We're Free

It's the last day of school!

(School should not continue on up into June in Texas.  It's too hot and we are ready to be out!)

 

 

Kyle has had a great year. He has loved school (because he has been in love with his teacher) and never complained once.  His teacher and I were laughing because she heard me working with the kids one day and said, "You talk to them just like I do."  I said, "I tell my husband all the time you treat the kids the same way I treated the kids when I taught...I think that's why Kyle loves you so much. It's like being at home!" 

 

It also helps that she's quite pretty,

 

Kyle and his buddies celebrating the last day

Reed has also had a fantastic year.  His teacher loved him and he loved her.  She was very sweet with the kids and Reed loved going to school everyday.  They were perfect for each other. 

 (And again, it helps when you happen to be pretty too.)

 

 

Reed on the last day

 

 

I'm really glad JR got the opportunities he did this year.  I'm thankful he was able to do the announcements and MC the talent show to show off his gifts. 

 

I've told you before how JR is quite the celebrity with the lower grades.  Just look at how the firsties reacted to him at the 5th grade clap out.

 

But, it's definitely time for JR to go on to middle school!  Here we are after 5th grade graduation.

 

Welcome  Summer!

All Celebrated

JR's birthday has been officially celebrated.

We took JR and his friend to the Astros game, with the big excitement of the night being JR and I getting on the jumbotron.

 

 

Jason and JR's friend had gone to the concession stand during the "flex cam".  JR was flexing his "muscles" trying to get on the screen...and he did.  Of course I was in the shot too, and handled it as I do everything in life...totally calm, cool, and collected...or maybe I threw my arms up over my head and started squealing.

 

 

After getting on the jumbotron the boys spent the rest of the night trying to get back on.

So they looked like this most of the time.

 

 

We definitely got our money's worth since the game was 11 innings, and though the Astros didn't win, Jason and I felt like we were on our own private date since the boys paid us no attention at all.

 

 

But JR's birthday didn't end there.

Saturday night he went to dinner with Grandpa and Granny Buffie

 

 

And Sunday night went to dinner with Granny Sherry.

 

Needless to say, the child certainly didn't starve this birthday.

Because of the Rain

I heard on the radio this morning that we got 26 inches of rain in Houston in the month of May. 

The wettest May ever.

 

 

It wasn't just us that the rain upset, Hunter has decided that he's going to have panic attacks during thunderstorms in his old age.

 

Here he is when I picked him up all pretty from the groomer (you'll notice it was raining that day).

 

 

And here he is about a week later after a panic attack I wasn't home for. 

 I'd think a closet would be a good place to hide if you were scared. Hunter thought going outside and wallowing in mud was the way to go.

 

 

After looking through my May pictures it seems the rain certainly didn't slow us down from eating.

 

 

And it didn't slow Kyle down from posing with "fun" things like bottles of water or a table.

 

 

We were able to sneak in an Astros game.

 

 

And thankfully, we were able to make it up to Denver and back.

 

JR and Reed waiting to board.

Reed asleep on a very nice stranger. 

 

Here's hoping June will dry us out a bit.  No rain in the forecast for the next week!

Runners Up

Wow, the sun came out today.

I hardly knew what it was!

In between the beginning of the week floods and the end of the week floods, Reed's baseball team was finally able to play their championship game (almost 2 weeks after it was originally scheduled).

Reed did good in the outfield, but not so great hitting.  He was able to score 1 run when he ran home from second (we don't scream "you can't stop a cheetah" when Reed's running the bases for nothing).

The rest of his team couldn't seem to pull it together either, and they lost the championship.

But hey, 2nd place in a league of 44 teams is certainly something to be proud of.

Reed took it much better than JR, who we had to send to the car because he couldn't stop crying.

(See, I'm totally not exaggerating when I tell you about JR's passion for cheering on his favorite teams.)

Here's Reed with his well earned 2nd place trophy.

And this picture just cracks me up. 

 The dads all had to jump in the team picture. 

Of course, they (the dads)  didn't let the moms get one with the team!

It was a super fun first baseball season (even with all the rain) and Kyle will be giving up keeping the concession stand in business as he and Reed both are going to play a short summer season in July.

The Last Year

This is the last year I'll be living in a teenager free house.

That's right, JR turned 12 today.

 

 

This is what the first day of the last year of being a preteen looks like.

 

The Last Push

The teachers are in the home stretch of school, and it's easy to tell with all the projects.

(Thankfully the projects have been done at school so I don't mind at all.)

 

 

The other day JR started telling me about how they had to do a STEM job project.

 Unfortunately they had to pick their jobs out of a hat and he had gotten....mathematician.

 

 

JR getting mathematician isn't as ridiculous as someone like me getting it, but still, not the most exciting career for him to research.

 

 

The teacher told them they could switch jobs with someone if both people wanted to switch, but JR was sure he'd be stuck with mathematician. "I mean, who'd want that?"  (I had to agree.)

 

 

The next day JR got in the car and said, "Mom! You'll never believe it!  One of the boys in our class came up to me and said, 'JR, I know you like to hunt, so I thought you might like my job.  I got game warden, and I really would like mathematician.  Would you like to switch?' "

 

 

Obviously, asking JR if he wanted to switch mathematician for game warden was like asking him if he'd like to trade his broccoli for a bowl of ice cream.

 

 

He was very proud of his game warden brochure (which does look kinda professional) and he even made an A on it.

(The grade was obviously an end of the year grade too.)

 

Send in the Ark

So if you follow the news at all, you might have heard we got a little rain last night.

I've been through 2 hurricanes, and a couple of tropical storms and I've never seen it rain so hard for so long.  I've also never seen such bad lightning.

 

 

And if you think I'm exaggerating, it started raining about 9:00 last night and didn't let up (at all) til around 3:00 AM.  In that time we got 11 inches of rain. 

The news also said we were having 10,000 lightning strikes every 15 minutes.

 

 

We were lucky since we didn't loose our electricity or have water in our house. Our only issue was Hunter had a panic attack over the lightning and made sure nobody slept though any of the storm.

 Poor Granny Buffie was stranded in her car until 3:30 AM, but Jason was able to get out and go get her then.

 

 

School was cancelled, but Jason was able to get to his office going a different route than he usually takes.  I didn't venture out with the kids today (there were already 2,000 cars abandoned and/or flooded out in Houston and I didn't feel like adding to the number,) so there was a lot of this going on in our house.