Another Fur Baby

Kyle's class has a classroom guinea pig named S'mores.

The kids can sign up to take her home for the weekend.

I won the awesome mom of the year award by signing up to keep her for all of spring break.

(In reality, I think we're the only family in the class not on a vacation, but whatever.)

I didn't think Chloe would mind since she doesn't even notice the hamsters, but I was wrong.

She is not pleased with the guinea pig situation.

Since these photos were taken S'mores has been relocated to the dinning room table, and all of the dinning room chairs have been moved out of  Chloe jumping reach for her protection.

I figured out S'mores really likes apples, so I've made sure to always have her favorite treats handy.

Fingers crossed we can keep her alive and well this week! 

Reality Meets Reality

My friend, Allison, called me and asked if I wanted to sit at her table for a Children's Museum luncheon.

Then she said, "the speaker is some doctor, and she has a reality show and she's a little person..."

At which point I started screaming because Jason and I have been watching The Little Couple on TLC since it first aired.

In my head, Dr. Jen Arnold and I are friends. 

 I have sat on my couch and watched her get married, try to have a baby (I cried when their surrogate miscarried), adopt their children (I cried again) and go through chemo when she had cancer.

So to say I was excited to go hear her speak was an understatement.

I knew lots of the stories she told at the luncheon because I read her book (so did my mom). 

After the luncheon I saw that she didn't have anybody around her so I went right up and told her that her family had brought me so much joy. I love watching Will (her son), and that I loved her mom.

And then I asked for a picture! 

You can't even imagine how little she is.  I'm 5'2", and I look like a giant crouched down next to her. 

My mom said, "Look, your purse comes up to her waist."  

And I was looking at her shoes, I actually think they have a bit of a heel on them.

Now if I could only meet a Real Housewife all my reality dreams will have come true, 

Last Middle UIL

My parents and I went to watch JR's advanced men's choir compete in JR's last middle school UIL competition yesterday.

As I've said before, I adore his director. I even nominated him for teacher of the year (and he won!) 

What those boys can do in sight reading is unbelievable to me, and of course, they sounded amazing.

And no, I didn't try to crop myself or JR out of the picture, my mom took it and this is what we got.

I sent him to school today with 2 dozen cupcakes to celebrate.

All the Wins

Reed's had many days where he's played 2 different sports and come home with 2 losses.

Sunday was not that day.

He played in a team tennis tournament in the afternoon and won his singles match and his doubles match.

 

Doubles partner, Eric.

In fact, his little team won all their matches. 

Then he had a baseball game last night, where he had 5 RBI's with 2 huge hits .  As he likes to say, "I almost had a grand slam". (He got out at home, but nobody even cared at that point.)  

And of course he hit that "almost grad slam" when his team had 2 outs. I almost had a heart attack when he hit it since I was sitting in the stands saying "please walk him, please walk him" under my breath.

He was named offensive player of the game after they won 8-4.

We all lined up to have our picture made, as we always do, when we are super proud. 

The Other Side of the Fence

Remember when I showed you this picture of Bindi and Chloe.

Bindi's mama sent me this the other day.

It's funny to see the view from the other side of the fence!

Glad It's the Same

I looked back to see what I wrote about the rodeo bbq cookoff for the last few years, and 2 years ago I wrote it about it on this exact day (Texas Independece Day).  So since the cookoff is a tradition, maybe writing about it on March 2nd can be a tradition too.

Last Friday night was the cookoff and I think we had passes to 5 or 6 booths, but it feels like we only went to 3 or 4.

Jason and I have been dieting so we were super excited to eat!
None of the ribs were as good as his, but I was hungry so it all tasted good.

I only care about going to the 1 both that has my favorite band.  I literally look forward to it every year.

This year they even had a glitter blower/cannon and what could be better than that?  

Um, nothing.  Nothing but a light up tambourine. 

I had to watch this video I made about 3 times to figure out what I'm saying...which is "I just got myself a light up tambourine! Things are about to get serious!"

I'm not sure if the band passed out sunglasses before or after the tambourines, but clearly, I was having a blast either way.

I'm already looking forward to next year!

Old Days

I felt like I was back teaching 7th grade science (a million years ago) as I volunteered to help Kyle and Reed's classes dissect sheep brains last Friday.

Kyle's class was first, and one of the kids in Kyle's group almost passed out.  I've never seen anything like it.  He's one of the tallest boys in their class and as soon as we turned the corner he started complaining about the smell.  (I think I have a strong sense of smell and it didn't even bother me).  He walked up to the table, turned white, and went and sat down on a bench with his head between his legs the entire time.  

The rest of the kids in my group loved it, I even had 2 girls that were totally in to it.

Here you can see how small the sheep brain is.  Which says a lot about sheep. 

The writing on Kyle's arm is so he would know the order of his dives since he was leaving for Dallas right after this. 

After what I saw with Kyle's group I was expecting a kid to go down in Reed's class.  But Reed's little group all LOVED it.  No fainters in this bunch for sure!