Ethan is 10!!!

Can't believe he is 10 already! For his birthday I got him contacts (notice the pictures!) He has been waiting since September for them and he was so excited! Thank goodness I took him in too- his vision got DRAMATICALLY worse since we were in 6 months ago!Ethan says this is him having an idea on his birthday. LOL! The rest of the pictures- I guess he was just in a goofy mood. His tongue is blue because he just finished a blue lollipop :)

Sloane liked her cupcake :)

Party on!

Ethan had his 10th birthday party yesterday. He had 5 friends over. They did a scavenger hunt through the neighborhood which was fun for us because 45 minutes of party time was completely quite at our house, because they were all terrorizing neighbors to get stuff for their list! Then we went to see Diary of a Wimpy Kid. All the boys this age LOVE this series of books so they were all excited about the movie. They all where screaming in the car, then when I parked, they all jumped out screaming and running different directions. I had a bit of a panic attack, wondering what I was thinking, bringing 6(!) boys to a movie theater by myself (Jim took Cameron and Sloane to Cam's soccer game) I was terrified of the sheer chaos that was about to erupt in the theater. However, once we got in and sat down they all fell silent and watched the movie like perfect angels!

MORE pictures of our stones :)

I know, I keep adding more pictures of our border but when it takes THIS much work- we wanna show it off! We are almost done with the front flower bed, and I may put the plants in today- yeah! Then I have to uproot some bushes on the side yard, rearrange them and replant them, then add some of our new dirt- That means hopefully we can start working on the side border soon!

Isn't it pretty! This is what it will all look like when it's finished!

not going as planned

Well, we are still working feverishly on our flower bed. Yesterday we dug up a bunch of clay in our beds and hauled it to the dump using a neighbors truck. Now we have a little more room for all the dirt we bought! The front flower bed is almost finished but we have alot of work to do on the other one. Unfortunately it is pouring rain today and maybe even snowing later so the rest of our weekend is shot. Then Jim goes back to work so maybe we will finish this summer sometime.... :(

We finally took a break!

The kids were going crazy so we decided to take them to the zoo. It was super crowded but we survived. Sloane loved seeing the elephants and horses. Cameron didn't feel too well so he sat in the wagon and just let us pull him around- he still had a good time though so that's all that matters.

slowly but surely

Well, this project is coming along, though it's going slower than Jim or I thought it would.
these are our supplies. The white bags contain dirt. A helluva lot of dirt. Way more dirt than we need. Oops! The other 2 pallets have our rock- which I think will be not quite enough for what we are doing.

Here is our work- we aren't done with this flower bed yet- we still need 2 more layers of rock, we need to remove the clay (lovely texas dirt) and add the topsoil and plants that came in the mail yesterday!
Today, we woke up to rain. Lots of it too! Looks like we won't be working in the yard today. We were hoping it would stop so we could at least take the kids to the zoo but it is still raining so I guess not. With it being spring break- the idea of going to a museum with all the other 5000

kids that are out for spring break does NOT sound fun at all so I guess we are staying home today. Unfortunately the kids are trying to kill each other so an outing would have been good to distract them.

A lovely thing that happened yesterday while working in the yard- Sloane dropped a big rock on my finger and smashed it pretty good. My fingernail turned a lovely purple and it throbbed all.day.long. Finally last night I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep with it hurting so bad so I pulled up my friend Google and researched what to do- I had to lance my fingernail with a hot needle. Yucko! But wow, it really helped release all the pressure almost immediately! And now I have a neat little hole in my fingernail.

Busy busy day!

Today will be busy- hopefully we can get the sprinklers done, and the border dug out so we can lay the sand and tamp it down in order to lay the border. Cameron has a soccer game at noon, and tonight we are going to a wedding reception for some friends of Jim's- ought to be fun, but man that's alot of stuff to fit into one day!

Last week was a pretty good week. Ethan had 2 huge tests at school- a math and a reading test. The math test was to practice for the upcoming math TAKS. Ethan got a 98. Yep, you read that right. ALL the teachers were so proud of him. He has been in math tutoring all year, and one of the teachers said something about him getting booted out of that class and he was really upset. He loves math lab! Sooooo, his math teacher is pulling some strings to keep him in there. I guess he likes the one on one time. The award that comes with getting a 98 on his math test is that he does not have any more math homework for the rest of the year! Yeah!
His reading test went well to, I think he got an 80- not enough to get him out of any homework, but it was 17 points higher than the last reading test.
We are still having some issues with teachers- I noticed the other day that Ethan's grades (we can check them online) were all 83 or above, EXCEPT for the 2 classes he has with a specific teacher- both of those grades were 50!!! So I contacted her asking what to do about that, and she was helpful and sent home all his 'missing' work- he came home and worked his butt off, finished all the work, sent it in, and then when we went to school for Open House on thursday we got to take home a folder of his work. Inside, I found 2 of the assignments that she had made him take home- they were not the exact ones though- they had been done before (in class) and they were graded. They were never even missing! I am so pissed. I emailed the teacher about it and she said 'oh, I don't know what happened- he never said that he had already done them' But shouldn't SHE know that SHE already had them and that they weren't missing???? She didn't even offer to give him extra credit for the work he had done. Ahhhh- but at least no more school bullshit for the next week and a half!

Spring Break is here!

Jim and I celebrated our 16th anniversary on thursday. Originally, Jim had sprung the idea of picking out our own presents- he said I could get the new $400 camera lens I really want ( I think he wanted something to do with his car- you know, the one he doesn't even have yet and wont for another year- the midlife crisis car!) But I knew our anniversary was the same time as spring break and we really needed to do some landscaping so stupid me- I give up a camera lens for a ton of work! Really it makes sense though- the camera lens does macro- like close ups of flowers and bugs. Macro photography is my passion and since moving to Texas, I haven't found anything inspiring to take pictures of. We have no flowers or anything pretty in our yard at all. So now we are going to plant something worth taking pictures of, but I won't have a lens for it. LOL!
Here are the before pictures....

Today we are finishing the sprinker system- it's already there, we just need to move a few things around. Digging in mud and clay is REALLY hard work!

Cameron's first soccer game

Cameron's team is called Lightening. I think this is the first season alot of the players have played, but they did pretty good! They really liked to kick the ball the opposite direction, but at least they were kicking the ball! Cameron ALMOST made a goal. He was pretty disappointed that he didn't make it all the way.

We were so proud of him- he did GREAT for his first game ever!