A Happy Harry Birthday

While Miles still loves Star Wars (see his shirt), he has grow to love the Harry Potter stories this summer. He has read the first two with some assistance and asked for an HP birthday party with family this year. We went to Nashville to celebrate with cousins and grandparents, but unfortunately poor Kate ended up with strep so the big event was cancelled. We still had fun eating at Noshville and spending some gift cards at Barnes & Noble. He got more Legos, both Hogwarts Castle and Hagrid's hut. He found Hedwig the owl at BN, and also picked out some favorite books. So we missed seeing the rest of the family, but he still had a great time turning 7!

20 questions with: MILES age 7

1. What is your favorite color? Green

2. What is your favorite toy? Legos

3. What is your favorite fruit? Granny Smith Apple

4. What is your favorite tv show?  Curious George

5. What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? dessert

6. What is your favorite outfit? Soccer shorts

7. What is your favorite game? Temple Run

8. What is your favorite snack? Oreos

9. What is your favorite animal? dog

10. What is your favorite song? Eye of the Tiger by Survivor

11. What is your favorite book? Harry Potter

12. Who is your best friend? Patrick

13. What is your favorite cereal? don't really like cereal

14. What is your favorite thing to do outside? play soccer

15. What is your favorite drink? water

16. What is your favorite holiday? my birthday!

17. What do you like to take to bed with you at night?  brown bears

18. What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? pancakes

19. What do you want for dinner on your birthday? Blue Coast Burrito

20. What do you want to be when you grow up? Archaeologist

BONUS question created by Miles:
What's your favorite thing to do?
"Read. Because really if I'm bored I just pick up a book and start reading words out of it."

1st day!

It was a dark and stormy morning, when Miles started 1st grade, Audrey started Pre-K and I started teaching. So we had to take an inside photo. Maybe we'll have a do-over day tomorrow.

Miles met his teacher Monday at the open house and was very excited about who he has, and who is in his class. One of his best buddies is in another class, but they know they'll see each other at recess and after school. 

Audrey is excited to be in Mr. Chris & Ms. Jennifer's class. Miles had them for Pre-K too and had an awesome time. Their preschool expanding into some vacated office space, so when it's complete in a couple of week, Audrey will have a brand new classroom. Like her headband? It's some elastic lace that came around a wedding invite we got last week. She is a stylish girl!

And I officially started school too! Teachers were back last week getting ready, then Monday was open house for us as well. Lots of kids came by to meet me and check out the changes I've made. I won't actually teach a class until Thursday, so I have to keep the butterflies in check for another day. I teach computer and library to K-8, and also have a Pre-K class that visits for story time. I'm very excited and blessed to be in such a wonderful place. While it's not in the same place as the kids, I will have the exact same holiday schedule and summers off with them.

Happy new school year to all the kids and teachers out there!

Just a boy and a girl in a little canoe

Actually girl and mom in one, boy and dad in the other. Elise and Stacy had the third. Fun day at Ijams quarry!

Video games!

Who needs an iPad when you have the classic Radio Shack game, Caveman! YaYa found Wayne's old games in her attic and now Miles is addicted. He claimed to love it more than Temple Run. Just wish it had some volume control.

who need an iPad when you have the classic Radio Shack game, Caveman!

FWD:

who needs an iPad when you have the Radio Shack classic Caveman!

who needs an iPad when you have the Radio Shack classic Caveman!

Miles is learning some soccer skills from the Brits this week. Hot but fun!

biker girl!

backstroke at swim team practice. he went off the blocks today too!

building fairy houses while enjoying the 20 degree drop in temperature from the weekend.

New family members

The weekend before Father's Day we traveled across the state to meet our newest family member, Sam! Sam was born on Memorial Day, so he was almost 2 weeks old when we met him. Audrey and Miles are so excited to have a new cousin to play with, although they were a little bored with him this time around. 

Luckily, we met another new cousin this weekend, cousin Chase! Chase and Ellie came to visit with Mike & Tiffany and Connie & Dave. Miles loved having an older boy to play with and all the kids got along great. Here's GG-mama with 5 of her 6 great grandchildren. Our new-newest cousin was born in Mississippi a few days before this photo was taken. Hopefully we'll be able to get a photo with ALL of her great grandkids together at some point

On the way to Memphis we stopped in Jackson to visit my other grandmother Alice. She was so surprised by our stop and we loved seeing her and catching up.

While in Memphis, we attempted to extract Miles's tooth that was dangling by a thread - it seemed. We even bribed him with cash and books (his preferred payment). After this picture he wouldn't let anyone near his mouth, and the tooth lasted for another week before finally popping out.

