A Little R and R

We headed down to Orland for the holiday weekend to hang out with Aunt Vicki and Uncle Marvin. They were using their time share at a resort down there and invited us to come along. We decided not to do any of the parks but had a great time with everything else.We checked out Downtown Disney were the kids were amazed by the Lego creations that were everywhere. This is a life size scene of some tourists walking their dogs, all made of Legos!
We headed over to Sarasota to show the gang our favorite beach - Siesta Key, which has been featured on the Travel Channel - BEAUTIFUL!! Think of a Corona commericial and that's excatly what it looks like. Ashlyn was scared of the waves and spent most of the time playing in the sand. The rest of us enjoyed the water and had a blast.
The rest of the time we spent haning out at the resort. They had paddle boats, 14 different swimming pools and miniture golf that kept us busy. Ashlyn and I are proud to report that we were on a team and were tied with Dad after the first 9 holes, not too shabby. After that us girls quickly lost interest and forgot to keep score.

Party On!

Today was the big day - C.B. Greer's Spring Fling - that my friend and I were in charge of putting on. In a nut shell we put on an all day party for 625 kids and we had a blast! The best part was that almost every teacher, tons of parents and most importantly the Principal all came up and told us it was by far the best event that the school has had in it's 11 year history! My back is killing me, I have huge blisters on my feet and ran around all day on 4 hours of sleep since we were do last minute things last night, but it turned out great and the kids really had fun. We had relay races, face painting, various dancing games, sno-cones, popcorn, pets from the Humane Society, a picnic lunch, a magic show that had things lit on fire and stuffed a person in a box and shoved swords through and the list goes on and on.....
This is the dunking booth that we had set up with Officer Childers our school police officer. I'm not sure who had more fun with this - the kids or Officer Childers?These are the inflatables that we rented - an 18 ft. slide, a jump house and an obstacle course. These were definitely the highlight of the day!

Tornadoes Rip Through Our Area

Yesterday we had storm after storm come through town and we were on tornado watch or warning off and on all day starting at about 6:30 a.m. and finally ending at about 5 p.m. This is a picture of the town just north of us about 5 miles, where tornadoes touched down 3 times and then another one touched down out on the island that a lot of people in our ward live on. Luckily nobody was injured, just lots of property damage. Al Rocker from the Today Show was reporting from Georgia this morning (not our town unfortunatley) because of all of the damage. When we were instructed to take action and hunker down multiple times throughout the day, we quickly realized that our house is not very tornado friendly. None of our rooms, bathrooms or closets for that matter, are tornado safe - meaning they all have a window or an outside wall. Blake was pretty freaked out, but it turned out fine.

School's Out For Summer!

Woooo-Hoooo! I've sucessfully completed my first semester of graduate school and ended up with A's in all of my classes! I'm glad Rick kicked me in the butt and made me apply for school, I had almost talked myself out of it, not confident of my ability to do well at that level. I had an educational psychology class, which I really enjoyed, a curriculum development class which SUCKED and a reading instructions class which was pretty good as well. I really enjoyed the semester, but am looking forward to having the summer off to relax and get caught up on my scrapbooks. One sememster down, three more to go!

Eating Update

A couple of days ago, we decided "to make Blake grow up" as Dad calls it, and go back to making him eat dinner. So no matter what's been put on his plate the last couple of days he's been forced to sit there and eat it. He has the amount of time that it takes everybody else and then when we get up we set a timer for another 15 minutes and if it's not gone by then a priveledge is taken away - but he still has to finish eating. I'm sad to report that he didn't finish in time yesterday so he couldn't watch Tony Stewart race last night, boy did he cry and carry on for a long time about that! However, the other nights he's done pretty good, so far he's eaten pizza, tacos, teriyaki and rice, chicken pot-pie (which he did good until the last bite and then threw up the entire contents of his stomach all over the floor and chair)and then today for lunch he ate a ham and cheese sandwich. We're making some progress.....

Our First Dip in the Pool

The kids talked us into going to the pool this afternoon for the first time this year. Blake had fun with his new diving sticks and Ashlyn learned how to manuver around with her new floaties. She was a little nervous at first, but quickly got the hang of it and wouldn't get out. Each time we sat her on the deck we'd turn around and she'd be back in the water! Our little fish are going to be soooo tan this summer!

Blake at the Daytona 500

This is Blake's Accelerated Reader poster that he earned last week from reading. The media specialist asked him a bunch of questions and then came up with this idea for the poster, took his picture and put it all together before he even knew what it was going to look like. Can you tell he likes NASCAR? It really turned out sharp and he can't wait to bring it home and hang it in his room, unfortunatly it has to hang up in the library until the end of the year.

Art Projects Displayed

Here's two of Blake's art projects that I just noticed were featured on the school's website this month! It seems like he does some real stuff with the art teacher instead of just coloring like he tells us! Notice that he made the crayon green - his favorite color.

Out Little Speed Reader

Blake's class FINALLY started the Accelerated Reader program after Spring Break, something he's been chomping at the bit to do since the first day of school. Since he LOVES to read, in the past month since they started he maxed out the entire year points and prize system for the kindergarteners! The craziest part was his average at the end was a 3.8 grade level with a 91% accuracy rate! He earned a bookmark, a t-shirt, a free book, a poster, an appearance on the school news to talk about his favorite book and the opportunity to go to a special lunch with the principal! This was the awards assembly today where the principal presented him with his poster, sorry it's kind of dark I sat on the opposite side of the gym. The Media specialist takes their picture and makes a poster out of it, boy does it look sharp. He chose to have a Daytona 500 theme for his with him reading his favorite Matt Christopher book. I'll post a picture of it later - it has to hang on the wall at school for the rest of the year.