New School Year

We're ready for the new school year!
Caitlyn is all signed up for college and starts on her art degree at Pensacola State College. She will be taking three art classes as well as an English and math class and will be carrying around a large art board. She is very excited about starting this new adventure, and absolutely loves the art building and library at the college.
Charles will be going into 4th grade and is no longer allowed to have a backpack. Instead he will be carrying all of his assignments in a zipper binder with a five pocket folder filing system. His textbooks will stay in the classroom and are all available online from home!
Ryan will be going into 1st grade. He will have spelling tests this year and is excited and ready to learn!
Amy is also moving up to a new older 3yr old class. She moves up to her new class the same day that the boys start school.

Growing Fast!

I just happened to have the camera out one day, actually Amy was the one who requested that I take a picture of her. I don't remember if this was for a special occasion or not. I think this is just a typical morning where we're getting ready to get in the car and go to daycare. I think I had just done Amy's hair and we were waiting on Charles to put on his shoes.

They are growing up so fast! Amy moves up to the older 3/4 class in two weeks as she will be going to preK the following year. Charles goes in to 4th grade and Ryan 1st grade. Ryan is signed up for football again this year and just started practicing with his team. He is on Niceville Eagles Team 1. Charles is signed up for soccer and will be in the U-10 group, but has not started practicing yet. Amy is just being Amy! She enjoys playing mommy with her dolls and making "houses and trains" (look like spread out blankets on the floor with various other toys and where she puts her dolls to sleep)  She cracks me up when she says things like, "I know that you don't want to go to sleep, but you have to, because it is dark out and it's time to go to sleep. And then she says "It's time to get up, because you have to get dressed, because mommy has to go to work. I know sweetie, I don't want to leave you, but I have to, you will be okay, and you will have a goooood day!!! I'm so proud of you, cause I love you so much!"  Lol! She talks and talks and talks....

Amy's Girly Room

Okay, well I don't even remember when I first started painting Amy's room. It could have been almost a year ago, I'm not sure. It was somewhat of a disaster because of paint color mixups. I finally had the energy to tackle the project again. I'm STILL not happy with the blue paint sittuation. As the paint is not completely uniform on all of the walls, but it's close enough and after 5 different gallons of blue paint, I'll live with the results.

I finally got around to painting some decorative items on the wall. I needed something to take away from all of the blue walls! I have plans to add more details and larger eyes to the owl as well as put some kind of center in the pink flowers on the white tree. I also plan to put up white curtains with either ribbon or floral vine decorations, and maybe a bird or two by the shelves. But all in all, the room is basically done.

Now...on to the boys' Star Wars room.

Amy is Three!!!

We celebrated Amy's third birthday yesterday afternoon. The weather was so nice outside that we decided to have it at the Children's Park in Niceville. Coincidentally located about four minutes from our house and halfway between our house and Seth's parents' house. Perfect location! Amy absolutely loves going up and down slides and climbing on playground equipment. She was even big enough to rock on the purple dinosaur and only needed a little help getting back down. We managed to keep the party a complete surprise from Amy. On Saturday, Grandma K wrapped all of Amy's presents, which turned out to be quite a task since she got a dollhouse that comes with separate boxes of furniture for each room. We hid them in the front hall closet out of the way. Then, while Amy was napping on Sunday afternoon, I made a quick trip to WalMart to buy some fresh groceries for the week and also picked up some cupcake themed party supplies and found a cute blue cupcake cake that the baker personalized for Amy's party. I had just enough time to grab a few balloons before I headed home. While the family put the groceries away, I went upstairs to get Amy dressed and ready for her party. Then Seth stalled the kids a while so that my mom and I could make it to the park a few minutes early to set things up. About ten minutes was all that we needed, and we had just finished when Amy came running into the park and saw the birthday table. Seth's parents joined us shortly afterwards. We had just enough time to eat cupcakes and ice cream and open her presents as well as have about 40 minutes of playtime at the park (before and after the party). I would say that it was a success!

Here's the cute birthday cupcake/cake.

Amy opening one of the first presents.

Almost there!

Her brothers were close by to help when needed.

Hugging her new Groovy Girls Doll.

Amy on the purple Dinosaur. I think I have a picture of all three of the kids at this age on this dinosaur.

 

Siblings having fun together!

 

 

 

 

 

Easter 2013

Just a few pictures of the kids taken on Easter Sunday. It's so hard getting everyone to smile, not over-smile, and look at the camera and not blink!

Georgia Cabin Vacation

We spent our Spring Break at a very nice cabin up in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Ellijay, GA, with Cara's parents, siblings, and nephews. What a blast! Here are a couple of pictures that were taken.

Here is the whole gang minus Aniekan. Unfortunately Aniekan's and Ali's stays did not overlap.

Here is Amy standing in the living room. Ali is washing dishes and I think that Cara is at the table frosting cakes.

Our hike to Amicalola Falls. Beautiful day! Amy made it up the 600 plus steps to the top all by herself!!!!

