Day 146---Monday

The rain stopped for long enough this afternoon we went out to skate on my new skates. Okay, I look pretty dorky, but I had a lot of fun. I wouldn't look so funny if I didn't wear these pads everywhere. I didn't fall even once---I don't need them, right? But B looks really cute!

We went to the Wolf Pen district for our skating----it's under development now, but it's Great! It has really wide paths that have gentle rise and fall to them and the trees are tall and shady. Lots of informational signs are scattered throughout, telling about plants and such. We took the path that goes behind all those restaurants on Harvey (if you're local and know what I mean!), so we ended up at Sonic, and had a cool drink. Yum! Definitely a diversion we'll be doing again.

Day 145---Sunday

They were being silly at dinner, Daddy doing B's arms for her. This is the re-creation I made them do.

Day 144---Saturday

Larry and B have gone to the softball games this weekend---one step away from the College World Series next weekend in OK City. This is our softball friend L, who was on the team until she had a knee injury. She is a great young woman we met just by happenstance, and B looks up to her a lot. L is a senior this year and didn't get to play the whole season. :-(

Picture credits go to my hubby!

Day 143---Friday

After their half day at school today, I took the kids out to lunch at Subway downtown---near the library we were going also. I asked the kids, "How do you feel about being out of school for the summer?" These are the faces they gave me to take a picture of in regards to that question.

Jamie is happy. He's officially done with elementary school, and ready to move on. You might notice his shirt he got everyone to sign. It's his "school" shirt---with the elem.'s name on it. He's done with it. Now it's a piece of memorabilia. You might notice, too, that someone wrote "KICK ME" right there by his shoulder. (And he cut his own hair in the front! I have given him a talking to about that.)

B has mixed feelings about being done with 2nd grade. She didn't want to smile, and she didn't want to frown. You might notice she is doing a workbook in Spanish that her teacher gave her. She can't stop doing schoolwork even right after her last day.

We had a great lunch and walked over to the library to sign up for the summer reading program. B got 2 hours of reading done that afternoon! J did one whole hour, and I thought that was good, too.

Day 142---Thursday

I hope these can become more of a regular part of my life this summer! Everyone knows I need ot get out and exercise more!

Thanks goes to my pre-school class who got them for me!

Day 141---Wednesday

Here is J after his graduation this morning. He's standing in the courtyard outside the cafeteria/main office area of school. He wanted to wear a real tie---one that really ties, not a clip on---hence the red tie of Larry's. And his favorite dress shirt---purple! His favorite color right now.

He is wearing two medals for academic excellence in Science and Math.

Go J!

We are proud of you and look for good things in junior high. :-)

Day 140---Tuesday

If you squint, this one might be sort of understandable!

J competed in the 5th grade talent show. Larry went---I was home with B again today. (Turns out it was strep throat! She's on antibiotics now.) J did a dance routine to "Time Warp", something he did with TROUPE a couple of summers ago.

I'm glad he's brave! This is so not like me. :-)

Day 139---Monday

Can you tell what this is? I didn't have the strength to bring it any further into the house---yet----when I took the picture. This is an intact snakeskin I found outside. I was putting away the big trashcan when I looked down by our square stepping stone. There it was, right where a real, live snake had shed it. *shiver* My first thought was, "My class is going to love this!" but I realized that school's out and I'll have to wait 'till next year. B is home sick and I showed her, and she's planning already to take it to school with her. We put it in a shoebox. I'd guess this is about two feet long. *shiver* Now where is our little friend living?

Day 138---Sunday

B and I started working on a present for her teacher (she isn't reading the blog, is she?) B started running a fever this afternoon, so school is out for Monday---her last Monday of the year! But this will give us more time to work on this little album with each of her classmates in it. We went to school one day her teacher was out, and took pictures and I had them write messages to their teacher. I thought this was an extra good present since this is her first class ever, and she's moving out of town after the school year is done.

