"A" Field Trips

So, remember in my previous post about school how I said I've taken Allie on a couple of field trips? Well, here are some pictures....Air Force Museum (Airplane, Astronaut) and Cincinnati Zoo (Animals)











And one more random pic from one of the soccer games - I Love this one of Avery! -

Fantastic Four.....

together again

Lone Star State of Mind

Well, ya'll, we found out where our next pcs (permanent change of station) will be.........Lackland AFB, Texas. Lackland is right by San Antonio and was #1 on our list of places to go (for the job). Needless to say, we're excited...and nervous...and sad all at the same time. Excited and nervous because it will be new, but we are ready for a change. Change is always a little scary though! Sad because we really won't be anywhere near any family and we'll be moving away from a couple really good friends. I'll miss them all like crazy!!! *sniff, sniff* Not sure exactly when we'll be going, but late spring is a good estimate.

I haven't really done any research on the area yet but some things I do know about our new "home" is:

• we'll most likely buy a house
• has a much talked about Riverwalk
• warm weather all year round (although probably miserable in the summer?)
• The Alamo
• a family we've met and hung out with a lot here lives there and will be moving back around the same time as us!
• we do have some friends in Texas (an 8 hr drive away) but we'll surely visit them several times :)
• short drive to Corpus Christi
• very short drive to Schlitterbahn Waterpark in New Braunfels!

Anyway, so those are some of the things I know about the area and look forward to. I'm sure I'll be doing a lot more research on it after the holidays. If anyone knows of some fun places or things to do around there let me know!

Can I get a yee-haw?!

School

First of all, props to all of you teachers out there........I now realize, even more, how important and time consuming and frustrating and rewarding and etc etc etc that your job is! You have to have sooo much patience and put a lot of thought and creativity into your lessons to keep the kids focused.
Recently, and I say that very loosely, I started up a "preschool" for Allie. Okay, so I started back in September and we're focusing on the alphabet (one letter a week)....we're on the letter "B". Yeah, I haven't got very far (thanks, in part, to my new hobby of couponing!)Anyway, so mainly I'll have Allie practice writing the letter and then we'll do a little art, math or science. Each day I'll sort of focus on some thing or object that starts with the letter of the week. We'll maybe even throw in a few field trips here and there (stay posted for some pics of a couple recent ones!)
I had always thought that I would want to be a teacher, but I'm really glad I didn't become one because I don't think I would have been all that great at it :) I do love making up lesson plans, but they never go as planned. And I cannot, for the life of me, figure out to keep this girl focused!! I don't want to give up because I know Allie needs and wants to learn this but she just gives up soooo easily. Hmmmm, kind of sounds like her momma :)

Any suggestions on what I could do to get her (and me) to keep at it and stay focused???

hApPy HaLLoWeEn

This year Allie was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and Avery was a witch. Now, Allie had no idea who Dorothy was when we first got her costume so we went and borrowed the movie and she's been hooked ever since. We've been to a few functions where the girls could get dressed up....gymnastics...trunk or treat at our church.....a Spooktacular Parade/costume judging contest and then the ever talked about Trick or Treating!!

So, first was Trunk or Treat, which wasn't actually a "trunk" or treat. But, anyhow, it was fun for Allie to get dressed up and walk around the church to go trick or treating......and play a few games. (she won a cupcake on her first time around in the cake walk!) Poor Avery was still feeling really sick from whatever kind of bug she had so it was just Allie and I out that night. unfortunately, we didn't actually take pics at the event.....but you can tell Allie was excited to be in her costume
Next up was the Spooktacular Parade! This actually exceeded our expectations. We got there for the girls to be judged and almost immediately we knew there was no way our cute little girls would be winning anything. There were so many AMAZING costumes....and the age groups our girls were in were definitely the stiffest competition. Then, little did we know, we were a part of the parade! It was cool to walk down and have everyone along side the streets looking at US. It reminded me of the good ole' days in Stockwell when we always went to our costume contest/parade....great memories!! So we get there and sign the girls up and go sit down....the guy next to us has some popcorn so Avery goes and mooches some off of him :)
Daddy went and got her her own after that

here you can see the Cinderella Coach that won 2nd place in Allie's age group. Cinderella was in there......everyone that won had a prop like this.....they were really cool.
Foy's is a big thing downtown....they are so into Halloween!
Trick or treating was so fun for Allie this year. We went along with her best friends, Adeline and Abby. She was literally running from door to door this year! Too cute! And little Avery enjoyed her first trick or treating experience too. Although, I think she had had enough after just a couple of houses....it was just too chilly out and her bucket got heavy fast! THE GROUP
trick or treat!
The cutest witch there ever was :)

Here are a few pics of the pumpkin Allie painted and one of the pumpkins we carved...



