Memorial Day Fun

While Paul, Lauren and I were away for the soccer tournament Zachary, Megan and Kristin stayed with Paul's parents and sister for the weekend. They all helped Aunt Kelly make cookies as we were leaving on Friday. I don't think they could have done it without Zach's help, look how good a helper he was.

It was such a beautiful weekend so they were in the pool a lot. Zach, loves the water, not sure if he jumped after this picture was taken or not, he's getting braver every summer so it wouldn't surprise me.

After returning home from the tournament and after a quick stop at our house (we were going by anyway) we headed to Paul's parents to see the kiddos and to have dinner. They didn't even miss us, I knew they wouldn't, they had way too much fun!

Almost the whole entire family was there, and it was nice to see everyone, especially my nephews. Lauren laid on the floor to play with Lehlan and he laid his head on her while she played with his hair. I got lucky when he didn't move when I took the picture.
Ryan was being too cute. Heather called his name and he turned and saw her camera and said, "Cheese!!!" None of us were prepared for that and I barely got him in the picture.

One final picture of the day and that's of the 3 boys. Some day I hope they'll cooperate with us so we can get a decent picture. We'll just have to keep snapping away every time they're together.

Megan's Show

Megan did another "show" for us last weekend. She had put up signs around the house to come see her "amazing" performance. It was supposedly going to happen Saturday evening but then she came up with the idea to sleep over at Mamaw and Papaw's house. She ditched her show real quickly! Sunday evening she decided to perform instead. Oh, did I mention that she charged $1 for tickets? She made $3 from me, Kristin and Lauren, I guess Zach was free. Paul had a softball game so he missed it.

She did a little of everything, here's a few clips I put together so you can have an idea of what she did. It's only 34 seconds, I really condensed it!

She wasn't done after that. It was onto her fashion show. Kristin announced and played the music and Megan had about 5 or 6 outfits she showed us. Here's two of them:

Her cowgirl outfit.

Her churchy outfit.

I'm sure there will be more "shows" in the future. The first one she did only cost us a quarter for a ticket, this one was a dollar, I really hate to see what the next one's going to cost us! I don't mind paying, I usually get it back when I do laundry anyway. :)

Kristin's First Concert

Last night Kristin played in the All-Star Band that performed at one of the elementary schools in the district. Kids from 4 different schools were chosen and Kristin was one of the lucky ones. Of course the concert wasn't at her elementary school but at least it was at one that wasn't far away.

So the concert was at 7:00 and Kristin was supposed to be there around 6:30/6:45. I knew the orchestra was performing too but what I didn't know was that the kids from that particular school we were at were going to be singing. Had I known that I would have shown up at 7:30 instead!

The concert started with the little kids singing group, then a recorder ensemble, then the older kids singing group. When I thought all the singing was done the choir director brought the kids back up on stage for a song he had forgotten! Of course all the different group changes took forever. So finally all the singing was done and then the steel band played. They were pretty good but by this time it was 7:45 and I just wanted to go home. Plus, none of these kids I even knew, it wasn't like it was an all-star chorus or anything.

The orchestra played next and then finally, around 8:25, it was the band's turn. At this point we had been there almost 2 hours! Can you imagine what Zach was like by then? Thank goodness I had Lauren there, she had him out in the hallway for a good chunk of time. Normally I want him to sit and be quiet during things like this, he's got to learn somehow, but that was too long for me let alone him.

So here's my Kristin with her clarinet.

And of course a video of her playing. This was their 9th song, "This Old Man." They actually played it twice but for here I cut it done to just one time.

They played 10 songs total which sounds like a lot but most of the songs were 30 seconds or less. After only playing for a year I think the kids did great. I'm actually looking forward to the middle school concerts now, I think the longest concert they've ever had was an hour (and at the time I thought that was too long.)

With the concert finished we finally got home at 8:55. What a night!

Lauren's Last Concert :(

Last night she played in her final concert for middle school and probably forever. She's decided not to play in high school and she was very excited that last nights concert was the last one. It's a shame because she really is pretty good, especially for not practicing! After 5 years of playing I think she's had enough.All the 8th graders were given white carnations to wear to signify that they were leaving. Last time you'll see her in that hideous looking vest and bow tie! Prepare to see Kristin in it next year though.

I know this isn't the best video but I couldn't zoom anymore than I did or it would have gotten blurry. Lauren is the one sitting behind the music stand. I think she deliberately put it up high enough so I couldn't see her. Here's a short clip from "The Curse of Tutankhamen."

The squeaking you heard was from the clarinets, at least that's what Lauren and her friends told me.

All in all a very good concert. We heard the Symphonia play before the band and even though I'm not usually a fan of listening to the strings they were actually pretty good this time. From now on any future posts about band will involve Kristin. At least with her playing the clarinet she should be in the front row, at least for the middle school concerts.

