November to February

Okay, so I'm only 4 months behind this time - improvement, right?

November was fairly uneventful and we coasted through the month with school.  Daniel got to go back to work after his knee surgery! (His knee still hurts though...)

December we had our typical family travels, minus being snowed-in this year!  (^_^)

January brought cold and ice to Houston = 2 bad weather days... (to be made up in June)
I was awarded the honor of Teacher of the Year for my campus.  I've written my seven (I think) essays.  Now, it's time to proofread, edit, and count to make sure I've got them all.
Braden was accepted into Cedar Brook Elementary's 2-Way Dual Language Program.  Basically, he'll be immersed in Spanish next year with only 10% of instruction in English.  During subsequent years he'll have approximately 10% more English added until he's up to 50/50 in 5th grade.  They have a 100% pass rate of a high school level 1 Spanish exam by their 5th graders, 90% on the first try!  I'm so excited for this enrichment opportunity!

February:  News of the month = Baby Carroll #2 will be here around Halloween!
Thanksgiving is at our house!  I'm "calling it" now!

I'll try to get some pics posted when I can...

April to October (just a little behind)

           

Well, it's been a while!  It sure has been busy in our family since April.  The end of April brought some crazy storms that we braved to get to baby showers.  We kicked off May with 2 weeks of daily swim classes for Braden.  We attended Braden's first Magic Show on 5/11.  Eleanor Grace arrived on 5/14 - a little early...  The next few weekends were full of birthday parties, including Papa's 80th at Mom's house.  Daniel and I kicked off June with a paintball party - plenty of bruises to go around.  We finished out the school year the first week of June.  I had a few classes to take once school was out and Braden went to daycare while I was in class.  Braden's end-of-year party for his daycare was fun.  We went to the World's Largest Swim Lesson in Galveston again this year - Braden loved the tunnel rides on the tubes and went down a water slide solo!

June 20th Braden and I headed out for a month of fun in North Texas.  Our first evening there we went to 6-Flags and rode every ride Braden was tall enough to get on.  He wanted to ride more, but wasn't quite tall enough...  The next day we went to Hurricane Harbor - again, riding everything he was tall enough to ride.  We got to see Monsters U with Shanna and Clayton, played at parks, went shopping, went back to Hurricane Harbor with Britt, entertained Kirsti, and got to spend time at Gran Land and at Grandma's with dad.  During our stay in North Texas, Daniel found out he would need to have surgery on his right knee.  We also needed to have the AC serviced twice from June to July and I discovered a water leak from our AC into my closet when we returned  home the end of July.

August started with another AC service call and a weekend trip to the lake with the Scaifes.  Not even a week after the last AC service, the AC is down again...  This time, we got a new contractor since the last one was not very pleasant.  This one was much nicer!  Once the AC was fixed, Braden and I went back north so Mom could watch him while I attended our staff retreat.  The retreat was fun, as usual, but Braden ended up getting a stomach bug and was sick off and on for about 2 weeks.  :(  Once we were back in town from the retreat, we started working on getting back on a schedule closer to what our school schedule would be like - not much resistance!  :)  Before school started back up we had a few school socials and Rebecca's birthday party.  Then, the kids came back!

We survived the first week back at school and went back north for a long relaxing weekend at Mom's.  Braden got back into his weekly swim lessons once we were back from our long weekend.  Daniel had his knee surgery on 9/10 and has an expected recovery time of 9-12 weeks.  (I think he's going to go stir-crazy.)  We discovered, since being back at home, that we have some visitors in the attic.  We called the pros in trap and remove them.  In September, we caught a opossum, a raccoon, and a mouse.  We also found an abandoned squirrel that we nursed until we could find a rescue center for him.  Our house = critter central...

October, we went to open house at Braden's school, attended a Carroll family get-together, went north for Shanna's birthday weekend, got to conference with B's teacher about his progress, and went to Ashley's Halloween Bash.  The family get-together was a success even though the day started rainy.  Shanna's birthday weekend was relaxing.  Braden's conference was informative - got to learn what letters & sounds he knows, how much he knows about reading and identifying parts of books and picture orientation, how well he can count, and that he loves to help (of course).  Ashley's Halloween party was fun and I was so glad to get to see them all doing well and enjoying infant life.

Now, we're off to November!  Hopefully I can stay a little more current than 6-months behind...
 

Now he's 4!

Well, Braden has made it to 4 now!  He's now weighing in at 33 pounds, is 3 feet and 1/4 inch tall, has 20/32 vision (evidently that's as good as a picture vision test goes for his age?), he passed the lazy eye test, has a BP of 78/34, and needs go go back for a retest on hearing after a few weeks of allergy meds.  He's now up to a size 7.5-8 shoe, 2T-3T pants, & 3T shirts.

We had Braden's birthday party this past weekend.  Braden had a blast tossing pigs and angry birds around.  Gran came down to help celebrate.  Next year, we may just stick to a family party or may ask just a few of his friends over - that we know can make it.  (There were way too many conflicts this year!)

Braden is still as ambidextrous as ever.  He is favoring the left hand when he throws though!  He is now writing his name, with prompting.  He swaps back and forth between his left and right hand, depending on which side of the letter he's writing.  (^_^)

On March 25th, Braden actually winked at me!

Over the last several months we've been to Gran's several times.  Every time we've gone up we've visited Granland.  There are big things happening there!

Daniel is busy at work at Hawker Beechcraft still.  He's also busy with Lodge quite a bit - more now that he's not on a skydiving team this season.

I'm busy, as usual, working on 7th grade math and science.  I'm hoping that I'll have enough time this summer to get some work done at Granland.  I hope to not spend my whole summer working on math...

Bad Dream Remembered

For a while, Braden was waking up crying, and sometimes yelling/screaming.  He was inconsolable!  I'm not even sure he was truly awake.  His sleep/dream pattern has changed somewhat now.

This morning, after getting up and getting a Yoohoo and yogurt for breakfast, he told me he had a bad dream.  I asked him to tell me about it, so he did!

• B: It was SCARY!  The wind blow me like this - whooossssh (arm outstretched with hand flying overhead).
• H: Where did the wind blow you?
• B: It blow me in the dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark.  (with each "dark" he crouched lower and lower)
• H: Oh, goodness!  I'm sorry it was dark.  What happened next?
• B: A bear in the street!  Big bear (standing with arms outstretched and on toes).  Him have big arms, and big eyes, and big hair, and big mouth, and big nose, and big neck, and big head, and big shoulders, and big tummy, and big legs, and big butt.  (he touched each part on himself as he named it)  Him chase me fast, fast, fast, fast, faster.  (arms pumping while saying fast)  Police car come to chase bear away.  Tie him up with rope (arm circling overhead like holding a lasso then wrapped imaginary rope around own arm) and take him away.  I safe now (hugged self).
• H: WOW!  That's quite a dream.  I'm so glad you're safe.
• B: Yes.  (off to play cars now...)

I couldn't believe how animated he was!  I like this kind of dream, even if it was scary, much better than the ones where he wakes up and is inconsolable.