Hope everyone else had a Happy Halloween as well!!!

Avery ~ 14 Months

Cute as a button and ornery as ever! She's so much fun to be around. Right now she's at the age where she mimics everything. She's learning really fast having an older sister to follow around. Allie plays with her really well! It's so cute watching them together. They are always holding hands!!

Avery loves to climb! She climbs into her rocking chair, she climbs up into Allie's bed, she climbs up the step stool and then into the sink....really anything that looks like it could be climbed onto she'll do it. The other day she climbed onto her little car thing and she was standing there like she was surfing. Well, it's on wheels so it started going back and forth (I was quite impressed at how long she stayed up) and then she face planted! She got a bloody lip, but only cried for a few seconds. She's one tough cookie! She loves climbing stairs too. Our stairs are really steep so we keep them blocked off so she can't climb them. We were just using a bin that was filled with toys to block off the stairs but she figured out that she was strong enough to push it out of the way. So we started blocking off the stairs by putting a big, heavy basket in between our couch and chair so she couldn't get anywhere near them. That worked for a couple of weeks until the little stinker found out she could just crawl behind the couch and get to the stairs that way!!! Now we need to figure something else out. She's such a little daredevil and too smart for her little britches. What a handful of cuteness!

Winter...Spring....Summer...

Fall?? All you have to do is call...I'll be there? Really? Are you sure? We seriously came back from vacation at the end of September and it was already in the 60's. It's slowly been getting colder and colder each day! I really don't think we're going to have a "fall" this year....one of my favorite times of the year. We're trying to make the best of it though. Last weekend we went to a pumpkin patch and this weekend we went out to Germantown for some fall festivities.

Our first stop today was Possum Creek Metropark for their Harvest Jamboree. Free pumpkins, t-shirts, horse rides, scary stories and more.
Huge rotting pumpkin





Next up was Tom's Corn Maze.....my first time going through one. It was fun, but cold! I think it would have been more fun to have one other couple with us to race against (and no one else in there). It started to get easier to find the different checkpoints because people were making bird noises everytime they found it...so all we had to do was follow their calls. It still took us about an hour though!
"Over here, Mom!"


The maze theme was "Let Freedom Ring"
We heard that there is a kids "haunted" castle somewhere around here.....not really scary, but just to warm them up to the idea. That might be a fun thing to do next weekend! Then, of course, Halloween and trick or treating would be the following weekend. FUN, FUN!!

Bama Baby

Oh yeah, that's right....vacation in Orange Beach, Alabama!! Never saw that one coming, that's for sure! Florida, maybe, but never ever would have dreamt of vacationing in good ol' Alabamers. It was actually really nice......once we got there.
The drive was supposed to take us 12 hours if we were going straight there. Now, we obviously stopped at Mammoth Caves which added about 3 hours to our trip. Then we stopped in Nashville to pick up a bed cover for Derek's new truck. That ended up being an hour there too. When we hit Nashville we started having car problems. We decided to keep on going. Things just got worse though! The car would eventually only hit a max of 30mph, which is extremely dangerous on the interstate. Luckily it was very late at night so there were hardly any cars on the road. We did make it to Maxwell AFB in Montgomery Alabama around 2 am and got the last room available to crash in for four hours. The next day the car was just worse.....my parents caught up to us and we sent the girls ahead with them. We finally made it to O.B. after 32 hours!!!!! Needless to say, we were stressed out beyond belief (the car only went 10mph for the last couple of hours!)

Anyway, the rest of vacation was enjoyable.....the resort we stayed at was amazing and the white sand beaches were pretty great too. Enjoy the slide show!!!

MAMMOTH Caves

As we were heading down south, for our LATE summer vacation, we decided to stop off at Mammoth Caves in Kentucky. It was right on the way so why not, right?! We were pretty excited to see them. We chose the Historic tour because it was one of the more kid friendly ones. It was well worth the stop although I will say that the cave we visited in Virginia was better.

Friday, September 18, 2009

It started pouring as we were walking to the cave....and it was a warm and fuzzy 54 degrees inside...hence the cold look on the girls' faces!