Fish out of water!

Benjamin is definitely our little fish!  I don't know what happened in the womb but if there's water around he'll find it!  We wanted to get him into swim lessons, but didn't make it during the summer months.  Fortunately, my health club offered them indoors so we signed him up for a Mom and child class.  He absolutely loved it!  If I wasn't careful, he would try to jump in before I did, which was kind of scary.  It was fun to see how much he enjoyed it and great for me as well.  With Alys at this age it was more of a nightmare.  I hope he continues to enjoy it and who knows, maybe someday we'll have a swimmer on our hands.

Goal!

Ethan has been enjoying soccer all month.  He has been playing with the Golden Eagles.  This has been his first run at actually playing on a team.  He has participated in clinics before but no actual games.  He's probably one of the youngest on his team but has enjoyed it and fit right in.  He's learned a lot and has scored a goal or two during the season.  I think his favorite position to play though is goalie.  Whenever his coach asks him to cover the goal he tends to not want to move down the field, as they don't usually play with a goalie.  Even though we've had a few cold, windy games and practices it's been fun to watch him play.  We look forward to the spring season!

Our Little Ballerina

About a month or two ago we signed Alys up for a dance class.  When I first talked to her about it she was adamant that she was not going to go!  I went and watched the first day and her teacher, Mrs. Macie was great.  She had fun things to play with while they were waiting to get started and she helped her find the right size ballet and tap shoes.  Now she loves it and she loves to wear her ballerina outfit.  She is learning ballet, tap and tumbling.  She will have a little recital coming up in December and we're excited to see what she's learned as she twirls in her cute little costume.

Canning, what's that?

Well, it's been about a month since I've talked about anything and my list is piling high so I thought I'd start with some canning.  When I was a kid I remember every year at the end of summer it was the dreaded time for canning!  That meant peeling pears, apples, peaches, making tomato sauce, shucking corn and cutting it off the cob and whatever else you could think of.  Some items always seemed to take forever!  Since I moved away, stopped in Arizona for a couple of years, stayed in Texas too long, got married and had kids; I kind of forgot how to do some of it.  So this year I thought I would take a stab at it just so I knew how to do it and there also seems to be a great abundance of fresh produce in the area.  Plus, we were also fortunate enough to share a garden with my brother and his family and my parents.  That was wonderful!  Here's some highlights of us working in the garden and the beautiful and tasty peaches that I canned.  They are a "Summer Lady" peach and very tasty.  I even grilled some of them and that was fabulous!!  Sorry, forgot to take pictures of that but definitely will next time.

A Family Camp out

For Labor Day weekend we went on our first family camping trip.  The kids have wanted to go for a long time, so with an extra day for the weekend we decided to take the plunge.  We went to a place called Mann's Creek.  They have a reservoir there and a few campgrounds.  We got in Saturday afternoon and got our tent set up under some nice shade trees.  That evening we just relaxed, played some crochet, baseball, etc.  We had some hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner which were yummy.  Then as were starting to slow down for the evening, the fun began!  The winds started picking up because a cold front was to be coming through.  We thought after a  while that the winds would die down.  Nope, not the case.  So as I lay there on the luxuriously soft ground, listening to the wind blow, I just kept wondering when I was going to have to crawl out of my tent to set it back up!  A couple of hours later, when it's dark and most of the other campers have settled in for the night we got some new neighbors.  While it was kind of funny watching them try set up their tents in 30mph wind gusts, it was not so funny when they were laughing and joking until about 2am.  Fortunately, the kids slept like logs.  Not to mention the zipper on the door of the tent we had did not work.  Needles to say, even though the first night went off with a bang, the rest was pretty good.

The next day we went for a walk to the reservoir, played some more games and had some additional family members join us.  My parents and some of the kids cousins came up for a night which the kids loved.  We had a great enchilada dinner made in the dutch oven by Woody followed by some peach cobbler.  I think sometimes we eat better when we do activities than we do at home!  All in all it was a good time and something the family will look forward to again.  Maybe we'll try an ice cave this winter...just kidding!

One night Benjamin was so tired he decided he'd just lay on the ground for a rest!  Poor kid, camping was just too much fun.

Back to School!

It's that time of year again already! Where does the time go? Ethan and Alys both started school on Monday. They were both excited about and I have to admit, Mom was a little excited too. Because it was a hectic morning, we took after school pictures. Ethan is now in 1st grade while Alys is in pre-school 2 days a week. Benjamin is my little trooper and gets to spend some more time with Mom. I know they will have lots of fun and make lots of new friends. The only complaint thus far is that they don't like walking Ethan to school. As you can tell, Alys is a bit red in the face after walking home on a hot day. Wait 'til the snow comes....

Oh Sooo Cute!

Aren't these the cutest little things? My parents have two Sheltie dogs and the female recently had 5 puppies. In these pictures, they're not quite a week old and still have their eyes closed. The kids were sooooo excited to go see them! If we would have let them they probably would've stayed with them all day. They were very cute and cuddly. When we got our dog, Sage, she was about six weeks old so it was a treat to see new puppies. It makes you want one all over again...for about a minute! Anyway, it will be fun to see them grow.

I was so glad to capture this while we were visiting my brothers house, where the puppies were. This is my cute nephew and niece Crew and Azlyn. It was nice to know that Benjamin is not the only one that has tried this!