGE answer to prayer because we have been praying for Riley to be able to go to Hendrickson for a long time now, and we've been told at every step of the way that there was just NO WAY it was going to happen. They are a closed campus and not taking any transfers. Well, they just so happened to hire another ROTC instructor and that made an opening for more students! Thank God for our answer to prayer!!

So, after our tour (and me freaking out about how big this school is, 1/4 mile from one end to the other, and how big the kids are that go there, and that my baby bird will be going to HIGH SCHOOL next year) I had to rush home and get Regan to her GS leader's house to head off on her trip.  Then Riley had to meet one of his friends that is about to go to the Naval Academy for movie night, and David and I decided to drop in on Danny and Shari D. for a while. Hadn't seen them in forever so it was nice to catch up and see them!

Then on Saturday morning, the boys volunteered at our church's annual Single Mom's and Military Wives Oil Change. I am usually there to help with the kids but I figured I would just stay home this time and deal with my own! But they were there most of the day and I think they said over 300 mom's came out! They got their oil changed, hair and nails, waxing, free childcare, massages, etc. I love this event, and hated missing it this year. But David has served at all of them! Proud of my man!!

Then after the boys came home and rested some, David and I took Little Bit to the pool for the first time. I wanted to see her swim so bad! I had gotten her the cutest little bathing suit and floaty, and David really didn't want to swim, but I knew I couldn't handle it all by myself, so he got his bathing suit on and came with us! And guess what, she LOVED it! It was so cute. She got in her little bee floaty and sat there for a bit, chewing on the bee antenna, but once she realized she was sitting in water, she started splashing around like crazy. David would swim around her and come up and it would freak her out how he was doing that. It was cute. Then we headed home to get her ready for bed cause all that swimming tired her out!

On Sunday, she looked so cute for church. She got a little upset after a while, she's really having some separation anxiety lately, not wanting to be far from me at all. But she got to ride in the big 6-seater stroller and get pushed around the halls, so she really liked that! I was on the schedule to do check in for the 2nd service so we were there a little longer than normal. Then I took Riley to the brand new opened Torchy's Tacos (one of my favorite taco places, and they just opened in Round Rock!) and then had to rush to get Regan from her camping trip. She said it was fun, but they didn't get to swim afterall so she was pretty upset about that.

Then, I bought a sewing machine and had to go pick that up, and came home to try to take a nap with Elise, but it was a very short lived nap. She was up a lot the night before with a stuffy nose, so we were all pretty tired and cranky.   Well, that was more like a novel, but it was a long, busy weekend. And now that school is almost out, we will probably be getting more and more busy! I will be glad to be able to sleep in though. I really miss sleep.

New Easter Cast

Regan was very excited to finally get some changes. Her pink, short arm case was cut off and replaced by a splint for the next 3 weeks. The purple, long arm cast was removed and replaced by a cool, Easter pink and blue striped short arm cast for the next 4 weeks! X-rays looked good, new bone growth around the breaks, and she got to wash her arms in the sink with soap and water and everything! She stood there while I washed and rubbed the dead skin off. Yuck, it's amazing how nasty it gets under those casts. She's much happier now that she can move her right elbow again!

David came with us since we all had the day off for Good Friday and so we took Regan to her new favorite place for lunch, Arpeggio, a Mediterranean deli, she loved it!

Not much to Report

Not a lot going on these days. Regan has one more week in both casts, then one comes off and one gets replaced with a short cast. She's very happy about that but I have to brag on her a little bit. She's handled this whole thing so well. I know I would be Captain Complainer if it were me, but she hasn't once complained about it. She gets irritated with herself for not being as independent as she used to be, but she's had such a great attitude with the whole thing. Very proud of her for that.

Hunter is getting huge and is quite the handful. He just roams the house seeking what he can devour (sound familiar, um, like SATAN?) He's not on my good list right now. But, we found out he LOVES the water hose, so I take him out back and spray him down, he loves it. And it's getting hot enough these days I might hose myself down with him.

