Summertime

In March I decided that I wanted to get my master's in education, and 4 months later I can say that I have my first 9 credit hours of grad school DONE. And somehow I seem to keep getting A's. Not only A's, but high A's. Which is starting to make me think that maybe I can handle this grad school thing. Or maybe I just got the easy classes out of the way and now they'll hit me with the killer ones. Except the 3 classes that I've taken haven't been easy, so that can't be it. I have been driving to Little Rock for class most weekends since May, and I had my last Little Rock class yesterday. So now my summer starts. Which would probably excite me a little more if I had longer than 2 weeks until school starts, but I don't. But it is really nice to not have anything I need to read, no presentations I need to prepare, and no papers I need to write right now. I almost forgot what it was like to have true free time. It feels goooood.

I will be teaching 1st grade this year and I am beside myself excited about this. I already know and love many of my students and I have the best co-workers a person could ask for. I've been working on my classroom on and off over the past month, but still have a LOT to do before school starts. I will post pics as soon as I get it finished, which will NEVER happen if I don't quit looking at Pinterest. There are too many good ideas on there to EVER get around to, so it would probably be in my best interest to just step away from it and get done what NEEDS to be done for now. But I don't always choose what's in my best interest, so this is probably how I will be spending my 2 free weeks of summer. But decorating makes me happy, so that's ok.

We have had a little fun this summer despite the fact that I've been in school. I did this post earlier about our trip to Gatlinburg in June, which was our big vacation of the summer. On July 4th, we went to Millwood with the family for a cookout and swimming, followed by our tradition of fireworks that evening.

On July 7th, Aaron went to camp for the week. This is what he looked like Sunday when we dropped him off...

And this is what he looked like Friday after we finally made it home...

We've got ourselves a broken foot in the house. Which is great fun when it happens to a very active 12 year old with an upstairs bedroom and is looking at a month with crutches. And what makes it even worse is that there's not even a good story to go along with the broken foot. He was just walking in the cabin Thursday night and his foot popped. Loudly. And that was that. Apparently this is a very easy bone to break when you are growing because it has a lot of tendons pulling on it,  but it takes a long time to heal because of very little blood supply, so we may be dealing with this well into the fall. We're hoping this won't interfere with soccer and football (well, soccer...I would NOT be heartbroken if he was told he couldn't play football...but don't tell anyone), but we'll know more when we go back for more x-rays in a few weeks. He has figured out that he can still ride four-wheelers, mow the yard, and climb the stairs (although not gracefully), so that's something. He was scheduled to go on a mission trip with the youth group that next week, but since he wasn't able to do the kind of work that would be required of him, he chose to go spend the week staying in a camper with his Uncle Craig and helping out at Jr. camp. He was really down about missing the mission trip, so getting to be at camp and feeling useful in some way for a few days seemed to help his spirits. And I was glad that he was away because Austin spent most of that week super sick with the flu (leave it to my child to get the flu in July), and being down with a broken foot AND the flu would have REALLY been bad.

Aaron and Emily, helping out at Jr. camp

 

Billy Blakeney and I at camp. Love this man.

Since the past few weeks have been such a roller coaster ride, I'm hoping for a peaceful and non-eventful 2 weeks. I'll leave with a few more highlight pics of our summer so far...

Austin playing at the Splashpad in town.

 

Kaulyn, Brandon, Austin and Aaron....SNOCONES!

 

Me, Kaulyn, and Jennifer

Aaron and Brandon at DeKalb's VBS

 

Wendy and Austin at VBS

 

 

Feeding the homeless downtown

 

Birthday party for Brandon, Kaleb, my mom. Photobombed by Austin

 

My parents, 1 brother, 1 sis-in-law, 1 niece, 1 nephew, husband and my 2 kids...WE FIT!!

Y'all stay safe! We're gonna try to ;)

Gatlinburg, 2013

In June, the 4 of us took a family vacation to Gatlinburg, Tennessee with my parents, 2 brothers, 2 sisters-in law, 2 nephews, and 1 niece. We stayed in a 4 bedroom condo that had an indoor/outdoor waterpark. This is one of my boys favorite places to vacation because when we aren't doing something in town, there's always a waterpark to play in.

Gotta love a waterpark snack bar!

The pic on the left is my boys standing in about the same place, one year ago. Sigh...

Breakfast! I loved our condo and our nice big round table!

This pic was taken on our balcony on Father's Day. Love these 2 men.

 

We also spent quite a bit of time geocaching during this trip. We have been geocaching for a few years now, and it's something that we all like to do. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can click here to see a post I did explaining what it is. Geocaches can be hidden anywhere, but most of the ones we found in Gatlinburg were in parking lot light posts.

We went to a few shows, one of which my dad was taken up on stage and sat there while 2 women sang the song 'Grandpa' to him. Let's just say I couldn't leave there that night until I had a DVD of the show in my hand. Good times.

Luke, Aaron, Brandon, Kaulyn, and Austin...ready for a show!

 

Before the show started, the kids got my phone and took about 125 pics of themselves.

 

We spent one day at Dollywood. Kind of like Hollywood, except not at all. I'm not really of fan of amusement parks because it is not the type of thing that I am 'amused' by in the least, but it was something that the kids really wanted to do, so we gave in. But the weather was perfect and it was nice to just spend the time together with no worries.

The ferris wheel. One of the few rides that doesn't nauseate me.

Craig, Rob, and Austin on the water ride.

 

Aaron, Kaulyn, and Austin. This rides makes me want to throw up just watching it.

 

Kaulyn, Kassie, and Aaron....thrill-seekers.

 

Craig, Kassie, Kaulyn, and Austin

On Tuesday, our group went up to Ashville to visit a mansion and also got to see Jennifer (who was working near there). Robbie and I stayed at the condo that day because I had a lot of school work I needed to get done. Robbie and I left on Thursday to come back home because he had to work Friday and I had class in Little Rock that Saturday, but the boys stayed up there a few days with my parents and got to go to Ripley's Believe It or Not and some sort of tomb that they also seemed to enjoy.

Why does he look 18!?

 

We love you, Gatlinburg....thanks for the memories!