Homecoming 2021

 Welp it happened. Claire went to her first homecoming dance.  Although it looked a little different that it usually does, I am so thrilled that they even had a dance!!!

This year Claire and Kathleen worked a booth at the carnival for finance academy!

Oliver loved seeing Camden and Liam winning some prizes!

Then it was time to head home and spend over an hour straightening Claire's hair!

Nana and Papa stopped over for a quick picture.

Then it was time to meet up with her friends!

My beautiful girl!

Such great girls!

They had fun at the dance but they said they had more fun at the Oliver Garden afterwards and then sleeping at Kathleen's afterwards.  This is just the beginning ladies, just the beginning!

Goodbye Sweet Summer!

Since school has started we have been crazy busy over here.  But I have to say that I love it.  I love that the school year is starting somewhat normally!!! Although we did our best to hold onto to summer as long as we could!

We have been soaking up every last second of summer by being out at the lake whenever we can!

We even moved my birthday party to the lake!

Oliver is really going to be a mess when he can't fish anymore!

Our last summer sunset for a while.  I am going to miss this soooo much!  

 

New School Year Goals

 So here we are at the start of another school year!  So that means a new year of new goals!

Claire is starting high school (which I cannot even believe)!

Claire

~ Go to go to school every day.

~Do well in all my classes.

Oliver started middle school (again, I cannot even believe it).

Oliver

~To not be late to my classes.

~Have a 95% average (or higher).

Mark

~Support the kids to do their best.

~To encourage my students at school to be the best that they can be.

(the kids said that Mark's goals are cringey lol)

I have an amazing team to work with this year!  I am really excited to have the kids IN school and I really look forward to working with these ladies!

Mom

~To stay positive!

~To have fun!

~To not sweat the small stuff!

Hopefully this year the world will start going back to normal more and more! I hope everyone has a great school year!!!

Middle School Locker Set Up

 Last week it was time, time to go and set up Oliver's locker for MIDDLE SCHOOL!  Yep, that's right... middle school.

He was so excited!

Even though he didn't want to make it as fancy as his sister did, he still had a blast.

Oliver wanted to write his whole schedule down on his dry erase board.  Between his schedule and his lock he was a little nervous.  But once we checked out his classes and practiced his lock, he felt much better.

My big middle schooler.  I now have no more elementary children. Oliver might be a big middle schooler but he still held my hand in the parking and told me that he had fun setting up his locker with me.  He is such a love!

We had so much fun and we loved getting some milkshakes to celebrate! He may be growing up too fast but he is growing up to be a pretty amazing kid.

August Wrap Up

 OK so the rest of August was amazing!  The weather was great and we spent as much time as we could out at the lake!

We may have missed some of beach week but we still managed to squeeze in lots of fun time with family on the beach.

So much fun with friends and family!

We FINALLY got to walk down and have a nice family dinner.  And during dinner there was a beautiful fireworks display, can't beat that!

I did a ton of reading and relaxing at the lake.  It is definitely one of my favorite places on earth.

Oliver's Birthday Party

 We finally had Oliver's birthday sleepover at the beach!

Heading to the beach!

The boys swam for hours!

Then we enjoyed some dinner!

Tetherball was big hit!

Then it was time for cake!

And singing Happy Birthday!

More tetherball!

Then it was time for some fishing! After fishing the boys went night swimming!

Then it was time for a fire and some s'mores!

Then it was "bedtime".  The boys stayed up pretty late but they were really great kids.  They had a blast and it was so nice to see them all have so much fun!

Beach Week

 We were soooo excited about Beach Week this year!  We finally had our own place and could stay the whole time!

Claire and Kathleen loved using the new margarita machine.

The kids had fun playing tetherball at K2 (which is what we name our cottage).

It was so great to see family!

Nana came up!

And Papa loved the treats! 

The kids loved their cousin time!

Kathleen loved getting her first piece of sea glass.

Oliver had to sneak away for a party with his new hockey team.  The kids had a blast. Then the next day all the fun ended.  One of the boys at the party had COVID so Oliver had to quarantine for 10 days.  It was awful.  We had to leave beach week and say good bye to our family that we only see about once a year.  We were so sad but we didn't want to spread anything around Oliver and I headed home and beach week ended a little early for us.  We are already excited for next year!

Claire's Birthday, A Night At The Rodeo

Claire has some wonderful friends and they plan each other's birthdays. This year the girls planned a night at the Rodeo for Claire and we had a blast!

The girls made Claire her own cake!

Since it was surprise Claire didn't know to wear jeans but I ran home to grab them for her and she was ready to go!

After some delicious cake and presents, we were off to the Rodeo!

The girls had a blast!

It was a great night and fun way to spend Claire's birthday.