August 31 - School Mode

38 weeks

We are on week 2 of school and quickly getting into school mode. JD walks the kids to school at 7.45am (they don't have to be there until 8.10 but Luke likes to be there early) and then I pick them up in the afternoon (which then wipes me out for the rest of the day, walking is 'no bueno' right now). Soccer officially started 2 weeks ago but was cancelled every day until this week due to rain. So, we are back to 'the season of soccer' with soccer literally every day of the week, including weekends, except for Fridays. Julia's new uniform just came in and this is the first year she's navy (instead of red) and she is number "42." JD said there is some science fiction reference to this (I can't remember what) and that's a great number....nerd alert hehe! 

Luke at practice

So...countdown to baby #3 (name TBD). I have been getting A LOT of daily text messages from people asking if I've had the baby yet (sometimes multiple times a day from the same person). To those of you texting me-I know you are excited and when the time comes, you'll know! I am not the type of person to have a baby and wait a few days to tell people. In terms of how I am feeling, not great. I've had a lot of problems this pregnancy (vomiting, blackouts, hip/pelvis issues, difficulty eating). About 2 weeks ago the baby seemed to 'drop' and I could finally drink a glass of water or eat more than a few bites of food without feeling ill. That lasted about a week and I'm back to feeling sick again. I've also come down with a horrible, horrible head cold in the last 2 days...so, yeah, not fun. But I'm assuming she'll be here in the next week and hopefully within a few weeks after that, I'll feel like my old self again (albeit a tired version haha).  

frosting overload

In other news, the kids and I, as well as some of the girl scouts, went to a local bakery/restaurant for a back to school decorating party last week. The kids went crazy with the frosting and had a great time. The next morning the kids competed in another mini-ninja warrior competition in north Houston. It was Luke's first time competing and JD took him. While Luke is not really a competitive child, he had a fun time and placed 2nd in all three courses (there were 10 4/5 year old competing). I took Julia in the afternoon and she was part of the 8/9 age group with 50 kids competing. She is extremely competitive (just like her mommy) and knew she wasn't winning after the first two courses. She was very upset. I'm proud to say that on the third course, she was able to harness that passion and was the only kid to complete the course in entirety. It was awesome and she was so proud of her herself! I will load the videos on YouTube and will post them in the next week or so. 

Cookies with the Girl Scouts

Homework time

Back to brunette for the fall

August 30 - Luke is a Rocket & Birthday Recap

walking to school - first day!

And in the blink of an eye, summer break is over. Approx. 2 weeks ago, class lists were posted and Luke was thrilled to be placed in Ms. Bach's class (same kinder teacher Julia had). He was also very excited that his friend Lily from pre-school is also in his class. I went to parent info night and once again, I'm the room mom. There is another mom who recently moved here from the Netherlands and she's going to be the assistant room mom, so between the two of us, we'll help the kids have fun this year. In third grade, Julia has two teachers. Her homeroom teacher was new to the school last year (but has over 10 years of teaching experience) and then was out half the year (pregnancy bed rest and then maternity leave) so no one knows too much about her, but she seems very nice. She is the math, science and social studies teacher. Then Julia switches classrooms mid-day and has another teacher for reading, writing and English. School started last Monday and both teachers seem great, Julia has been happy so far.

She has a lot of rowdy boys in her class (they already had a food fight in the cafeteria and caused the whole class to lose recess time) but hopefully they'll calm down as the year progresses. 

As anyone who knows our kids, Julia and Luke are very different. Julia has always been little miss outgoing personality who gives me every minute detail of her day. Luke is the type that responds "good" for "fine." So unsurprisingly, he hasn't been very forthcoming about his day when I pick him up. But as we were walking home the first day, he interrupted Julia and said "I would love to tell mom about my day if you would just-stop-talking." It was pretty funny. His class did several science experiments he was happy about-but when JD asked him about his day over dinner, he responded "Mom can tell you everything, I already explained it once."

Luke is an Otter!

Little stinker! His class also did a scavenger hunt around school on Friday looking for Chester the raccoon-Luke is the type of kid who is very logical (I don't think he even believes in Santa but is smart enough not to say anything) but he really believed Chester and could not stop talking about it. He had to call JD as soon as we got home to give him all of the details. This warmed my heart to see him acting like a little boy since he's usually so..grown up about things all the time. For example-I helped out a lunch a few days last week and one day I saw him chatting with two boys from his class. I thought, 'great, he's making friends.'

Mom, stop taking photos of me

I walked over to hear what they were saying and the two other boys were talking about how their dads can jump to the moon, pick up the earth, that kind of stuff. Luke...he was telling them that wasn't physically possible, etc etc. Ah, my little logical engineer. 

