They make me smile

Scott enjoying the sunshine

Scott making his sister laugh





Annabelle laughing at Scott



Annabelle enjoying herself

What can I say, I really enjoy my kids. They make me laugh and smile a lot. They each have their own personality and interact with each other really well. As they get older, I'm happy to hear their thoughts and points of view.  I took most of these pictures at a restaurant when we went out last Friday night to celebrate their mid-term A's.

A little busy.

I've been a bit busy these days. I'm taking classes at night at the local college and I volunteered to be the Homecoming Coordinator for Scott's youth football association. When I signed on, it was suppose to be done by Sept. 1. Of course, once I was confirmed as the coordinator, the homecoming weekend of events was moved, by the Board,  to Sept. 24-26th.  At which point I realized I was going to be very busy for the month of September and celebrating my 16th wedding anniversary at a bonfire rally for the Jr. Warriors of New Lenox!

All in all everything turned out really nice. I had a great group of ladies to work with. Here are a few pictures of things we created to make the rally and homecoming day special for all 248 kids and their families.

Flowers for 8th Grade Moms

Tattoos to show team spirit!

Bags given to all kids.

Schedule of Rally events!

 We made banners for game day and had a sponsor for small footballs that we gave fans on game day. We also, made homemade noise makers, which consists of water bottles filled with pea gravel and decorated  in orange!

We ended up with great weather and won our game!!!

Kind of sounds like a "Sale" ad

Annabelle trying to take Mojo to School with her!







Scott coming home after 1st day of 8th Grade!



It's hard to believe my kids are in 6th and 8th grade. The time has truly gone by so fast. Scott has grown and changed his looks so much, just since April of this year, that I can't believe he's the same kid. In a way he is not. He's developed a cool, calm, presence about himself and loves to be physical.

Annabelle and Scott both have a way of making others smile and have the greatest sense of humor! They both are excellent students and are happy to help out around the house, if they remember that you asked them to! Mark and I are very proud of our kids. They are growing up to be wonderful people.

Football

If you never want to hear your kid say "There's nothing to do", sign them up for football. Since August 2nd, our life has been football everyday. Just like work is daily, it should be no big deal but football doesn't always stick to it's schedule - and if it rains it throws it off even more! If you know me, you know I'm having a bit of a hard time adjusting to the flexibility of time. Last minute time changes is not my cup of tea and I like dinner time with the whole family.

This being said, Scott is enjoying the sport so far. This is his first year playing organized football. He likes playing street football with his friends so he decided to join and wouldn't you know it, none of his friends are on his team, bummer!

The picture with his helmet is his practice uniform and the other is his Game Day uniform. You would think with all this fancy stuff he was in the NFL. Team pictures were Sunday, I'm guessing they schedule these right away so the kids don't look beat up before the season starts. In the first week of practice Scott dropped 5 lbs. I should have did the practices with him!

To make things more exciting I volunteered to be Homecoming Chairman. I thought this was a great idea since you must volunteer and homecoming was scheduled for the last weekend in August. This way it would be out of the way for when I start my classes for Fall semester. WRONG!!! Homecoming was rescheduled for the end of September. Another plan failed. Oh well, I meet with my committee tonight and hope we can get organized before the chaos of school begins. We all start August 23rd.

Mojo

If you are still curious with the happenings of our dog Mojo, don't forget to check out his blog at

http://mojosspot.blogspot.com/

July Birthdays!

July is when Scott and Mark's birthdays are. We celebrated Mark's by going to dinner and coming home to a small cake I picked up from the store. It was the perfect size. Of course, this year was not half as fun as last year!

We celebrated Scott's birthday (again!) when we got home from vacation. We had Mark's siblings, parents, my Mom and brother Steve with his family over for some hamburger and dogs. The Seymours were still on vacation. This year was a little more exciting since Scott turned 13 on the 13th (Golden!). The cake was a yummy fudge frosted cake that Mark picked up for me!

Scott was sweet to let his cousin Seth sit on his lap while we sang happy birthday.

Scott also had his friend, Jacob over for the festivities. Note no decor this year. Scott asked me to keep it simple. I love that boy!

Vacation (Part 4)

The Seymours stopped by on a beautiful day! We had fun tube'n and stopping on a sand bar to swim. (Doesn't Mike look like a tourist in this picture? LOL!)

The rest of the week flew by, but we had fun. The big boys decided it was time for them to ski and we were all so impressed.

People often ask when we come back from vacation if we caught any muskie. This year we can say "Yes". Of course the true answer is "Yes, we caught a musky sleeping on our beach!". This poor guy was injured by a boat prop and washed ashore over night,. Let me tell you that bad boy stunk! Thank goodness the guys had trash duty. They actually took it out on the boat and left it on an island for the other birds/animals to feed on.

All and all we had a fabulous vacation and can't wait to do it again!