Our First Track Meet!

Of all days to have a track meet, it had to be the one scorcher in March.  Haha.  This year I signed Meredith and Wallace up for track.  It's a nice short season, just a one month commitment.  And, although Meredith appeared to hate it, Wallace LOVED it!  So, we'll be signing up again for sure.  

Eeeek!  So cute!

I was very excited that Meredith actually ran all of her races.  At every single practice she'd just run off and pick dandelions or play in dirt rather than run. 

This was seriously right before the shotgun start of her second race.  See how everyone else is already in their "set" position...  I was so sure she would just stand there when he fired the gun, but she surprised me and took off!  

Track meets are VERY long.  And we had a few hours between the short sprints and their relay.  So paletas! 

There was a lot of sitting around.

And trying to stay hydrated.

Did I mention how HOT it was today?  

Searching for shade wherever we could find it.

I was most shocked that Meredith actually participated in the relay race.  She and Wallace were both in the same relay.  She never once would practice it with her team this past month.  But today she got up there and did a great job!  And Wallace, who'd been struggling all day with getting a good start with the gun, had a fantastic start as the first leg of the relay!  They did great!  In fact, they got 2nd place, so now guess what?  We get to go to another track meet....  sweet....  lol.  Maybe it won't take 7 hours since it will just be for one event.  

Catching up!

Well goodness.  It's been a while.  I'll think I'll just get all caught up in one quick post.  :)  

First, there was Halloween! 

Wallace only had underwear on...and in my moment of brilliance I thought I'd just have him hold the pumpkin so no one would be able to tell. Now it just looks like he was naked.  "/

This was the year of homemade costumes.  I didn't really manage to get a great photo of Meredith in her costume, but here's one from her school parade.

It's a little tough to tell, but she was a jellyfish!

Anna was a spider.  She needed this costume for a school play, and ended up really liking it!

And hommie was a backhoe!  He actually needed this for school as well, and oh my gosh, was he excited to use the lights for trick or treating!!

Then I saw this scary dude right outside the dogs' kennel one afternoon when Josh was out of town (of course!). The first rattlesnake I've seen at our place since we moved out here.  I just sort of panicked and ran in and out of the house a few times trying to come up with a plan to save the dogs if it decided to actually go into the kennel.  Then about the fourth time I ran out of the house, it was gone and the dogs were calm again.  "/  I was such a grown-up about it.  

I got to take the cheer team photos this year and was super excited to rent a 14mm lens for it!  

LOVE this one of her!  :)

Meredith didn't want to be left out of the cheer photo fun.

Their coach found this super cute idea for a team photo!  :)

We went to soooooo many soccer games!

Anna got more and more awesome as the season went on!

And Meredith....found other ways to have fun while we were there.  Pretty sure I won't sign her up again until she's at least 5.

At least James was playing too, so we got to have lots of fun with our friends this season.  I miss our Wednesday evening McDonalds dinners after practice.  

The football team that Anna cheered for made the Superbowl and won!  It was the WINDIEST game ever!  

And then it was time for the annual trip to Canton for shopping fun at the trade days.  This year Wallace got to come along!  He got a bit caught up in the whirlwind of shopping and toys and hats and turkey legs, etc...and didn't really understand what had happened when the money ran out...  That was just the biggest bummer for him.  I think he'll have a better understanding of it all next year, and I'm sure he'll want to go back.  I didn't get any shopping pics of him with my fancy camera, but we got some fun ones at the camp site.  He really enjoyed camping out!

And of course Anna is all about smores and camping and shopping too!  

I let Sarah's girls play with my camera, and they got some pretty cool photos.  Lots of pictures of the campfire, and some pretty cool ones of everyone sitting around it too!

I'm not even kidding.  There were like a hundred photos of the campfire on the camera when I got home.

I really like the photos kids take!

I took Wallace on the longest hike ever when Anna and everyone else went shopping for the second day.  I'm pretty sure we got a little lost, but my fitbit registered over 10K steps before 10AM!

And then we had the freak MASSIVE snowfall here in south Texas!  The same day that Meredith had her tonsils out.  "/  We ended up letting her go play in it with Anna and Wallace when it was falling that night.  And I almost held back and didn't let them go out in it the next morning because of the tonsil thing.  What a mistake that would have been.  I got some cute pictures of them!  And they may never see snow here again.  Oh, and then their principal let them all go out and play in the snow even more at school!  It was just THAT awesome!

