School is back IN!

 School is back in!! Riley is now in 1st grade and still loves school!  There have been two times this year when she has asked to stay home to play... which NEVER happened in kindergarten however she has also expressed that they do more work and play less in 1st grade so thats probably the reason!

When school 1st got started both kids were sick.  Kyle was snotty as usual and ended up getting a 2nd set of tubes and Ri, who is NEVER sick ended up on an antibiotic!  One evening while Eric was prepping the kids for bed, Ri attemped to open a bottle of kids cough syrup.  Without any luck she hands it to Eric so proceeds to easily open it, pour, and distribute.  Ri was floored and asked, "Daddy, how did you do that?  When I turned the top it just went 'click, click, click'!"  Eric explained that the cap is child proof.  Riley paused to think and then asked Eric, "But how did it know I'm a child?"
I just LOVE how this little one thinks!!

 1st day of school!

This is one of the pix Ri left for us at her desk for back to school night

(yes, she finally has a desk instead of a table!!  by far one of the best parts of 1st grade for Riley!!)

 Kyle is now in Pre-K with Ms. Julie (same teacher Ri had) and seems to love it!  He also finally started to play t-ball!!!  He loves it - even more than soccer!  Since he considered himself a rock start soccer player, we figured he'd have the same opinion of tball.  However after the 1st game, he expressed how much fun it was but also said, "but I'm not dat good at hitting, I'll need to practice!"  We are very proud of him and his desire to rock on the field!

Beach Bash

Wow, what a week!!  As always, our family week at the beach was a GREAT time and this year we had lots of excitement including an earth quake, birthday, wedding, and hurricane!  Definitely a week to remember!!  However, aside from all the unusual excitement, we also made our annual tiedyes, created HUGE bubbles, flew kites, and as always, Papa fed the kids chocolate cake for breakfast (we are ok with anything that provides a couple extra hours sleep for the parents!!) 

This was right after the wedding - the surf was rough but beyond beautiful!

Crazy Hair!

 The surf was rough all week but the kids loved it and had a blast playing in it (supervised of course!)

 Kite flying!  This year we had a much more simple kite and it went up in the air with no effort at all! Papa even bought kite string that went over 500 feet - this little kite was flying up HIGH!

 We had beautiful weather - aside from Hurricane Irene on Friday - but since we got evacuated on Thursday evening, we never had to deal with her!

 Don't let Grandma fly away!!

 Notice this years tie dye!  We are getting pretty good!!

 Happy 7th Birthday Lexa Marie!

 Bubble Making from Bebe's fun bubble kit!

 Darcy & Justins beautiful wedding!  At 2pm we found out that we had to be out of the house at 5pm... so we moved the 5pm wedding to 4pm and it was Perfect!

Most Improved

We have had an amazing and super FAST summer!! The kids have grown so much in appearance as well as abilities! Just today I watched Kyle glide across the monkey bars all by himself!

The Tidal Waves took up a good 2 months of our summer - and no matter how hot it was, we still had FUN!
Most of our meets had themes - this one was hawaiian! and then it stormed... so we got kicked to the car! It stormed 5 out of 6 of our meets - that doesn't mean make up meets, it just means VERY late meets since the storms always pass!
This is Riley in clerk of courts! She loved free style and also had a good back stroke but was terrified of swimming the back stroke during the meet (more to follow on this below)....

Ri with one of her AWESOME coaches!

Ri finishing up the 25 free style!

And she won her HEAT!! She also ended up placing 2nd out of all 6 and unders!

And then there is Kyle and CarrieLyn! Sooo cute!! Kyle will be on swim team next year.

Earlier, I mentioned that Ri has had a fear of swimming the back stroke in the meet. In fact, for three meets, she breaks down in tears while in the Clerk of Courts and refuses to get in the water. I was petrified that she would fester over this fear all winter long so Coach Brandon met with her to try to get her over her fear. The fear was based on hurting her self on the lane lines.

So the last meet of the year is at hand and Ri is getting ready to swim the back stroke and startes to lost it again... Brandon to the rescue and somehow he get her to give it a shot (Eric and I tried at all the other meets with no success!) She get in, give it her all (straight as an arrow down that lane - never hitting her arm on the lane line!) and WINS her heat!! and not only that, she WINS the ENTIRE event!! It was soooo crazy exciting!

And because of that, Riley won "Most Improved Swimmer" for the 6 & under at the year end banquet!!

This is Ri accepting some of her ribbons the morning after one of the meets at "Ribbons and Donuts"

We also celebrated Lexa's 7th birthday last week. She had her party at the Y and everyone had a blast! The kids had to swim the length of the pool and then tred water for 30 sec in order to go down the slide and guess who jumped in line and succeded?? Little Man Kyle!!

Summer Fun!

The week after the 4th of july, the girls stayed in NC with Grandma and Papa. It is their most favorite week of the year and next year they are excited about Kyle staying too! When we were all there, the kids had pix taken with Grandma and Papa.... soooo cute!

Once home, Riley got to go to her very first kid neighborhood pool party and swim from 8-10pm! After one of her friends spent the night and then next day she and I worked hard at a local under privileged child care center to spruce it up for the new year!

New hair cuts!

The Tomato Festival - yummo!

While Ri was away, Kyle got to play the role of 'only child'. This one particular day, we dressed like cows and had free chick-fil-a....

And bowled for the very 1st time!

Kyle also got to have a sleep over, kind of! The weather was horrible this one night - which happens (as always!) to be swim team night. Since Ri was away, we weren't going to the meet, so Ivy came over and played and slept over till about 11ish when the meet ended.

Can you tell that they are having a good time together!?!

More on Swim Team to come soon!

4th of July Fun!

For the 4th year in a row, we spent 4th of July weekend with Grandma and Papa in NC and what a beautiful weekend! Lots of fun on the boat, pool, and hanging with family! The fireworks were beautiful - quite the production for little Washington!

Waiting the fireworks on the boat!

playing in the water before the fireworks

They played hard and rested Harder! (look close, all 3 are in this pix!)

Everyone rested hard! LOL This is mom & dads new room - beautiful!