Busses, Bikes and Floats

For the last couple of weeks I have been humming a very catchy tune: "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!" We had a fantastic summer but the start of the school year is always a fun and welcome event for the whole family! So, here are the kids on the first day of school - our big 4th and 1st graders:School starts early around here - Mike and the kids were at the bus stop by 6:40 AM!
Of course, with the start of school comes the rush of GERMS and 3 of the 4 of us are getting over the yuckies around here. Seth was home sick on Friday with his signature "Seth Cough" but we let him play outside that evening to get some fresh air. He decided that riding his bike would be fun...until he flipped over the handle bars, didn't let go of the bike, hit the pavement and had the bike land on top of him! Thank goodness he was wearing a helmet. Our poor little Sethy. He refused to let us take any pictures that evening, but this one was taken the next day. What you don't see is the scraped elbows, chest, back and leg...

After such a traumatic evening we were happy to have something more fun to take part in the next morning. Thanks to one of Mike's co-workers, Grammy and Katey got to be in a parade!! Seth, Mike and I watched the fun from the sidelines and picked up lots of candy. Here are shots of Katey passing out candy in the parade and Grammy waving from the float:

Even though Katey spent more time walking than riding on the float, she was ecstatic to be in a parade and make other kids happy with her fist-fulls of goodies!

3:58PM...exactly

We love our Katey Beth! For lots of reasons, really, but this post will be about one of them specifically.

Yesterday was Katey's 9th birthday! We had 3 different birthday celebrations for her this year (one birthday party, as noted in a previous post; one celebration at the lake with the Averill family and one at home last night with the 4 of us and Grammy) - that makes for a LOT of cake and ice cream!!

So, Thursday night as Katey was getting ready for bed I made the comment that I would never hug Katey as an 8 year old again. She quickly corrected me, saying: "Yes you will, I won't be 9 until about 4:00 since that was the time I was born!" I laughed and sent her off to bed.

Come to think of it, we had 4 birthday bashes for this child as I took donuts into her class yesterday to celebrate. All the kids sang Happy Birthday to Katey and after they were finished her teacher asked how old Katey was. Katey proclaimed, "I'm 8 still but at 3:58 I'll be 9!" You gotta love her sense of literalness!

Katey is growing into such a wonderful, sweet-spirited child. She is loving and kind and empathetic. Katey loves to learn and devours books as quickly as she can get her hands on them. It is our prayer that she will grow in wisdom and truth and in her walk with Christ more and more this year. Happy 9th birthday, sweet Katey. We love you so very much!!

Birthday celebration #1:

Birthday celebration #2:
Birthday celebration #3:
(it is hard to get a candle stuck into a hot lava cake!)
And, a couple of shots of Katey around her actual birth day:

Lake Vacation

We had the honor of spending last week in Greensboro, GA with the Averill family in celebration of Mom and Dad's 40th wedding anniversary! What a blessing to have such a wonderful event to celebrate!

The week was filled with swimming, boating, eating, skiing, tubing, eating, laughing, picture-taking, sleeping, fishing and celebrating (and probably a little more eating). We really spent almost every waking moment on the boat or at the table. Annie and Jen would really like the ground to stop moving now as we are in day 5 since being on the boat and still have yet to fully regain land-legs! Of course, the crazy boat driving while trying to flip tube-riders probably didn't help with Jen's motion sickness...

One thing we planned for the week as a gift to Mom and Dad was family pictures. A wonderful photographer, Gloria Slaughter, came to us to take pictures. They turned out beautiful and we couldn't be more pleased! We were a bit ornery and pulled a little joke on the parents...all the kids and grand-kids dressed in crazy colors and played it up like we were ready for pictures. Mom and Dad were good sports but we did have them going and a little worked-up before letting them in on the prank. :)

Oh, one more thing: I'm not saying who it is, but we did learn last week that someone in the Averill family has a "sassy swagger" but it is only because of pigeon toes...or so we have been told! :-)

Here are some fun photos from our wild week!

Grandma up on skis! She is awesome on the water!!

Annie learned to ski - check out the determination on her face! (Aunt Jo learned to ski this week as well!)

Seth LOVED tubing!
He got pretty brave and daring and was even flipped off the tube a couple of times and came up still smiling!

Aunt Christy and Aunt Jo...adorable!

Grandpa fishing with the kids. They both caught a fish!

The cutest little nephew around - NATE!!

Uncle Brandon and Aunt Annie

Oh, what a wonderful trip full of great memories!!

Birthday Party

We celebrated Katey's 9th birthday a little early this year with a fun Olympics of the Mind type party. There were 10 kids in total and we had a great time!

The festivities began with building card houses. The kids worked very hard on them, got very creative and did a great job!

Katey has dubbed this one the bird nest house.

This one was the tallest built!

And this one is the most effort behind a house!

Next up was the Egg Drop competition. The kids had to build a structure that would protect an egg from a 9+ foot drop! Here are the creations:

And our only kid egg that survived:

Mike created an egg contraption as well. Here is video of his being dropped...will it survive??



Poor Daddy!

After the egg drop we did some inventions. The kids got into groups and were each given a bag of items to be used for an invention of their choosing. No pictures of this, but one group made a ramp into a piggy-bank, one made a smoothie stand, one did a crazy, spikey SpongeBob thing and the most creative of all was a radio-active pizza (if you eat it you will glow in the dark so you won't be afraid of the dark anymore!).

