End of School Year

Well the school year is officially over. I have spent the last two mornings at award ceremonies for my children's accomplishments. Both Taylor and Tanner make all "A's" for the year. I am so proud of them and how hard they work. They received a metal for this honor. This is their Principal Mr. Dyer and Assistant Principal Mrs. Wilburn.

I could tell I was Tanner by his shoes. I would know his giant, dirty shoes anywhere. He is obsessed with Tony Hawk right now.

Here is Taylor with her teacher Ms. Barker, Tanner's teacher Ms. Rosier, and Tanner with his report card.

Introducing my Fifth Grader and my Third Grader. This is Taylor's last day in the elementary school and she is NOT sad about it. She can't wait to go to the middle school and get a locker!

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Memorial Day Camping Trip

We decided to go camping for Memorial Day weekend this year. We decided this long before the forecast for rain was out, but we thought we would go anyway. We were able to camp on some land that belongs to our friends dad. This land is used as a recreation place for company parties. It has a lake, paddle boats, putt putt, ball fields, and bathrooms. The best part, other than the bathrooms, was that we got to camp for free!!!! It did rain on and off until Saturday night, but that didn't stop the fun.

This is a picture of a friend of ours who didn't want to get out of his tent Saturday morning, but kept joining in on the conversation. My husband and another friend decided to pull up his tent stakes. It was alot funnier than the picture is, I promise. Here he is when he finally got out of the tent. With hair like that I would have stayed in there too.

My son found a love for fishing. He would even go to bed early just so he could get up early, and he did. He woke up at 5:30 on his own. The kids would fish whenever it wasn't raining and when it was raining they would go play putt putt since it was covered. Taylor caught 2 bass and was proud to hold them herself. Tanner caught 4 bass all about 1lb. except one that was about 3 1/2 lbs. He was so excited, but still won't hold one himself.

We also enjoyed the paddle boats. The kids enjoyed going out by themselves, with Dixie the dog of course. If anyone would ride out in the lake she would swim out and get in the back. She didn't want to be left out of anything.

We ended up coming back a day early because of all the rain and mud. It was a great trip and we can't wait to go back.

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Taylor's First Game Ball!

I was so proud of my daughter last night. She got her first game ball and she was so excited. The part that made me proud is that she got it for listening to the coaches and for her good attitude and character. These attributes are much more important than ball skills (although those are great too). She is growing up and maturing so quickly. I am proud of the Tween that she is becoming!

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Mother's Day

This Mother's Day was a different experience for me this year. My children are getting older and starting to do things for themselves. Of course their father had helped get them a card, but he had to work so the kids were left to be in charge of the day. While I was taking my bath the kids decided that they would fix me breakfast. Taylor made her toast, which Tanner says is the best toast in the world, and Tanner cooked me scrambled eggs. The best part was when I got up from the table and they cleaned up the mess! After breakfast we got dressed and went to my mothers house.

I wrote a post a couple of months ago about my grandmother that passed away. She was my mother's mother. I wanted to be with my mother more that ever this year, being her first Mother's Day since the passing of her mother. She had picked some beautiful flowers from her yard and wanted me to make an arrangement for her grave. My grandmother loved to look out of the large sliding glass doors in her den and admire all of the beautiful flowers that my granddad had planted especially the bright pink Mandavillia. My mom and I packed up the kids and the flowers and drove over to Gadsden. We had a wonderful lunch at Struts (great hot wings!) and went to see my uncle who is recovering from shoulder surgery while waiting for the rain to stop. As soon as the rain let up we went to the cemetery and got to work.

I started arranging the flowers and Mama started cleaning, which would have made my MaMaw so proud. Since it has still so wet we let the kids sit in the van until we finished. After we felt that everything was in tip top shape we all sat back for just a moment, a somber moment. When we were walking away I noticed that Tanner, my almost 9 yr. old son, paused for a second and then caught up with me. I turned back to take a last look and noticed that he had taken the penny out of his pocket and laid it on her foot stone. You can't really tell from this photo but he is a little bit of a perfectionist. The penny is laying perfectly in the center of the stone and it even lined up perfectly. It touched my heart that he had to make his own contribution. He didn't have much but it didn't matter. MaMaw would have been touched by this precious gift. She loved her great grand babies very much!

To end the day I returned home to a husband that was cooking me some ribs!!!! It was a great day spent with family the way that it should be!

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My Ma-Maw

In my earlier post about my grandmother I promised that I would post some pictures of her. I am now following up on that promise. Most of these pictures were taken by my grandfather who was taking some photography classes. He also did the hand tinting himself.

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