Western Day

Nothing says Rodeo Season like Western Day at Florence Elementary!

Parker and Tyler

Miles, ready to do some dancin'.

Kindergarten Field Trip!

Miles went with is class on their first (and only) field trip, to the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo! It was such a fun day. I was chaperoning, and was, thankfully, only in charge of Miles and his buddy, Collin. I seriously don't know how teachers do it.

Getting on the bus! First time on a school bus!

Getting off in Fort Worth!

Eating lunch at Riscky's BBQ in the Historic Stockyards District.

Exploring with Collin.

Banditos.

When I picked Miles up from school, he told us about the bus ride home. He and his two friends, Caiden and Collin, decided to pretend to fall asleep with their foreheads resting on the seat in front of them. And then they actually fell asleep like that. Wish I could have seen it.

Neal had a birthday.

Happy Day to Neal, who turned 38 today! I love him and am so thankful for my hard-working, loving husband. How did I get so blessed?

Science Fair

Parker really wanted to do a science fair project this year. He used different fruits and a potato to create voltage. He put a galvanized nail and a penny in each piece of fruit, and connected them to a voltmeter. He did a great job of explaining the project to all the people who came by with questions. It was highly impressive.

Sickies

Miles got the flu. :( There were 14 kids absent from his class one day during the worst of it. He was a pretty sick little dude, and I ended up getting the same symptoms, but, thankfully, testing negative for flu. Mom and Dad came to visit, and, sadly, we had to cancel our fun plans to go to Fredericksburg on Sunday and Monday. So we basically just laid around and tried to get better. Now that it's been a week (more like 10 days for Miles), we can finally say we are back to normal. Here's hoping for a healthy spring! Soon!

Keane

The night that I went on my first date with Neal, in 1997, he picked me up and we went back to his house to wait for his roommate and the girl he was taking out that night. Sometime before we left for Salt Lake City to go to the symphony, I caught a glimpse of Neal's CD collection and was totally impressed by his musical taste (because it was so similar to mine)! We were meant to be, I was sure of it, because he had a Gene CD, and Gene was a band from England that I was sure no one in Provo had heard of. I am still so glad that we share musical taste; it makes life fun now that we are old and still like to go to concerts sometimes.

Last Friday night, Neal and I cashed in my birthday present and went to the Keane concert. It was super fun and the band sounded amazing. Yay for music!

Spelling Bee: Audrey

Audrey participated in her school's spelling bee on Thursday. She did a great job, and though she didn't get as far as she did last year, we are still really proud of her ability! I got a kick out of the coincidence that Audrey and Parker both were asked to spell the same word this week: recipient!

Cute, smart kids. We are so proud.

Spelling Bee: Parker

Parker was in the school spelling bee today with 29 other third and fourth graders. These things are always so nerve-wracking! Parker was the last kid to spell in each round, so at least he got all the applause! He made it through 5 rounds, and we are so proud of him!

Parker and his buddy, Reed

Spelling "flora"

New Year Fun

We had fun the last couple of days our cousins were here.

Thursday, I took the kids out of school early so we could go to the trampoline park with our cousins. This was a newer one in town, complete with a mechanical bull!

We got together at Daddy Jeff's house on Friday night to play games and "watch football." Then it was time to say goodbye. Cars were off to Salt Lake City and Canyon the next morning, full of people we miss! This is Uncle Tyler playing Mastermind with Audrey, Miles, Tucker, Oliver and Claire.

 

We had Trooper bathed and groomed on Saturday, and decided it was time for him to spend more time inside. On his "pillow," for the most part. He is so fuzzy, that in order to keep the cleaning under control, we have to limit his range. He LOVES it.

More Cousin Time

We had a lot of fun on our last day of Christmas Break! We spent the day at the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas. It just opened December first, and it was sold out (crowded), as it has been every day since then. But we still managed to have an amazing and very educational time!

 Emmaline, Claire and Audrey. They are 14, 13, and 11.

Savannah was so sweet to help Miles build a structure before he tested it on an earthquake simulator.

Claire and Parker worked on one, too.

This Digital Mirror was incredible. Read more and see it in action, here.

After 6 hours at the museum, we went to visit Uncle Jeff on the 44th floor of his downtown Dallas building to take in the view. Then we went to Dave & Buster's for dinner, where Neal and Patience met up with us. A super long day, but lots of fun! Let's hope school is not too big of a shock to the system tomorrow!

New Year's Day

We had a nice family day on New Year's Day. We met up with the Huntzingers and Daddy Jeff and Gail at Jeff's house in Dallas for some brisket, black-eye peas and cornbread. Mmmm, good.

 The kids had fun talking to Nelson and looking at their phones.

 Lots of cousins at a little table!

These five were outside most of the day. It was chilly, but they didn't seem to mind! The rest of us stayed inside and played games. A few watched football. Good times!