Okay, Julia's 8th birthday was also this month and she once again had two parties. Yes, it's a tad ridiculous but it's tough when we have 11 girls in the girl scout troop plus other friends. So she had a small Olympics themed sleepover a few weekends ago complete with pizza, cake and water slide. They watched some Olympics and a movie and were in bed by 11pm. There were a total of 7 girls and it was so much less stressful than last year (we had almost double the amount of people last year and it was too much). They had a great time! This past weekend was a joint birthday party for Julia & Hannah (both August birthdays) and the troop. We did another waterslide at the house, ice cream cake and a pinata. It was a quick 2-h party and very stress free. The girls all had a great time. 

Getting ready for her party: new hair & red/white/blue nails

Happy Birthday Julia!

Karma was just one of the girls

Girl Scouts

August 29 - August Catch Up

Bay Oaks Girls: Jenna, Evelynn, Julia, Baylee & Lauri

Happy Monday dimpled munchkin fans! We are in the home stretch. Baby #3 is due this week. Her initial due date was Labor Day and it was moved to Sep 1 based on the ultrasound measurements..so my guess is that she'll come this weekend. She comes when she's ready, right? We are ready-her room is 100% complete, clothes washed and diapers/wipes/cream are stocked up. JD has a busy work week and a huge design review on Friday so he's hoping she does not come earlier than Friday night. Time will tell, we'll keep you all posted. 

In the meantime, somehow it took me way too long to blog about our summer vacation and it's the end of August with no August updates. We had a busy month so let's get started. Immediately after coming back from vacation, the kids had summer camp at Bay Oaks Country Club (across the street from our neighborhood).

dryland somersaults

This is an awesome swim, golf and tennis camp however it is outdoors all day. This was a rough transition, especially for Luke, since we had just spent a week in perfect 80 degree weather with zero humidity. To go from that to a heat index of around 105 was a shock to the system. 

After Bay Oaks that week, Julia took diving lessons (week 2 of a 2-week "camp" that started the week we were on vacation). When I was growing up, diving lessons and diving teams were standard for the summer swim league. Here, it is swimming only. And while there are diving boards at most of the pools, the fulcrums are so far forward no one can bounce the boards except for adult men.

Julia is on the 3M board

So, I was thrilled when I found a USA diving club that was offering this camp. The coach, Sven, is known as the 'diving guy' around our area. He recently retired as Vice Principal for a local high school and used to coach all the local divers. His USA diving club has produced several national level divers. I wasn't sure what to expect from these lessons as I never had 'real' lessons at this age, nor was I sure that Julia would even like it. She signed up with her friend Jillian from the Orcas and both girls absolutely LOVED it. Sven was fantastic-very energetic and kept everything fun. They were divided up into 4 groups and rotated boards (2 1M and 2 3M boards). They did stretching, dry land, line ups and more. There was Sven and 3 teenage helpers and they were fantastic with the kids-they provided constant feedback. Julia absolutely loved 3M and didn't want to get off of it. She now wants to do swimming and diving in the winter when soccer is over. I have A LOT of videos (probably the most videos I've ever taken of her doing any activity, I couldn't help myself) so I will load a few to youtube soon and post them. 

quietly scrapbooking

We had a very busy month with our Girl Scout troop this August as well. The girls all came over for the opening ceremony of the Olympics (where we ate pizza and Olympic inspired desserts) and then worked on their scrapbooks. I'm not sure if they are finally maturing a little or if they all had a busy week and they were tired, but they were incredibly well behaved and there was minimal screaming (screaming in the sense that most of them like to talk extremely loudly and excitably all the time). The troop also threw me a gorgeous baby shower at Catherine's house. We had a delicious pot luck and everyone spoiled the new baby with adorable clothes. The girls also played some fun baby shower games. They were blindfolded and had to put a diaper on a baby in a short time period, they had to create little babies using play dough and played baby bingo. It was a blast!

The kids also had eye appointments this month before school started. Julia's prescription changed a little and she has new glasses. Luke had his first ever official eye exam and it was hilarious watching him. They asked him to read one line, he did it perfectly then they asked for the next line. Julia and I are the type that will guess the letters and keep going. Luke...nope. He would clearly say "no, I can't see that." And then just stop reading. They finally understood to ask him to read the ones he could read and it turns out..he does not need glasses (Julia was very upset that he does not need them). 

I will try to post another update tomorrow recapping Julia's birthday and the first day of school. It's been a crazy month!