Day 137---Saturday

This is me, holding my newest plaque. I was nominated by my co-workers for Preschool Classroom Teacher of the Year for our area. And I got it! :-)

(I really wish I had powdered my face a bit before my hubby snapped the picture!)

(That's a picture on the wall of my father-in-law. It looks kinda weird, over my shoulder!)

Day 136---Friday

This is my little Monk, marrying Romeo and Juliet. I attended J's production of "The Seussification of Romeo and Juliet" tonight. We parents take turns going to the shows and taking B along, too. J's Monk also ahd a Brittish accent---making the part his own. He wanted this part in the play, so he was really happy he got it. He's also really pleased with how nice his costume is. I was really pleased with how funny and entertaining the show was.

Day 135---Thursday

The real picture of the day would be my little pre-school students in their caps and gowns, tooting and talking through the tube of their graduation diplomas. But I was so busy on stage with them, I didn't take pictures of them! I didn't een take the camera with me.

So these are the flowers one student gave me after graduation. The yellow roses of Texas!

Day 134---Wednesday

These are my Mother's Day cards. I was awake at 10 and thought, "hmmm, I haven't taken a picture yet!" J gave me the store-bought one, and B made this purple one at school. She had also made a little tissue paper flower for the top.

Day 133---Tuesday

This first picture is my "represenative" shot for the day. Our pre-school had Water Day, and we played outside much of the day on this water slide and big blow-up bounce-jump (which you can see off to the left. If you know who to look for, you can see our B---yes, I let her come to school with me today. I don't think I've ever let my kids skip school for no reason!

This second shot is just my favorite of the day. This child was eating his snowcone at the picnic table after having a noce, messy, activce day on the playground. :-)

Day 132---Monday

I didn't mean for this to be the picture of the day---I got to her ballgame and didn't have my camera. But here she is with fresh braids I just made, before her game today!

Day 131---Sunday

The picture of the day was taken by my Dad today. This is My Mom, me, and my daughter, B, on Mother's Day. Three generations of women!

I'm wearing a new shirt Mom bought for me, and B is wearing a new dress that GeeGee bought for her. We were just getting home from church. After this, we changed in to gardening clothes, ate our lunch---pot roast Dad had cooked---and planted the plants I had brought. Then B and I got a quick dip in the hot tub!

This is a shot I took near my parents' home. A storm is a-brewing! Fortunately for me on my 4 hour drive home, I kept the storm to my left the whole while, just getting a few sprinkles here and there.

Day 130---Saturday

Mom got these flowers from my sister while we were at her house this weekend. They came by UPS----a day late and UPside down! Why would a guy not pay attention to the 3 visible UP signs with arrows on the box?? But they came through it all okay. Pretty flowers!! I had also gotten my mom plants---Caladiums.

B and I went for the weekend, just us girls and we got to go shopping also. We all got some cute inexpensive sandals and some clothes for B and I. We also went to eat at Pastafina----a local favorite---for our Mother's Day meal on Saturday.

Day 129---Friday

This was done by my husband! He started it I think before we even had J, but I'm not sure. he finished it while we were in the duplex without cable. :-) It's funny because we have two dogs that look like these now, and we didn't when he started this project. Now we joke that we just need a brown lab to complete the family. So NOT!

Day 128---Thursday

Yesterday afternoon we had thunderstorms in the area again. After all our trouble last week, I ought to be worried, but I wasn't. It didn't even rain much where we were, but I think it did out to our East. The best way to look at thunderclouds is from the side---not from underneath! So I got some really cool shots as I drove J to his stuff last night and went grocery shopping. This first shot is from the Kroger parking lot. I just love all the shades of white and gray on this cloud.
When I got back to the house, unloading all the groceries, I saw this out my front door as I went back for all the bags. Aha! A sign that God will never flood the whole Earth again. Maybe I can take this as a personal promise not to flood my house again.

