Graduate

Our big boy graduated from Elementary School! I can hardly believe it. I can so vividly remember his first day of preschool. His first day of Kindergarten literally seems like it was about 2 years ago.

I cried for several days leading up to his graduation. I can’t really explain why I was so emotional, but I think I was just really nostalgic. And realizing just how fast it really did seem to go by as I looked back on the last several years. I felt some guilt that I didn’t stop to enjoy that time as much as I should have. And there was also just a lot of gratitude. I’m just so thankful for the time I’ve had with him and for the wonderful young man that he has become. I really am so excited for him as he embarks on Middle School and on to the rest of his life. He has such a bright future ahead of him and I can’t wait to see how God uses him.

Here he is walking in to the celebration.

(Side note: the boy HATES to dress up. He always wears tall black socks and was so glad when he realized he could still wear his socks with his khakis. He said that was the last ounce of dignity he had left :) Ha! He is so funny! But, I thought he looked SO handsome. The un-tucked shirt was a compromise :)

Being called out as a member of the Principal’s Leadership Team

Getting the Presidential Award. He got a pin and a letter and certificate signed by President Obama.

Getting his diploma from his teacher. We love her so much!

After the celebration, we went to check out he and his friend’s award winning Science Fair project.

Then we went back to his classroom for the Author’s Tea. There was cake and drinks and the kids each got a chance to read from some of their writings from the year.

I love the poems he chose to read. I will post them here sometime. They are great!

He has the most wonderful friends and they all have so much fun together. Here he is with one- they were chillin’, listening to the other kids’ readings. So thankful God brought  us here to this school!

After the author’s tea, we were treated to a hamburger cook-out. Here’s he and I posing for the camera. He  gets a serious kick out of rarely taking a normal picture for his mom ;)

After we ate, all of the graduates divided into teams and had a fun field day. We hung around for most of the day just enjoying watching him and his buddies play around.

Here’s a couple pics from the games.

Here he is wearing the big clown pants as his teammates threw wet sponges into them.

Another one of the games was Polo. Here he is using his sister’s pink unicorn stick horse and a plastic baseball bat to play beach ball polo. It was so funny. I got such a kick out of those big kids running around with their stick horses! Especially Big B with his pink unicorn. He was mighty proud of it too :)

What a wonderful, memorable day!!

A hot date!

My husband and I had a hot date this week!

We each worked all morning, then met up at the doctor's office around lunchtime.



Then we did all sorts of fun bonding activities, such as sitting next to each other in the waiting room and getting poked with a couple needles a piece.






It was so romantical!

Then, the date ended when we each jumped in our own cars and sped out of the parking lot, heading off to the rest of our busy days.

Oh well. At least we can scratch another adoption update item off our to do list.

If we have to do another medical update for our adoption, I will be angry person! This was #3 and STILL no referral!

Deep breath. Innnnn and outttt.
:)

My Mothers Day

My husband and kids made Mothers Day so special for me!

I got to sleep in, then when I woke up, they started bringing me gifts. And, Jas had my coffee ready for me while he was preparing my breakfast in bed.

Rhett made this for me at school. When you open the jar, there are several strips of paper that he wrote sweet words of affirmation on. He said that when I'm feeling sad or having a bad day, to just pull one out and it'll make me feel better :)
Each of the kids decided what they would write on their slips.

Here is the first one I pulled out :) (having trouble with not being able to rotate my pictures.)

"You is kind. You is smart and you is important."

Not gonna lie. Made me cry :)

They brought me magazines to read while I was lounging in bed.

One by one, they each brought me a card. And flowers too!

And a real plant! I'm going to try real hard to keep it alive!! I also got a fun DVD.

Gracie also made me this all by herself :)

When I opened up her homemade envelope, I found several sticky notes that were stapled together. She wrote sweet things on each one. Here are a few of my favorites.

"I love snuggling with you."

"You are awesome"

"I love you so much"

After a few hours of lounging, we headed to the Naturals game with Jason's parents and Uncle Roger.

After coming home from the game early for the kids to work on reading, projects and talent show practice, the kids wanted to make and serve us dinner.
Of course, being Kennett kids, they had to go all out and get in costume.
Sissy did most of the actual work with me while the boys were giggling and getting in costume.

I got all the food going, with her help, then they finished it off and served us.

Stirring gravy is serious business :)

Crazy kids! We were laughing so hard!!

This kid had a crazy Australian/Scottish accent going on.

We sat outside with relaxing music playing and the kids served us our dinner and also dessert! It was actually quite relaxing and nice to have a few moments alone to enjoy dinner and conversation. And those kids.... They kept coming out to check on us. And entertain us :) I so wish I would've had a camera rolling the entire time. There were 3 or 4 different times that we were laughing so hard we had tears rolling and we couldn't catch our breath! So, so fun! Oh my! Those kids are just awesome!  And Rhett kept apologizing for the shenanigans and giving us suggestions on how we could make our evening have more romance ;)Like bringing us out a cup of sprite with 2 straws in it to share!!Hilarious!!!