Being Silly

While we were at my parent's house the other day Megan came out of the bedroom with Zachary modelling a wig. I can't believe he actually wore it, especially long enough to get a picture.


Well then the wig got passed around and since I already had my camera out...
Lauren looks a little possessed in that picture! She has wild eyes. Then my dad put it on, can't believe he let me take a picture of him with it. He should have known I'd post it here. I must say the blue and white frizzy hair suits him. :)

Megan then had to dress Zach up some more. At least he matches in his purple.

Megan is the one that still loves to dress up. I'm always finding her at home dressing up in her clothes from her closet. Then everything ends up on her floor, eventually they make their way to the laundry baskets, then I end up washing perfectly clean clothes. Drives me crazy!

Odds & Ends

I just wanted to update some of my past posts.

Hornet's nest - I asked them why they never opened it up to see what was inside and they were like, "Oh, I didn't know we could do that?" So once again I drove them to school with the nest sitting on my passenger seat in my van. Yuck. Megan's class cut it open and then they took it to Kristin's class. They have yet to bring it home again, I'm hoping it stays at school this time.

Lauren's dinner dance - She loved it! Had a great time. I was texting her afterwards (one of the other mom's picked up and she was doing a sleepover) and she said she was surprised at how much fun she had. I replied something like well what did she think it was going to be like, everyone just sitting around? And she replied "yes!" She didn't eat the dinner, she said they served adult food not kid food. Dinner was either stuffed chicken breast or roast beef, both of which she would eat for dinner at home. So I paid $35 for her to critique the food.

Lauren's soccer games - Her 4th game of the season they lost. I didn't go to that one because it was raining and I didn't want to have all the kids out in that mess. I could just picture Zach splashing in the puddles and rolling in the mud... Her 5th game, this past Sunday, they won but it was by forfeit. The other team just didn't show up. Yes, everyone was a little annoyed by that, a call from the other team's coach would have been nice. One more game left and the spring season will be over.

Zach laughing
I'll leave you with this video of Zach. He was watching Word World the other day and he started cracking up at one of the characters that had a pot on his head. He can laugh at some of the weirdest things.

Longwood Gardens

Kristin and Megan's entire school went to Longwood Gardens yesterday for a school wide field trip. The school had gotten some kind of grant to cover transportation costs and then Longwood waived the admission fee for everyone. I like those kind of field trips!

They got lucky with the weather and even though everything was wet it didn't rain the whole time they were there. It rained before, it rained after, just not while they were there. They both came home and said they had fun. They did some orienteering with Longwood guides which sounded interesting and they got to see all the sights while they were there. No pictures from them, with the threat of rain I didn't want either of them to have my camera again.

But I do have pictures from this morning when Zach, my mom and myself went. The weather was halfway decent today and I've been wanting to go so we went. Zach did a lot of walking while we were there. In fact I didn't even put him in the stroller until we were getting ready to leave. We headed straight to the children's garden first since that's the most fun. Of course he loved the fountains.
After playing around in there we went through the rest of the conservatory and even stopped to smell the roses...

Then it was back to the children's garden for another round of splashing in fountains. He was fascinated with the rocks that were at the bottom of some of the fountains today. I thought he was going to climb in one just to get to the rocks! In this picture he's watching the water jump from side to side.

After leaving the children's garden there was this activity center set up, a matching seed game. He didn't actually match them up, he just enjoyed that they were magnetic and he put them anywhere.

Then we went and saw 2 of the 3 tree houses and that was it. It didn't seem like we saw much because Zach wanted to walk everywhere and he was slow! But he enjoyed it and was really checking everything out. We'll just have to go back.

Lauren's 1st Dinner Dance

It was the 8th grade dinner dance tonight for Lauren. Her and two of her friends all got out of school early to go get updo's and then went to her friend's house to get ready. My job for the whole evening was to go to her friend's house, snap some pictures then drive them all to the dance which was held at a local fire hall. The other two moms did the hair appts. and the picking up when the dance is over so I think I got the better deal!

Here's Lauren and her friends, Lauren's the one in white in case you don't know!

Her hair from the side. It looked really cute up.

A different pose on the back of the truck.

When Lauren was telling me "the plan" on Thursday about what they were doing and who was doing what I had absolutely nothing to do except go take pictures if I wanted. I thought that was ridiculous so I volunteered to take to the dance since I had to go that way anyway to get home. She also told me that they were going to eat at her friend's house before leaving because she heard that the food at the dance was terrible. I was like, I don't think so, I paid $35 for her to go to this thing and she wants to eat before she goes? And she did, they all had pizza and fries before they got dressed so now I'm curious to see what dinner was like. She's spending the night at her friend's house and she has instructions to call me when it's over and she's been picked up. Can't wait to hear how it went!