Due to a slight miscomunication in plans, some of us were separated on the way down from the falls. But both groups ended up meeting up at the park in front of the visitor's center at the same time. Perfect timing, and a fun afternoon!

At the end of our day trip to Dahlonega GA, we went to the Consolidated Gold Mines for some gold panning and a gold mine tour. Here we are watching the video on how to pan for gold.

Reece and Ryan panning for gold.

More panning for gold.

We only had about 15 minutes before the gold mine tour, but it turned out that was just enough time for all of us to finish panning our gold.

Step two of the process where the experts help wash away the final pieces of sand and issolate the gold nuggets, then put it in a small glass vial for us to take as a souvenir. This part was exciting to see how many nuggets were in your pan.

Ryan admiring his gold!

Nina already has hers and Reece has just been handed his gold. By the way, the same guy handing Reece his gold, happened to be our tour guide for the mine.

Down inside the mines. There were three levels, but we were only able to go through the first level as the other two were still under water, apparently very cold water!

Everyone over 5 feet tall had to wear the blue hard hats, those shorter could wear them if they wanted.

 

 

Team Banner

Just thought I'd share the team banner that I designed for Charles' baseball team. I used MS Publisher and Paint - yep, really fancy stuff, haha!

It is 40 inches by 24 inches. Now I just have to figure out how to get this on a poster board or banner. If you have any great ideas let me know. My thoughts were to just print it out on a color printer, pasted the pages together and glue them to some poster board and then figure out some way of laminating the poster or protecting it from water etc. If you have any great ideas, let me know.

Baseball Season

Well, it's officially Baseball Season at the Smith household. Here are a few pictures taken on Opening Day. Ryan already had his team pictures, Charles will have his taken tomorrow, so I will try to upload more pictures of Charles and his team later. Here's what I have so far. Oh, and both boys are having a blast!

 Charles is on the Mets minor league team, mostly 6-8yr olds. Coach pitched, 5 runs maximum per inning, 3 outs and you switch teams. Each team does have a catcher though. As Team Mom, I get the fun job of helping the catcher get the gear on. Being catcher is apparently the cool position and so the coach has to rotate the players.

This inning, Charles was assigned the catcher. He is intensly waiting for the ball.

 

Here is Charles' entire team. What a great bunch of smiling baseball players!

 

Ryan is on the RockHounds minor league team. Mostly 5-6yr olds, also Coach pitched, but each team cycles through all of their players each inning (and a few more if the other team has more players). Outs don't count other than the fact that that player doesn't have a chance to score a run.

Here is Ryan carying his team banner for the Opening Day Ceremony. Charles' team is already out on the field (they are directly under the flagpole), I accidentally turned my camera off instead of clicking the "take picture" button. Grrr...on this camera they are only mm away from eachother.

Here is Ryan lined up with his team.

Trip to USS Alabama

In February, on President's Day weekend, we took a mini-vacation to Mobile, Alabama. While we were there, we toured the USS Alabama Ship and a Submarine and the following day we went to a children's museum. Here are some fun pictures from our trip.

Kids standing in front of a canon in front of the visitor's center at the USS Alabama.

Here is Ryan sitting in one of the 100 or so gunner seats on the ship. This is his 'ready for battle' look.

This ship is apparently the only US ship/museum to allow visitor access to the heavy bomb storage room. They aren't loaded anymore, and the kids had fun playing with them.

Here we are making our way over to the smaller submarine. We had 30 minutes left before closing, so this was a quick tour through the sub. Fortunately there aren't many side rooms in a submarine, you go in one end and walk in a straight line from room to room until you come out the other end.

The gang, being goofy!

This was the submarine captain's room. Pretty cramped, but he is the only one to not share his cabin with someone else.

Here we are inside the submarine. Ryan couldn't wait to discover the next room, so he is probably already through the door behind Seth. I love Amy's backpack. I got it for "free" (exchanged for 2 points) at the clothing swap that I co-run at our church. It had never been used and still had the tag on it. At the time this picture was taken, Amy was not quite potty trained, so it held a couple of pull ups and a small container of wipes. Nothing like having your own child carry around their own diaper bag! :-)

This was taken at the children's museum. Amy was a "Wharf of Wonder" Kid. The only one under 5yrs old in our family who was able to go in a special area for little kids. She had fun for a little while but I think she preferred being with her brothers, so we soon joined Seth and the boys who were in the room next door.

Amy fishing plastic crabs and fish out of the ball pit next to the fishing boat.

Kids being goofy again. They are posing in front of their hand prints.

 

 

Silly Amy

Amy is cute and funny and mischievous. She constantly makes us laugh with the things that she does or says, and sometimes she doesn't even need to say anything, her facial expressions are just hilarious!!! She is quite the celebrity at her new Daycare. It appears as if every parent who has a child at our Daycare knows Amy very well. And the same goes for Amy knowing each and every parent. Apparently several other mom's and dad's routinely get hugs from Amy too, sometimes before their own child! Consequently, Amy apparently gets daily comments from other parents who say that she is so adorable and wish that they could take Amy home with them. Yep, and here we thought Ryan was the social one of the family!