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...