What's New

I realize I haven't posted in a while - so here's what we've been up to:

SUMMER MOVIES:
This summer we have seen: Horton Hears a Who, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and The Bee Movie. We saw Horton Hears a Who at the discount theater and then one of the theaters near here has free movies at 10am on Tues and Wed and that's where we saw Alvin and the Chipmunks and The Bee Movie. Then, this past weekend David went out of town so the girls and I went to see Wall-E. Wall-E was good but not as good, in my opinion, as Alvin and the Chipmunks and maybe not even as good as The Bee Movie. Going to the movies with three kids has not been at all the nightmare I thought it would be. However, I have now missed the ending to Alvin and the Chipmunks and Wall-E thanks to Audrey and her amazingly tiny bladder! Seriously - after missing the ending of the Chipmunks I made sure to make her go to the rest room right before we left for Wall-E and still, she couldn't make it through the entire movie!!!

SUMMER READING:
Both girls are doing really well with their summer reading goals at the library. They already have both earned a free kids meal at Applebee's and are now ready to claim the next prize, a free paperback book. They have discovered books on CD and have spent hours listening to stories. We are also reading some books together and Audrey reads alot on her own. Audrey is very in to Magic Treehouse books right now and Amy has discovered the Cut-Up and the George and Martha books by James Marshall. Allison loves the library trips too. She goes straight for the board books and usually checks out 2-4.

SUMMER LEARNING:
We are still doing our little homeschool lessons 4 days a week but they are no where the level of when we first started. KUDOS to those moms who homeschool year round. It is ALOT of work!

Audrey has been practicing and practicing riding her bike with no training wheels and has finally mastered it. YEA AUDREY!!!! Amy is still riding with training wheels BUT her bike is way too small for her. My plan is to get a new bike for Audrey, hopefully on sale somewhere, and then move Amy on to Audrey's and see if maybe she can't master the "two wheeler" before the winter weather hits.

We also finally got in to swimming lessons. We have been on the wait list at a nearby swim club for ever and now that session 3 is here, we are finally in. Hopefully we'll get into session 4 as well. That way the girls will get 4 weeks of swim lessons. I was pretty proud of how well they did today. They look like they are perhaps the oldest in their class (they are together this year) but they didn't seem to notice or care. I was super pleased to see Audrey master her fear of the diving board. Last year there were tears every single time and today I could tell she was a little nervous but she did GREAT! She jumped right in and even swam by herself a little bit on her way to the ladder. Hopefully they will both do well enough to pass to the next level when they are done.

SUMMER TRAVEL:
We haven't been anywhere major yet but we are hoping to meet up with Aunt Audrey and Family next week. We were going to meet them in Memphis but now we are trying to meet in Missouri. My Dad's mom's memorial service has been set for Saturday, July 26 and we are going to try to attend. Driving to Stillman Valley, Illinois from Memphis was just going to be too much. Hopefully I can find a place in Missouri that will work out. The kids in both families have really been looking forward to seeing one another.

We did spend one wonderful day in Dayton back on June 18 when the Cates family was in town. I charged my battery for my digital camera, remembered to bring it along, took a million pictures and THEN realized I had not put the memory card back in. It was still at home, in the computer ..... oh well ......

Our friends the Freeman family, stopped by to visit as they traveled from Pennsylvania back to Texas. They moved to Pennsylvania right before we moved here but lucky them, their dad got a new job back in Austin and they are moving back. It was fun to see them for a few hours and we were glad they got to stop by.

Other than that we have been tending to our garden and trying to get to the neighborhood pool when it isn't raining and hoping to get to more parks. This Friday a radio station is offering discount tickets to an amusement park not far from here and I am contemplating taking the kids there for the day. If we go - I'll be sure to take plenty of pictures. My other goal is a family trip to the Aqaurium in Newport, Kentucky.

So there - now you are all caught up ....... :)