First week of school

Halie's first week of school was a success! She had a wonderful time and was asking if she got to go back tomorrow at the end of each day. By the last 2 days of the week she had gotten herself up and had her light on in her room at 6:45, 5 minutes before I came in to wake her up. By the end of the week she was pretty tired, but still smiling! This week at school she said they were just learning the rules and making friends. They learned about "self reading", which I assume means she gets a book and looks at it, because she has been very excited about doing this at home. Funny how it was never a very good idea when Mom asked her to go read book! Whatever works....thank goodness for teacher!

We have been able to walk to school almost every morning this week. Halie rides her scooter and we walk. Dad has been able to join us almost every day, so that has been an enjoyable start to our mornings!

While Halie has been at school, Austin and I have had the chance to hang out a little bit more and have some fun together. We had some beautiful weather the other morning, so we took a walk to the park and Austin fed the ducks his cheerios. He loved it!

Another morning we rode bikes and played basketball. The kid LOVES the outdoors, so I have been taking advantage of these nice mornings to get him out!

Yesterday he started to weed eat the inside of the house. He was walking around shirtless to start out with and found the weed eater. Then he walked to the laundry room and demanded dad's yard work hat. He walked around for quite a while doing some important work! He was so proud of himself!

The year is off to a great start. Hopefully next week will be just as great!

First Day of School!

What a great day for Halie! This is her all dressed up this morning and ready to head out the door. She has been a little nervous about this day for a while. Paul and I were able to walk her to school this morning. As we were walking she started to get pretty excited as she saw all the other kids heading to the same place she was. Once we made it to the school she very proudly led us the way to her class and I had to stop her at the door to get a picture with her new teacher, Mrs. Coe. After that she was on her way to start her day without me. I had to chase her down to get a goodbye hug! She said "I'm really excited now!" once she got into her class. It sure made leaving her there a whole lot easier! She had the same level of enthusiasm when I picked her up too! I'm so proud of her!

A couple of days ago I had the realization that this was the first time in her life that we were sending her out into the "world" without us. Except for the gym, all the other times she is apart from us is in a christian environment. It made me realize the gravity of it all, how important it is for Paul and I to be covering her little heart in prayer daily. Praying for God to truly write His name on her heart and draw her into a relationship with Himself early in her little life.

This was a big step today Halie. I love you.

Farewell Friends

We have some very dear friends, Eric, Emily, Madi and Mason who have been a big part of our lives for the last few years. They have been called to serve the Lord in Tanzania, Africa and are leaving next fall. They were unexpectedly called away to Houston for the remainder of their time in the states and these are some pics from our goodbye party we had for them this weekend. They are an amazing family and we will really miss them.

I will miss Madi's contagious smile!

Madi, Nathan, Mason and Carter

The big kids playing outside.

More big kids playing outside... Paul, Isaac and Eric

Lance and Renee
Tripp and Catherine

You guys will missed....

Back home

Well, we made it back home to Texas. We got in on Sunday night/Monday morning at 3 am. It did feel good to walk into our home for the first time in 6 1/2 weeks. It looked different to me when I came back, it looked bigger for some reason. That was 4 days ago, it's back to looking normal now! We were welcomed back to Texas by having our AC break on us on Monday. My parents were great and let us come sleep at their place until we got it fixed the next day.

Halie was off to Grandma and Grandpa's house on Monday for a visit. She had a wonderful time as always. Grandpa is her cards partner, he is teaching her lots of card games and says she is pretty good!

We were able to get together with Mike, Rebecca, Jaxson and Camden last night. It was wonderful to see them again after such a long time. This picture is Austin dressing up that night in a Santa suit and Paul's graduation cap. I couldn't get him to hold still long enough to get a great pic, but he sure looked cute!

Halie had meet the teacher tonight. Her first day of school is on Monday! She said she was really nervous about going, but today when we were shopping for her school supplies she said, "I'm not nervous anymore, now I am excited about going to school!" Here is a shot of her supplies all ready to go. I always loved new school supplies as a kid! Her new teacher seems nice, hopefully we'll have a great first year!

Before meet the teacher, Paul and Halie had a date this afternoon. They went to Target and had popcorn and went shopping for a new movie. Then they went to the Yogurt place and had a treat. Halie had a great time. I hope this is a tradition they can keep up together in the future.

Paul is already in bed. He has started going to swim practice at 5 am on M,W,F, so he has been getting to bed much earlier than normal. That is where I need to be headed to (to bed, not swim practice). More to come next week with Halie's first day of school!

Horseplay!