Next came cake and ice cream! Katey chose to have a torte-like cake. A delicious pairing of Mom A's homemade chocolate cake with Ann's homemade frosting. YUMMY! And Katey did a great job of choosing colors for frosting. We had left-over batter so you can see we also did some cupcakes.


I couldn't let this post go without attaching the video of Katey blowing out her candles. Enjoy!!



Our last activity of the day was an imagination game - I showed an object and the kids had to come up with things it could be used for. Below is one of Katey's friends using a mop head as a hula skirt! This was a really fun game for the kids and they got very creative!

Overall it was a wonderful day and I think everyone really enjoyed being here to celebrate with our not-so-little-almost-9-year-old Katey! A special thanks to Grammy for all of her help with the party!

If Only...

Seth and I spent some time throwing rocks into a pond today while Katey was busy with her 2nd piano lesson. On the way back to the van a motorcycle passed us. The following conversation then ensued:

Seth: WOW! That motorcycle must have cost a lot, a lot, a lot of money!
Me: Maybe. How much do you think it cost?
S: Welllllll...maybe like about $200!

J: Oh, well how much would it cost to buy a car?
S: Probably around um $400.

J: I see. What do you think it would cost to buy a house like ours?
S: That is really a lot of money! I would say about $1000. But when you first get married you don't have a lot of money and you don't have any money to buy furniture.

J: So how much would it cost to buy a couch?
S: They cost a lot - like $30

J: People need beds to sleep in, so how much would that cost?
S: Maybe about $35. Mommy, my hands are dirty from throwing rocks. We really need to wash them.

And, it was true. His hands were really dirty from throwing rocks (but what fun we had doing it). And, Seth was growing weary of teaching me about the cost of living. If only...

Just to see what she had to say about it, I asked Katey the same questions just now. Her responses?

Motorcycle: Hmmm. Probably about $350
Car: Well, for convertibles it would be over $1000 but cars usually cost between $500 and $1500. (she said with much conviction and a sureness of her figures)
House: Probably about $900. I mean, our house is pretty big.
Couch: At least $50
Bed: $100

Sweet dreams...

Interviews with Three Entrepreneurs

Yesterday the kids got to fulfill a lifelong (well, at least couple of year-long anyway) dream and set-up a lemonade stand. We weren't sure how it would go but decided to try while Gabriella and Aunt Shannon were here to help. The girls and I baked cookie bars and got them ready to sell and all 3 kids helped make the lemonade. The girls worked hard on the sign and did a great job!


Aunt Shannon helped man the table (in 97 degree weather! Bless her!!) and they were out for just under an hour. According to Shannon, the first 15 minutes were pretty sad. No customers and the kids were all very upset. But once customers started rolling in the kids were all smiles. Here is the experience according to them:

Did you have fun selling cookies and lemonade?
Seth: Yes!
Katey: Yeah but it was a little hot.
Gabriella: Yes. But actually we didn't have fun at the first part but then we did.

What was the best part?
S: Holding out the cookie bars and showing them
K: Hmmm. I say it was hmmm giving cookie bars and lemonade to people and pouring lemonade and receiving money.
G: Hmmm. Giving it to people and (getting) the money.

Was it hot?
S: YES!
K: BURNING!! At least 1000 degrees!
G: YES!

How much money did you make?
S: $15
K: I made $5
G: $5
(Note, the kids made $15 total - so $5 each!)

What are you going to do with your part of the earnings?
S: I might buy some stuff at Target with it.
K: Only keep $.25 and donate the rest for an orphanage in Mexico
G: I don't know

Do you think you'll do another sale?
S: Yeah.
K: Yup. Next time maybe we can make donuts and sell them in the morning for breakfast.
G: Yup.

Summer Fun

We have been enjoying summer way too much to post here often, which is a wonderful thing!! But, it is time for an update, so here it is:

We'll start off with fun that Mommy has been enjoying:


The kids are old enough to help with chores and one day I asked them to wipe down the bathroom floor, knowing that when given a squirt bottle this would be a fun activity. At first there were arguments (over which one GETS to clean around the toilet - they both wanted to. Ewwww!), but once they got started they had so much fun that they asked to clean the sink and toilet as well!! If that wasn't fun for Mommy, I don't know what is! I know this stage won't last long, but I will enjoy it while we are here and send them to the upstairs bathroom next!

Katey and Seth's favorite activity this summer has been swimming. I haven't gotten many pictures of them in action, but we are usually at one pool or another two or more times a week. In this shot we joined some friends at their neighborhood pool and played with them - This is Katey, Abby and Tori enjoying some girl time. Seth, Gabe and Sam were on the other end of the pool doing boy stuff (you know, squirting each other with water and doing cannon balls!)

Jen and the kids made a very quick trip to Ohio to visit family. We went to the park one day and to a great water park (Zoombezi Bay) with Jen's dad and sister another day. At Zoombezi Bay the kids loved playing in the kids area, floating down the lazy river, swimming in the wave pool and doing the crazy tube rides. Thanks Papa Dana for a super fun day together and for wearing the kids out nicely before our trip home the next day!

Katey at the park

Zoombezi Bay

Papa Dana with the grand kids

There is much more to post about but I will save that for another day. Shannon and the girls are spending the week with us and who knows what kind of fun we will all get into!