Riley is off to drill weekend right now. It's inspection this weekend, so he's not looking forward to it. Time to get the head shaved again, make sure all the uniforms are ironed the right way and shoes are shined to perfection, patches sewed on in exactly the correct spot. The military is pretty particular about that kind of thing, who knew?

David has been going to a chiropractor friend from church and is feeling MUCH better. Which is good because we have so much to do around the house! He got a job offer today which is great news, but he's holding out a little bit for a different job that he really wants, so we are praying they offer him something soon, or he will take this other one. Either way it means more money which is an answer to prayer!

Kenzie and the kids came by one day to pick up mail, and it was good to see Eli. Hadn't seen him in a long time, so of course, took some pictures. It was hard cause he's a mini-Riley and didn't want to stay still for longer than about .02 seconds.

And I'm just the grease in the wheels that make all this go 'round. I'm just counting down the days till our phone contract is up and I can get an iPhone (10 more days!) That's the highlight of my life right now. Don't hate :)

The cookies are here!

We had a busy Saturday. Up bright and early (and nasty and rainy) to get 250 cases of Girl Scout cookies! It was different this year, we had to line up at the Dell Diamond parking lot where they had a row of 6 or 7 18 wheelers all packed with cookies. You pull up to each 18 wheeler and they load whatever you need in the back of your truck, you didn't even need to get out of your truck this year!


Then back to my house where the rest of the troop came and picked up their cookies. Sales don't start until Wednesday, booth sales on Saturday, but I didn't want to have to try to find room in my house for all those boxes and try to keep a chewy puppy away from them all!

So, Regan has her initial order of 540 boxes to sell. She wants to sell 1500 this year, but I'm not up for that. I told her we would do 1000, and then think about it. She said Dad should do the last 500 with her, and I'm ALL about that!

Then, in the afternoon, Regan and David had the annual Father/Daughter Girl Scout event. This year it was "Minute to Win It" games. They had fun, it was hot and muggy so they were wearing shorts, in mid-January!

Red's Range

David has been wanting us to get some guns lately ('A' gun, I don't want to be on any government watch list!) so we went to Red's to do some target practice, and see if we liked this one. We didn't, so he's still looking. But it was kind of fun. The kids were mad that we didn't take them with us, and someone brought some very loud something or other, even with those headphones on, I would flinch each time it was shot. I really don't know much about guns, and just want one that will put a hole in a bad guy, but David says I have to be all comfortable with it and all that. Annie Oakley, I'm not!

I thought I did pretty good though, the ones closest to the black are mine. Of course, David shot farther away than I did (full disclosure) but still, I could hit a bad guy at 3 yards! We have the best date nights.

Easter On the Hill with Tim Tebow

Easter On the Hill

Well, it was no secret about Tim Tebow coming to our church for Easter! It was everywhere, in the news, on Jay Leno, online, everyone seemed to be talking about it. And it did not disappoint! It was an incredible event that I'm so glad we got to be a part of.

David served in the volunteer parking lot, that opened at 4:30am, so he got to church around 4am, got the volunteers parked and then was getting buses in and out of the lot all day. He didn't leave the lot until around 3pm, so he was there, on his feet for almost 12 hours straight, and didn't get to see one minute of the event. It's because of him and other people like him, that this event went off so smoothly! I was so proud of him for serving and not complaining, and just doing whatever it took so other people could come and hear the gospel.

Riley and I served in the Kids tent, so we got there around 6:30 and helped set up the tent, and get the face painting going. We did face painting and the eye black tattoos that said "John 3:16" under the eyes. Those were a big hit and we ran out of those before the service even started.

We ended up with nearly 20,000 people there, and over 1,000 salvations! In the end, that's what it was all about, not Tim Tebow, or Joe Champion, but about people coming to know Christ, so I would say it was a success, and all those early morning trainings, orientations, prayer meetings, it was all worth it. I'm so proud of my church, and I can't wait to see what God will do next!