There's almost always a marker smudge on this kid's face.

My kids really like to eat snow...

Good thing I got snow pictures when we had it...because there was seriously no snow in Colorado when we went on the ski trip!

Wallace was in a little school play.  He got to wear his new hat he picked up in Canton!  And this is the day I realized that my son is a bit on the small side....  lol

Christmas morning came!  

Wallace had a pretty nice shiner for Christmas photos...  This kid and his facial injuries...

Christmas morning bedhead is the best!

Not long after we finished opening presents we left for the ski trip.  Unfortunately, Josh managed to get the flu...on the way there.  Well, I guess he already had it, but about halfway through the second day of the drive he started going downhill super fast.  After just about 2 more hours he couldn't even drive anymore.  We'd taken two vehicles!  I was so glad I brought along a buddy to help with the kids!  I had no idea how much I would need her!  She helped me schlep kids and equipment up and down the mountain for four days.  I'd have been doomed without her!  I owe you one Kailey!

This about sums up the ski trip.  Not very snowy....  Somehow there was just barely enough up on the mountain for skiing and snowboarding, but there was also a lot of ice and tree tops and rocks sticking up through the snow on the runs.  We literally didn't see snow falling from the sky until we got quite a ways back into Texas!  It was so weird.

"Stop taking photos and let us get in the hot tub!!!!"

And just like that we're all caught up!  

Soccer Mood Swings...

So, Meredith did better in her soccer game today!  She actually went out on to the field!  But....there were still a lot of tears.  She's starting to look a bit imbalanced out there.  Ha!  I'm going to post the photos from today's game in the order they were shot.  

A little irritated, but not too bad.  This was when Josh was having a talk with her about her options.  Since the alternative didn't sound too fun, she opted to play soccer today!

Good to go...kicking the ball off...

gasp!  Someone took the ball away!  

We've pulled ourselves together...

Damn it!  It happened again.  The best part is her little teammate who's all confused by her crying.

"Oh...it's my turn to kick it off?"

"Okay, yeah...Let's do this!"

@&$%#^@&($!!!!!!

"This sport is exhilarating!  I just LOVE it!!!"

"I'm going to play all the time!"

"I HATE SOCCER!!!!"

"Just kidding!  I LOVE SOCCER!"

"Nope.  Still hate it."

At this point I left to go watch Wallace's game and left Josh with her.  But she appeared to be on another high note.  :)

It's emotionally exhausting to watch her play!

Hommie did so awesome in his game!  He kind of loses focus about mid way through each game, but he pulled it back together again toward the end.  

And although you can't see the ball in this one, he's dribbling it, and he looks so happy!  :)

Anna's out of town, so she missed her game.  But, she's on the trip of a lifetime to New York City with Big Momma and Joe-Joe!  From the sounds of it, they've been having non-stop fun for 4 days.  I can't wait to hear all about it!

Fall so far...

It's been a busy fall so far, and we're only about 3 weeks into the school year.  Once the kids' activities started up our schedule went haywire.  We have practices 4 nights a week!  I'm not sure why I let this happen again, but everyone seems fairly happy so far...albeit, a little confused with the weeknight schedule, and there have been a few meltdowns concerning who's going to soccer and who's going to swim.  

Cheer started up during the summer, but I didn't really take any photos until the first game.  I'm glad I did too, there's going to be quite a bit of overlap with soccer from here on out, and we might not get to the rest of the games until after they start.  "/ 

I heart cheer pics.  :)

And today was the first round of soccer games.  All three of them are on different teams...which is why our practice schedule is so crazy.  Anyway, once I got to the fields I realized I hadn't put my long lens on the camera.  *sigh*  So, no action shots. 

But I did get a buddy pic!  I'm usually terrible about getting these.

Meredith's was the last game.  So she did a lot of this and snacking on gummies.