What a fun and memorable Mothers Day. I'm so very blessed that those 3 sweet kids call me Mom. Thankful.

Field-trippin'

I got to go on Rhett's field trip with him to War Eagle Cavern today. I've never been on a field trip with him since Kindergarten, so I was glad to get to go spend some special time with my boy!









He got to pick some souvenirs in the gift shop. One of the things he chose was a coon skin cap. We picked out a bonnet for Sissy. I've been reading the Little House on the Prairie series with her, so I knew she'd love it.



That boy is so sweet. He stayed right by me all day and held my hand most of the day too. Melts my heart. Love him so!

Arkansas Reflections Contest Winner!

Gracie entered our school’s PTA Reflections contest in the photography division. This year’s theme was “Diversity Is…” We gave her the “kindergarten version” of what diversity is and started to help her brainstorm on ideas of what she could do for her photo.

I had lots of different ideas to throw out at her, but little miss had her own ideas. She decided she wanted to do a scene of a tea party with all different kinds of “friends”. In her essay that she hand wrote to go along with her photo entry, she explained that even though all of the friends at the tea party are different, they are still friends. She also explained that she edited the photo to add the white border that looks like clouds because it looks like a fairy tale, and to her it would be like a fairy tale if everyone was friends even if they were different. (I’m paraphrasing. I will post the original essay after we get it back.)

She set up the entire photo shoot. She cleared out the living room furniture and set up the table, chairs, dolls, tea set, etc. Her daddy put the camera on a tripod for her, turned it on and turned her loose on it.

She took 97 photos :) When it came time to editing them and choosing which one she wanted to use, she sat on my lap at the computer and we opened up 2 at a time. She would chose which she liked best, and we’d open another one and she’d chose again. We did that for every single picture.

Once she chose her picture, we spent quite a bit of time choosing how she wanted to edit it with digital software.

Then she chose what color mat to use.

Throughout the entire process, I tried to give her my opinion or give her suggestions. She wanted nothing to do with them. She had her own ideas and said she didn’t need any help. There are a few things that I tried to talk her into doing differently.

Boy, did I learn a good lesson here! Step back and let her shine!

Because…

She won her division (K-2) at our school!

Her project was forwarded to the Arkansas State PTA Convention where it was judged with all of the other K-2 division school winners from around the state.

And guess what?? She WON 1st place at State!!!

Here she is getting her award at the State PTA Convention.

They had her picture on display at the State convention. Here she is standing by her entry.

This past week, she was invited to be recognized at the School Board meeting with the other reflections winners from around the district. She loved it :) She eats up being in the spot light.

Now, we are waiting to hear if she won anything at the National level.

Of course, she can’t wait to enter the contest again next year!

Little Olympics

Braden participated in the  annual Springdale 5th grade Little Olympics. The 5th grades from Springdale elementary schools all compete against each other in track and field events.

He’s been looking forward to getting the chance to compete for the last few years!

They had try outs at school over the past few weeks and he qualified for the tennis ball throw and 3 relay races.

He and I sat together and put together a little movie of the pictures and videos of the day.

He messed up on one of the Relays, so he said he didn’t want to put it in the video. I told him we needed to add it in to remember the day and that one day, it’ll be funny and it won’t bum him out when he watches it. After a few times, he was already laughing about it and making funny sound effects to the fall :)

It was a hot, sunny day, but it was a great experience and glad we could spend the day together. He didn’t win any medals, but did have a great day with his buddies.

Also fun, was that several of his soccer teammates were there competing for their schools too! A little fun competition!

Summer Job

We hired a new lawn mowing guy for the summer. He only charges about half the price of our last mowing guy!

Today is his first day!







And he's so darn cute! :)

Weight loss update

So...drumroll, please... as of this morning, I've lost 25.8 lbs!

Rhett snapped a couple of photos of me this morning before I took them to school. (Just ignore the wet, lifeless hair. Yuck. Please and thank you.)



My shorts are way too big :)

I guess i'll show the side view. I can't believe- I wasn't even sucking in at all. :) I mean, I'm not a skinny girl, but that large spare tire around my middle is slowly disappearing!



It's been 18 weeks since I started trying to lose weight, so it averages out to be 1.44 lbs lost per week.

There have been times where I've gotten discouraged that after a week of hard work and dedication, I only lost .2 or .6 lbs. But I've stuck with it, and I'm so glad I have!

I had a little revelation this week. I had my food scale on the counter and the kids put in a 16 oz bottle of water and said, "This weighs 1 lb!" When I heard that, it was like a lightbulb went off. I picked up the bottle of water and thought to myself, that's kinda heavy. Every time I've lost a pound, it's like I lost 1 of those bottles of water. And get this-- I've now lost about what one of those heavy 24 packs of bottled water weighs! Including the packaging! Wow!!!

I'm not stopping now! :)
Only 6.2 lbs to go to reach my goal!