The weekend was perfect because we were able to time our visit to see not only the TX family, but PopPop and BeeBe  who were in from NC.

Yay for fun fast family visits!

And in other news, I've been hired as the librarian and technology instructor at St. Joseph School.  It's a smaller school, PreK-8 with just one class per grade. I'll see all the kids in library once a week and also in the tech lab once a week. I wish the two spaces were integrated, but that's something we can work toward. I went in last week and rearranged the space. It may be hard to see in this picture, but I made a space for storytime and the "E" (Everyone) books under the window. All those stacks of books on the table are being pulled out due to age or low use. Miles went in for a while last week and helped me stamp them all. I'm really excited about this opportunity but will go ahead and proclaim that this blog will be even less updated than it is now! I hope to at least keep some mobile postings going even if I can't write a lot about what is going on with our lives.

Happy Father's Day!

Miles met Jordan McRae today

1 week

The wait is over! Our nephew Sam arrived May 28, Memorial Day. We are so excited and happy for Megan and Kyle. We can't wait to go visit and meet him in person.

Sadly, our egg watch in the back yard ended. The eggs disappeared. We'd like to think (and tell the kids) that they moved to a new nest, but alas, it was more likely a blackbird or raccoon or other varmint that got 'em. Judging by the broken branch beside the nest, I'd say coon. Oh well, c'est la vie.

Last weekend we met our friends Karley and Abby and their parents down on Market Square. The kids scootered around and wore themselves out. Then we treated ourselves with some Rita's Italian Ice, Yum! Except for Audrey who had to have sprinkles. Of course she just licked all the sprinkles off the ice cream and left the rest for Wayne to finish.

Today Miles started basketball camp at UT. He was pretty excited after attending a few games in Thompson Boling Arena this season. He's ready to go pro.

He was most excited to see his favorite players in real life. This is Jeronne Maymon, #34, his #1 fave.

Doughnut day!

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

pool day!

Last Day of Kindergarten

Today was Miles's last day of kindergarten. He had a fantastic year with his class. Here he is with his teacher, Ms. Anderson, on the first day and then today.

He had such a wonderful year and grew so much, but physically and intellectually. We're so proud of all he has accomplished. His wonderful teachers, Ms. Anderson and Mrs. Douglas, can't be beat. They put together so many nice end-of-year gifts for us: a fun CD including the kids singing some favorite songs; his journal and lots of summer activity pages for keeping up with skills; and a scrapbook of the fun activities with lots of class photos from the year. We will treasure them all!

Now it's time to jump into summer fun. After last week's Festival of Reading, Miles checked out about 12 of the 15 Babymouse books from the library. He's already read about half of them! Yes, even though the cover is pink, boys love Babymouse too!

We just finished a session of swim lessons for both kids. Audrey's working on being able to swim alone and Miles is building strength in the various strokes.

He will be doing the feeder team for the swim team so will have lots of practices to work on those strokes this summer.

And we'll be doing some fun things around town. Yesterday at our library we caught the performance of Otis by the Dollywood Penguin Players. We hear they will be performing Ladybug Girl at the park this summer so we may have to make our first visit!

And we'll be on nest watch too. We see 2 eggs in the nest! Mama Cardinal is very caring, sitting in her nest all the day long. We think she's getting more comfortable with us being on the patio, she doesn't chirp at us as much anymore. Apparently these eggs should hatch in 11-13 days, so we're looking at June 3-5. We're waiting on another very important egg to hatch too: our baby cousin /nephew Sam is due sometime next week! We can't wait to go meet him after he arrives!

Field Day Fun

Miles had field day at school on Wednesday of the last week of school. It was the first time they'd held a true field day at the school in years, and I think it was a huge success. I volunteered to help man the 3-legged-race all day, a post chosen for its prime indoor location (although it probably would have been fun to be outside witnessing the madness). Here is Miles's class getting ready to race.

Miles and his buddy Patrick decided to be a pair.

They were ready to go, practicing their 1-2-1-2 count.

They won the their class race and came in second in the Kindergarten finals. It was a lot of fun for all involved.

See the look on their face above. They were in 3rd but then the middle team fell.

We finished their session early so the teachers and volunteers ran a heat and I teamed up with Mrs. McCormick and we won! I still got it!

After lunch the liturgical choir entertained the school with their band (3 electric guitars and a drum kit) playing songs like What Makes You Beautiful and Don't Stop Believing. Then a nun showed up and crashed the party. See for yourself:
That's actually one of the office staff in the habit and lots of teachers dancing. The principal is to the right of the nun and Ms. Anderson to her right.
The day was so much fun, I hope they continue the tradition.