Luke played Pokemon Go while Julia was diving

Fun at the end of camp in the water (she is surfing on the mat)

Cutest shopping helper ever

GS Baby Shower

August 26 - Hot Springs

After our amazing time in Vail, it was time to start the journey back home to Texas. This was the only part of our trip that we didn't plan out ahead of time and we had 3 days to get home. We stopped in Salida again but this time, we went to the Salida Hot Springs Aquatics Center. The Aquatics Center is the largest indoor hot springs in the United States. The water is piped in directly from an underground spring in the Rocky Mountains. One part of the pool looks like a typical..well..pool-6 lanes and 25-yards. It also has a diving board, slide and coolest of all-a climbing wall! The average temperature in that pool was 84-86 degrees. There was a smaller section of pool (they are sectioned off by a wall) with a soaking area and kids play area, with average temperature around 99 degrees.

They also offered private soaking rooms, but we didn't check those out. The kids had an absolute blast going down the slide and...you guessed it, climbing the wall. JD swam some laps in the pool and I enjoyed floating around. It was nice to be swimming without chlorine. 

After leaving the pool, we started south toward New Mexico. Our plan was to stop in Santa Fe again and go to one of the national parks there. There is a park with caverns for people to explore and a junior ranger program. Unfortunately, there was some convention in town and literally every hotel room was completely booked. EVERY ROOM. As you can imagine, there aren't a lot of towns in New Mexico so we ended up driving to Albuquerque (about 70 miles west). We arrived at the hotel around 10pm and as our luck would have it, a large group of 20-somethings was having some sort of convention/meet up. JD dropped the kids and I off to check-in and it took awhile to navigate around all of the..impaired people waiting for their cabs. JD got stuck in the parking lot and eventually had to park in some random lot several blocks away. It literally took him 45min, after he dropped us off, to park and get back to the hotel. Needless to say, it was not an ideal situation.

After a quick night sleep, we got in the car bright and early and headed to Frisco (next to Dallas). In Frisco, JD and the kids went to the video game hall of fame and loved it! I sat in the lobby resting so I don't have any photos, but they all had a time good time. We spent the night in Fort Worth and then went to a really cool cafe in the morning called 'Nerdvana.' It's a coffee/pastry shop that has board games for patrons to play, a really unique place. 

Alas, it was time to head home to Houston. We weren't excited about the heat, but we were excited to see the dogs again!

Next post-summer catch up!

August 23 - Goodbye Vail

Goodbye Vail-we were so sad to leave but so happy we chose to vacation here. We loved the perfect weather (I cannot stress how wonderful zero humidity is), how clean and beautiful the town was (flowers everywhere and no litter), the general "healthy feel" everywhere you go (kids and people biking or walking everywhere, I think I saw 3 people smoking the entire week) and most importantly-we loved spending time with Uncle Bryan. Enjoy these pics from our last morning there and then....I will have one more post about our journey home. Hard to believe it's almost end of August and I haven't even started blogging about our August adventures yet-never fear, they are coming!

Uncle Bryan

JD and Christine 

Attempt at the family selfie

Julia and JD biked into town one last time

one of the many covered bridges around town

beautiful fountain in town

flowers in front of our hotel, you can see the gondola in the distance

August 21 - Adventure Ridge, Mini-Golf & Mountain Biking

first ones on the gondola

Earlier in the week, JD and Bryan took the kids on their first mountain biking adventure with Wade and his dad. Well, they attempted to take both kids but Luke's bike didn't have the correct hand brakes required to go down the mountain and he wasn't comfortable on the rental bike (it was a smidge too large for him). Bryan and JD agreed it was a good thing Luke did not go that first day, as they did an approx. 4.5 mountain bike trail that would have been very challenging (I believe JD's exact words were 'I would have been so nervous with Luke going down that trail, we might have had to walk down the whole thing'). Julia rocked it and Uncle Bryan was very impressed by her lack of fear and bike skills! 

alpine coaster!

For our last full day at Vail, we let the kids decide what activities they wanted to do. Luke wanted to go back to Adventure Ridge and do the alpine coaster (he wasn't able to do it our first time out as he didn't have the appropriate wrist band). He and JD headed up the gondola as soon as it opened and were some of the first people on top of the mountain. They went on the alpine coaster 4 times, did the trampoline and tubing multiple times. After they were done with Adventure Ridge, Luke and I had ice cream in the village and Luke went mini-golfing. He had a great day!

top of Vail mountain

Julia decided to go mountain biking, so after JD was done at Adventure Ridge with Luke, he and Julia headed up a different gondola and tried out a new course. She had one minor wipe out (she was very proud of the scrape on her arm) but otherwise had an amazing ride! Uncle Bryan spent the day off-roading with one of his friends and had a fab day too. 

After our adventures, we (along with the Howard family, who spent the day fishing) had a pizza dinner in the room and the kids watched a movie (the kids watched movies together almost every night). Another great day in Colorado!

Ice Cream with Mom

Mini golf with my favorite guy

Mountain biking

after dinner movie