June 2019

 June brought LOTS of swimming this year. Our beautiful kiddos all were on the swim team "The Olympia Otters", and did wonderfully! Kael, Eden and Elara all competed in the competitions. I'm so proud of how much they each improved swimming this year.

The first meet was Saturday June 1st.

Poor Kael was throwing up the night before and wasn't able to compete, and Connor didn't compete at all because he wasn't able to swim across the pool yet. However, by the end of June Connor could officially swim 25 meters without any help at all!

Here are some photos of the two girls at the first meet.

I volunteered at the 6 and under tent for most of the competitions to be with Elara.

I think they all enjoyed being on a team and making friends just as much as they love swimming.

When not at swim team or swim competitions you could still find the kids SWIMMING at our community pool.

One day we made it to the library to get some summer reading books. They had clowns doing face painting and balloon making, so obviously the kids had a blast!

 Eden really loved learning to bake things with her easy bake oven this summer.

Swim meet #2 happened and Kael was ready!

 They let the kids write funny stuff on them with black marker. Eden always wrote Bulbasaur and Pikachu. Elara loved having Poplio on her back.

Eden got a 5th place ribbon the first meet for a medley relay. The second meet Kael and Elara got some ribbons.

 Heidi introduced the kids to kiwi and other fun fruits like mango and dragon fruit, but their favorite is officially kiwi now.

 Grammy came for 2 weeks to have fun with us. Somehow we didn't get any pictures!

 Kael and Eden became pros at diving in the pool.

Birthday celebrations for Sharice were on the 16th.
We went to a movie and I got spoiled rotten again. We went to a movie and I got a jello poke cake.
I'm pretty sure we didn't see Detective Pikachu for my birthday, but we did go in May with Dad. This picture will have to suffice my birthday was AWESOME. I just can't remember it.

On June 19th we took the kids bowling with Grammy. Eden got two strikes in a row and we all started cheering and celebrating. I looked around and asked, "Where's Connor?!" And at that very moment I looked back and Connor picked up a 14 pound bowling ball off the rack and dropped it on his middle finger...

It was bad.

Poor Eden couldn't get her 3rd strike after that. We tried playing a while longer, but I took Connor home and then took him for an x-ray. Sure enough his poor finger was broken straight down the middle of the bone making Connor our first kiddo to break a bone.

Poor little dude was so tough. Even with tylenol and ibuprofen he woke up a TON during the night in a lot of pain.

 He became our little ninja turtle and had 3 fingers.

 You would think that breaking your finger would stop you from swimming. Oh no. The very next day he wanted to get back in the water. So, we let him. 

And he even jumped off the diving board.

No stopping this kid.

Kael found a gross dead dragonfly.

And then, we went to the river with the Pinkston's. It was so much fun!

The last swim meet was June 24th. I'm so proud of all 4 kids. They worked SO hard and improved SO much!

The kids earned lots of ribbons and already can't wait for next summer to compete again and see if they can add more to their collection.

By the time June was done I was ready for a break from swimming though. Even though we still went to the community pool lots in July and August. I think I can officially say June 2019 had the most swimming we have ever done!

The end of May 2019

 I feel like there are so many random pictures I'm forgetting. If I could only stay on top of my stories they would be more than pictures, but sometimes a picture says a thousand words.

So, a couple of random pictures from the month of May.

I'm pretty sure Connor got a hair cut at some point this month....

 And Kael was so proud to get his basketball "stuck".

 Kael's field day

LAST DAY OF SCHOOL AWARDS

 Elara, Mrs. Brittany Antionetti, and Gabriel

Mrs. Antionetti gave each child an award on the last day of school. It was so sweet. Elara received the go fly a kite award because she was always wanting to learn more each day and soar higher and higher.

Kael got on the honor roll and a couple other awards on the last day of school for his 5th grade promotion ceremony.

Finally school is DONE! We had our traditional end of school party with our friends and thankfully our friend Sarah Guest had the party at her house this year.

 The Linck Family has been some of our dearest friends. Alice and Eden and Kael and Ryan became the best of friends and it was so much fun having them just down the road. They moved to DC this summer and we miss them terribly.

It's hard to believe we only have one more end of school party in the 5 years we have been in Texas. The next party will officially be our going away party. We sure have loved every minute in Texas, tough minutes included. We've had the best of friends and have been so blessed! I think the phrase "so blessed" must have come from Texas because Texas is good to those who live here.

 Elara's friend Avery on her soccer team had her 6th birthday and celebrated at the EVO theater and they invited our whole family to come and play games and watch the live action Aladdin movie.

It was so much fun, and Avery's Dad was Elara's soccer coach "Coach Kevin".

They are such a fun family and great at soccer. With Kael's team splitting up we decided to put him on their son Wyatt's soccer team and have Coach Kevin be Kael's coach as well.

 Kael is growing up before my eyes. It is his last year in primary and every once in a while I get to steal a glance his way in primary and it melts my heart. He is SUCH a good boy, and I'm so very proud of him and how he tries to be a good example for all those around him.

Over Memorial Day weekend we were lucky enough to be able to drop the kids off up with the Pinkston's and have them watch the kids so Derek and I could sneak away for a night in Austin.

We haven't been able to do any Austin trips, and getting rid of the kids made it such a fun trip! It was so nice to have some time with just the two of us since he got home. It had been so busy every single day and trying to cram in as much time as we could it was nice to just take a breath and enjoy some time together.

 Blake and Ashley watched the kids mostly and they found this brand new baby deer, and helped it find it's Mom, AFTER they got to hold it for a second!

 The kids found a deer and WE found a zeebra!

We went on a tour of the "Inner Space Caverns" and they were beautiful, and they happened to have some zeebra outside of the cave. 

Waiting to go down in the cave. 

 After the cave tour we went to go see the bats under the bridge on Congress Avenue. And the bats decided they just didn't feel like coming out that night. We waited several hours, even past dark and decided around 9 PM we were wanting some ice cream and just left after only seeing about 5 bats leave the stupid bridge. I'm certain it's really cool when ALL the bats come out, but it was pretty dumb for us. 

The next day before picking up the kids we stopped at "The Salt Lick" for the best BBQ for lunch.

 Random Photos Again.

This boy's name is Alex Nickerson. Alex and his twin sister Abby would come play at our house sometimes. He was in Elara's class at school. They moved this summer and we sure miss them too. Being in the military means a LOT of goodbyes. We are grateful for the good memories we get though. We can cherish them forever, and I think it helps our kiddos to become kinder, more understanding, and helpful human beings. Because they know life can be tough.

May was tough with the goodbyes this year. Most of the families who helped support us through Derek's deployment moved away. We were and are so grateful for the love of a military family.