Our summer is winding down..

So today is our last Friday home together. It is so hard to believe that school is starting on Tuesday! I met Cayden's teacher yesterday. I don't know how many parents make a point of meeting the teacher b/4 the year starts, but I for one, like to know the person who will be molding my young child's mind for the next 9 months. She seems nice enough, I've only heard good things about her from other moms, so I'm sure it will be a good year. Kieran's 4K teacher is Mr. Bart and he is awesome. Any of the 4K teachers would've been great. Mr. Bart likes to use nature alot in the classroom; AKA bugs, spiders, lizards, creepy-crawly things. The kids eat it up! (not literally, of course, ICK)

Our weekend promises gorgeous weather-DRY, sun, low humidity and 80* days and cool nights. Anyone out camping sure has a perfect weekend to do so. We may put up our tent in our yard tonight for something fun to do.

Next week will be very busy for another reason as well. We've hired a lady to help in our office. I'm so happy, since I haven't had the time to do all of the work needed to be done. She is going to work out great, she has a wonderful personality and is excited to join our office. She starts on Tuesday.

I think today we are going to walk down to the library. We gotta do something to enjoy this wonderful, beautiful day!

Everyone have a fun, safe, and happy weekend!

Summer Fun at the James'

The stars of the afternoon...

Kieran's turn yielded solid hits but no candy.
Actually Tyler's second turn (with a baseball bat) proved to be no match for the pinata and the candy spilled out on to the tarp. Mass chaos ensued, of which I didn't catch a single decent picture, but no fists were thrown and no blood was spilled and everyone walked away with a decent load of candy.
My boys with their bags of goodies.

Chase really got into his cake
Ava taking a swing at the pinata!
Cayden was one of the "older" kids, so he had to wear a blindfold. He still made some major contact with the thing.
Chase even had to have a turn..This kid is such a little cutie. You can't help but smile every time you look at him, even when he's crying, he's just sooo cute.

Cayden manning the bounce house entrance
Cousin Ava and Cayden enjoying their M&Ms
All of the kids got a bag full of goodies from the scavenger hunt.

The "Splash Ball Toss" game,,
Cayden's spoils from the splash ball toss






Kieran's spoils from that game.
















So, Aunt Misty and Uncle Todd and the girls organized a party for all of the young ones in the hall. Finally today the weather cooperated! What a day it was. We had a bounce house, water balloons, scavenger hunt, yummy food, oh yeah, and a pinata full of sugary sweets. All of the kids had a BLAST! The adults too. I gotta mention Dan Chitwood's role in the huge water fight. He and Jose' put in a great offensive against Val and Brit. Despite their efforts, the girls kicked their butts. Dan was still wet 2 hours later. HA! I wished I would've gotten a picture of him, but I didn't. Oh well. All of us loved the party! I have put in a few pictures of the fun times we had...

A few shots of our summer fun..

The boys with Matthew at the pool..
Kieran and his swimming lesson teacher, chillin in the pool on the last day of lessons.
Brotherly love at the District Convention...

Kieran pushing Ava at the park last week.

It's a flood, so where's the Ark?

As summer draws to a close, SAY IT AIN"T SO! We finally have gotten the rain we needed like 2 months ago. Except all the rain we needed came in 2 days. Our neighbors to the north and west have been hit very hard. Many, many homes are ruined in Gays Mills, Soldiers Grove, and Richland Center. Here is a link to the Channel 3 website. There are 5 volumes of pictures that people have sent in of the damage. Some of the captions lend a bit of humor to a bleak situation.

http://www.channel3000.com/index.html

Now for a few pictures from our District Convention. DeKalb was a nice place to go. Reminded me of the Coleseum in Madison. The boys did better than I hoped. It helped that I had a bookbag full of activities for them to do.