Last night the adults sat down for supper (the kids ate before we did) and we put on a movie for the kids. Noah and Halie were sitting on the couch watching it and Austin was walking around playing. All of a sudden I noticed I wasn't hearing anymore noise coming from Austin or the couch - never a good sign. This is what we found in the basement... Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb and completely dismantled the DVD collection and had a great time doing it!

The two of them have had such a great time playing and getting into trouble together! One of them does something, the other one copies it, good or bad. Poor Mickey (the cat) cannot wait for these two hoodlums to leave!

Austin has really come into his own the last few weeks. He is definitely a little boy now, playing with cars, balls, animals, barbie dolls.... :) I think we can blame the last one on having an older sister, lets hope at least! He has started saying tons more words now, it seems there are new ones coming out every day! His first sentence was "I want my daddy", at least that is what it sounded like and he was crying for dad!

This morning we got up early and headed to the horse stables. While we were waiting for our horse to get saddled up we fed some of the other ones carrots. The kids loved it!

Quite the little man, he has now started standing with his hands in his pockets.

Halie taking a ride around the arena on King, our horse for the hour. She was ecstatic about getting to ride him.

Austin was all about riding him too!

The whole fam taking a walk, Halie did a great job leading King around whenever the boys were taking a ride.

Jessica and Noah joined us for the day!

We kind of got in trouble two times during our hour with King. Not on purpose of course... Paul was the first one to get yelled at. Halie wanted the horse to run, so Paul tried to get him to run. Well, we were very loudly told that he is an old horse and isn't allowed to run. Oops! Then Austin didn't want to get on King the second time, so I hopped on with him. King is only a kids horse....no one told us that before. Sorry King.

Altogether we had a great time, apart from Austin screaming the ENTIRE way home. I guess when your almost 2 and decide not to eat your breakfast, you get kind of cranky and hungry after a while!

Breckenridge, CO

We made it up to Breckenridge on Saturday afternoon. It has been a pretty low key visit up here, which has been nice. That was all part of the plan of putting Colorado last on the trip, so we could just sit back and enjoy it. So far, so good!

Sunday morning we went to church up here. The church we found was non-denominational or a bible church, not sure which one, but it meets outside in the summer months. It was a neat little service, right next to the river. They had a few baptisms in the river after the service. A few people brought their dogs, Halie got a kick out of that one! I was so surprised to see the number of young people there, it was pretty encouraging from a mothers perspective. They had a lunch fellowship afterwards, so we stayed for that and met a few of the locals.

Monday we headed over to Copper Mountain to visit their Adventure Park. That is what most of the pictures below are from. The kids started out jumping on the trampolines. Halie jumped twice that day, the first time a little more cautiously than the last. By the second time she was doing back flip after back flip after back flip! Austin was reluctant to get on at first. In the first pic of him you can see the blank stare on his face, he eventually let that go and started to smile and threw quite a fit when it was time to get down.

After that we headed over to the Go-Carts. Austin was too small to ride, so Halie and I went for a spin. We didn't win, but we had fun! You can only imagine how upset little brother was that he didn't get to go....

Next we took a ride up the chair lift and enjoyed the beautiful scenery of God's incredible creation!

We saw a few deer on the way.

On the hike down we ran into a couple marmots. They looked like big ground hogs. Halie though that was pretty neat.

Here is us starting to head down the mountain on a trail after getting off the chair lift. See the nice patches of blue sky there in the pic? Well, that is how fast a storm can move in on the mountain, because about 5 minutes after I took this there was a huge lightning strike followed by a very loud thunder clap that Halie did not appreciate, and rain. We hightailed it up the mountain to the lodge to let the storm pass!

After we rode the lift back down after the storm, Dad took Halie to ride the Go-Carts again and Austin and I stayed and played on the playground.

We then played a very abbreviated game of Putt-Putt golf. Papa, I thought you taught her how to hold a club better! I have to admit, there are some things that children show a natural talent for, and Halie has quite a few, but golf does not seem to be one of them!

Austin just had fun holding a club the whole time, every once in a while he would step in and try to hit some one's ball.

Today, Tuesday, we went for an hour and 40 minute bike ride on the incredible biking trails they have here. It was beautiful! It was slightly hilly...so that made for a pretty good workout, that and the fact that there is a heck of a lot less oxygen up here! But we all enjoyed it. After some lunch and a small rest we took a ride up the gondola and hiked down the mountain from there. It was a very enjoyable hike. Halie did great, she went exploring and found a collection of leaves and picked a bouquet of wild flowers for me! We found a small river we had to cross on small log holding a guide wire. Gymnastics paid off! Halie didn't fall in!