Anytime I see a rainbow I try to get a picture! ;-)

Day 127---Wednesday

Here's another day I'm not posting a picture. I am finally getting things livable here, and I don't even have the energy to find a picture to stick in today that was *close* to taken on Wednesday! ;-)

I'm not bummed about this---life will go on with out one more picture from my house! ;-)

Day 126---Tuesday

B made this little hat for her Girl Scout troop leader---for the baby! She came to the Brownie meeting today, and the girls got to hold her if they wanted to. Her name is Alexia Lilliana---doesn't that have a beautiful lilt to it?

We had a crazy scheduled day with school, work, then Girl Scouts and J's TROUPE practice this evening. After that, I got to go pick up some clean clothes---one of my pre-school moms offered to wash my dirty clothes from the duplex! We moved out of the duplex this evening also, and slept at home again. Whew!

Day 125---Monday

J's foot figures prominantly in this photo. We are eating breakfast in the duplex before school today. Because the duplex is in south College Station, we are doing a lot of extra drivng. I have to go all the way over to the kids' schools and back here.

My boss bought a bunch of groceries for us to eat at the duplex---cereals, milk, lasagne, pizzas, coke, waters, kolaches, taquitos---we were set! I am so thankful she did that for us. :-) We had an oven to use and a fridge, so we ate really nicely while we were there.

Day 124---Sunday

I don't even know how to show you how the house looks. This first picture is what you see when you walk in my front door.

The second picture is from the back of my bedroom, looking all the way to the front of the house. This is the path the water took!

Day 123---Saturday

This is our group---recognize the shirts?

We had 13 Brownies and 4 Juniors---everyone in the troop got to go! We had 8 adults with us, too, which was wonderful.

One of the highlights for us was B getting to feed the giraffe. The Mom of one of our Brownies had a personal connection to someone who worked for the zoo. They were college roommates. Anyway, she took us behind the Africa exhibit and saw a few of the animals close up we fed this giraffe some carrots. An extra priveledge! Isn't that a long tongue?

Day 122---Friday

This is the trip to the Cameron Park Zoo in Waco, TX. B's Girl Scout troop got to go on the cookie money they raised. This was a fabulous trip!!!

I was really hoping that this picture would come out. :-) I was trying to show the beautiful aquarium, so I didn't use a flash.

Here you can see how the girls got to asleep in the aquarium building. They laid out their sleeping bags on the floor right in front of the big aquarium window. We grown-ups slept sort of behind them against the other wall, which had smaller aquariums in it. On air mattresses!

There were so many interesting things we did on Friday night, I'll be doing a full blog post about it on the other blog. :-)

Day 121---Thursday

This was the day I cried a lot. At the slightest little thing. The guy came out and told me that the water wasn't just in my bedroom, but in the dining room and the living room. And the estimate for pulling it all out was $1600. After many phone calls and many many people helping us out, we had a place to stay for the night. A co-worker of mine offered up her kids' rooms to us and we stayed there for the night and had pizza for dinner. I stayed up and talked to her for a couple of hours.

This is actually a Friday picture! I have another friend who has a duplex which happened to be empty. She told me that she was going to let us stay there, and that everything would be okay. She had just had a pipe burst in her house and had to do the same thing I was doing---move out of the house while the house got dried out. So this is her duplex, with our stuff in it! We called it camping with carpet.

Day 120---Wednesday

This is a fan we borrowed form our church---it actually belongs to a memeber there. We at this point thought we could still dry out the carpet ourselves.

Day 119---Tuesday

This is the last picture I took before I realized water was coming into the house. I really missed the *real* picture of the day---a photo of the back of the house here! This wall is my bedroom wall. Our yard was inundated with 4 inches of rain in about an hour and a half or so today! (I had two sources in our neighborhood---4 inches!) The water had no where to go----it wasn't getting through our fence to the front where the big storm drain is. Larry took fence slats off and the water gushed through at mid-calf height. But too late. The water was in the bedroom and spread to the rest of the house.

Day 118---Monday

I guess I have messed up and not done a picture for this day!

I felt HORRIBLE today, and went to the doctor in the afternoon. I did have strep throat, and it had me laid out on the couch all day. The house was getting messier and messier!