First Day of 1st and 3rd :)

1st and 3rd grade, oh my! The girls got up pretty easily, and they seemed excited about school. Brooke and Cory were also up, so we took some pictures and headed to the bus stop with the whole family. They jumped right on the bus and took off for their first day. Cory, Brooke, and I were left to wave goodbye to 2/5 of the family :) Brooke and I met Dana for lunch to give ourselves something to do, and we cooked the girls' cakes after that. Then, we just waited until that big yellow bus would bring them home!

The traditional grade level cake pieces :)

Waiting patiently for her buddies to come home!

They are home!!!

They decorated their cake pieces, and we chatted about their days. They didn't have much too say except that the day was good. Both were a little bummed out that they weren't with their good friends in their homerooms or in their large groups, but they were alright. Kacy did say that her table was "cuckoo" and "chatterboxes". Adilyn seemed to feel good about everything. Looking forward to another great year!

I took this picture of Brooke as she was bored and watching tv all alone. She asked me about 5 times, "Where are Adilyn and Kacy?" Poor last child...

Last SeaWorld Trip of the Summer

Because I wanted to make sure that we got our money's worth of our "free" passes for SeaWorld, we decided to go one more time. I didn't think it would be too busy since it was the weekend before school started, but I was wrong. Very, very wrong. It was crazy busy! Once we saw the line to get into the parking lot, I really wanted to just u-turn and head home, but after 3 hours in the car I figured we would give it a try. We survived and rode a couple water slides, played in the lazy river, and finally got to see the big Shamu show. The girls were troopers and didn't complain about the crowds or the heat too much. We also saw a cute sea lion show, and we rode some other little kid rides. At least we got out of the house for one more summer adventure (along with thousands of other people)!

End of Summer Super Fun Week!!!

Summer is almost over...noooooo!!!! Because we don't want to believe that it's almost time to get back to homework, waking up early, and having the monotony of the daily routine we always have an exciting week to end summer! We have had so much fun this summer, and I don't want it to be over! Of course, the fighting and the constant bickering is annoying, but in the end - being together and having so many fun adventures is definitely worth enduring the sibling rivalry of summertime
Monday - Galveston! I wanted to go for the day, but I had a lot of work to do. I thought we weren't going to go at all, but then Cory was done with work around 3pm. He was bored, we were bored, so we went down for an evening beach trip. I love sunsets at the beach!
Tuesday - I had a school outing at the Houston Museum of Natural Science in Sugarland, so the girls and I headed down to check it out. It was super tiny, but we still had fun. They had a cool little planetarium dome for movies and some fluorescent minerals. 
Wednesday - Astros game!!! It was free kids' tickets and $1 hot dog nights, so we figured we would go down one more time.
Thursday - Peter Piper Pizza for lunch. The girls have been bugging me to go back down to Peter Piper Pizza, so we headed that way for one more afternoon fun. Kacy was the big winner when she got 250 tickets on one game!

Michigan - Favorite Moments

There were many memorable moments of our family vacation. There were, as always, some annoying and frustrating parts as well. For the most part though, everything was awesome. Since I am always real, and I always like to remember the good and bad I will share the best moments and the most annoying :)
Let's start with the annoying first:
*We had a minivan, which was amazing. We had room to spread out, there was a DVD player, we could take Mom and Brandon with us, and it was very comfortable. The negatives were the persistent fights over the pushing of the buttons for the automatic doors. Oh my goodness, every single time we got in the stupid van they were fighting about who got to close the door. Kacy also loved to bug Adilyn with the armrests. Kacy sat in the back seat and would constantly kick the armrests down.
*The big girls had to share a bed in the creek house, and the last two nights they fought for about 30 minutes before going to bed about them in their space or kicking them. Thank goodness they would finally pass out after a while!
Now the favorites:
Of course, the wedding reception and the dancing was a lot of fun for everyone! One of my favorite moments was when I was holding Brooke and dancing with her. She wanted to go right by the DJ because she loved the disco lights. I tried to leave, and she kept saying, "Right up front, Mama, I want to dance right up front!" All the girls danced the whole night! Another favorite moment was when all the cousins got together for a group picture. We are never all together, and it was a sweet moment.

Another favorite was playing volleyball on Frankfort Beach and jumping off the pier into Lake Michigan! We met up with the family on the beach, and we decided to play some volleyball. I didn't think we were going to play a real game, but we did. It was so much fun! We played three games, and unfortunately the Texas/New Hampshire team got beat by the Michigan people. So sad! Adilyn joined us for a couple games, and she didn't fantastic. I wasn't sure how she would do playing with all the adults, but she made me proud! Luckily, none of us out of shape old people got injured! After playing for about an hour, we were pretty hot, sweaty, and sandy. A lot of them were going to jump of the pier. I hadn't worn my bathing suit because I wanted to use that as an excuse to not have to get into the ice cold water of the lake. After the game, I regretted that decision because I was so hot! I decided to jump right in the lake with my clothes on anyway. Kacy even joined in on the jump. I was so amazed that she was brave enough to do it!