And for how much she's claimed to want to play over the past two years, homegirl is just not that into it.  Today she cried more than she played.  She would get up the gusto to go after the ball and then bawl and fall on the ground in a huge fit when another kid would kick it away.  This is the same tactic she uses at home when she doesn't get her way.  So far I've failed at stopping it at home, so I'm not really sure what to do it about it on the soccer field.  "/  It reminded me a little of myself when I was a child with my Mom in the grocery store because it got so bad that random people were trying to talk to her and get the fits to stop.  I will never live down the grocery store stories, and Meredith will never live down this soccer fiasco!

So...here's to cloudy days and many more soccer games!

The BEACH!!!

I have been looking forward to my family's beach trip all summer. Last year we took one at the end of the summer too.  The weather was so nice, and the beach wasn't terribly packed, so when I went to schedule it for this year, I booked it for the same week!  It also happens to be a week of partly rainy/cloudy days, which makes for a pretty nice beach trip for me since I live in an area where it doesn't rain quite as much as I wish it would.

I think the reason I was most looking forward to the trip this year is because I didn't really take any time off all summer.  My kids were travelling all over the country having a ball of a summer, but I didn't really get to do any of it with them.  Which means I haven't had any photos to post...because I haven't taken any.  "/  

Needless to say, I was stoked about this trip!

Jenny pointed out to me that I'd managed to book a house within the limits of the "Zoo" at Crystal Beach.  "/  I was worried this would mean the kids would have no room to play.  The Zoo from my childhood was cars parked right beside each other all down the beach (all playing loud music) and a steady stream of vehicles cruising up and down the beach all day long.  Fortunately...that is no longer the case.  Or at least it just hasn't gotten back to that point since everything was wiped out with Hurricane Ike.  And it seems like people just don't really cruise in their vehicles anymore.  They almost all cruise in golf carts that they decorate, so it's almost like a parade!  And the cruising was only taking place on the weekend, so most of our trip was nice and pleasant.  But to be honest...the Zoo wasn't unpleasant or rowdy at all.  :)

Wallace and Anna could not get enough of the water and playing in the waves.  And also watching me catch hermit crabs (they were both pretty chicken to actually touch them).  Meredith took in a mouth full of salt water with the first wave that hit her on the first day and just wasn't really interested in the water after that. She LOVED going down to the beach to play in the sand though!

She even got Anna and Wallace interested in it.  :)

Checking out the hermit crabs.

Jenny found a boogie board one morning, which saved me a trip to the store!  Wallace loved it!  

He just seems to want everyone to be as excited about the beach as he is.  :)

anna was so into hermit crabs.  She'd take her little bucket everywhere when we were on the beach.

Josh came down for a few days, and the morning after he got there it was like glass.  There were hardly any waves.

I don't think I've ever seen fish in the waves at Crystal Beach!  I took like a hundred photos trying to catch a wave with fish in.  This was the best I could do.  :)

And we tried to save this stranded jelly fish that morning too.  Not sure if it ended up making it or not, but we tried.  

We were so close to Galveston Island that we got to see all of the ship channel traffic, which for us seemed super cool!  We'd get excited about all the cruise ships and barges.  I don't remember seeing all that last year, but we were miles down the peninsula, and it was a lot more rainy.

Jen and her boys came too this year!  There was one day when she took them to Galveston and we stayed behind at the house, and my kids were sooo bored without them!  Lesson learned.  Keep them all together at all times.  :)

Jen brought a slip-n-slide!  None of our kids really understood that you are supposed to get a running start and then slide down the slide.  Anna and Thomas were the closest to getting it right.  For the most part the kids would just run down the slide and then bust their butts.  Ha!

Meredith would prance to the end and then sit down and pose.  

Anna did just about all of her sliding on her knees.  

Meredith didn't really throw any massive fits this year.  She understandibly just gets upset when she thinks someone has taken something that's hers...like a sand castle toy.

We'd go down to the beach for the sunset almost every night.  That's actually moonlight on the water!  It was actually more of a moon rise every night because the sun sets on the other side of the island.

Hommie's hair is soooo long....

Meredith made sure to keep the door to the beach house nice and smeared.  

Granny pointed out that it was national cookie one day while we were there.  :)

Anyway.  It was such a fun trip.  I can't wait to do it next year.  The rest of the family keeps threatening to book a house at a prettier beach, but I don't know.  I'm pretty stuck on this one.  It's where I grew up going to the beach...so it just seems like the logical place to go.  I guess we'll see where we end up next summer.