Cadence's Guitar Club Concert

Did I mention how much I love the schools here?  Cadence's school has free extra curricular activities after school to keep kids out of trouble.  Cadence found out about their guitar club & couldn't wait to join.  She got her new guitar for Christmas this year & needed to learn how to play it.  The guitar club was perfect for her.  She worked really hard for 3 months to learn what the rest of the kids had learned over 9 months.  She's a total natural (surprise, surprise) & learns very quickly.

I was SO proud of her.

She looked so beautiful on stage.  She was SO excited to show us what she had learned.  They played four songs & she did fantastic.

Cadence's best friend, Victoria, is a part of the guitar club as well.  She just lives up the street from us & attends church with us as well.  We love her sweet family.  It was really fun seeing them perform side by side.  Best Friends Forever.

THAT'S MY GIRL!!!

A Visit From Justin

My brother works for Vivint (the security system & home automation company).  He works all their finance for them & is really high up in the company.  He's always going on business golf trips, fun vacations, & TONS of business trips across the country.  I never in my wildest dreams thought he'd ever come anywhere near me.

Well, I got a text from him saying he'd be in Virginia Beach for 24 hours.  Of course he'd be in meetings most of the time, but MAYBE we could somehow manage to see each other for a few minutes. . . at least long enough for him to meet his new nephew.

His schedule was pretty tight & we didn't know how we'd manage since VA Beach is about an hour away until he got his actual schedule & he realized he'd be in a town called Newport News instead of VA Beach.  I just about DIED.  Newport News is 10 minutes from my house!!!  I was SO excited.

So, Wednesday night after Activity Days, I raced over to the Olive Garden there in Newport News with Trek & Canyon (Oma stayed at home with the older kids since it was past bed time).  I got to visit with my baby brother for a good half hour.  It was WONDERFUL.  I miss my family SO much.  Justin & I hardly ever get to see each other so this was heaven for me.  I was SO happy he got to see Canyon & I was just happy to be with him for 30 minutes.

Thank you Justin for making time for your big sister.  It meant the world to me.

Smithfield with Oma

I absolutely love the area we live in.  Cadence goes to school in a small town called Smithfield.  You've all heard of Smithfield because they're known for their ham, pork, & bacon.  YUM.

I love old town Smithfield.  All the old colonial houses from a hundred plus years ago still line Main St. & they are filled with fun shops, bakeries, & other fun things.  I wanted to take Oma out there for an afternoon of fun with the kids.

All around town they had statues of the founding fathers of our country.  The kids thought they were SO cool so we HAD to take pictures with them.

Smithfield is known for it's pork, especially ham.  All around Smithfield they have beautifully painted pigs.  My kids get a kick out of finding the pigs.  We make it a game of hide & seek & they love it.

Oma LOVES Christmas stores so I took her to the Smithfield Christmas Store to buy some ornaments for her ginormous Christmas tree.  Craiger made friends with the elf by the front door.  He just wanted to hang out with him the entire time Oma shopped.  It cracked me up.

And my very favorite place in Smithfield is the Ice Cream Parlor.  It's the cutest old time ice cream shop ever.  I like to take the kids there for ice cream cones on hot afternoons.  It's got a fun old town feel & everybody knows everybody there.  We love it.  The kids had a blast.

 

Random Fun

I love how Bladen insists that he's too big for naps.  I find him in the craziest positions sound asleep these days.  What a cutie.

Canyon is a sleepy head

The girls absolutely LOVE baking with Oma.  For Activity Days they made some vanilla cream filled chocolate cupcakes.  They had a blast.

Oma also made homemade Wendy's Frosty's for us.  I think the boys liked them . . . 

A LOT.

Canyon keeps getting bigger & bigger.  He's already grown out of his newborn clothes.  It's so sad how fast they grow.  He's getting cuter & cuter every day now.  I just love this kid to death.

More Oma Fun

Oma gave the kids these really neat window markers.  They can draw all over our windows & wash it off super easy with Windex.  They are GREAT for keeping the kids busy.  

Even I had fun playing with them.

She also brought them some fun glow in the dark glasses.  They got a kick out of these.

On Sunday we took Oma to the lake to feed the ducks for our weekly Sunday walk.  Oma loves to feed the ducks.  We loved sharing that with her.

Dissecting Owl Pellets

Cadence tested & made it into the SEARCH program at her school this year.  SEARCH is the "gifted" program & we are SO proud of her for her accomplishments.  She is such a smart little girl & it makes me happy that we have her in a school that recognizes her abilities & tries to push her so she can learn & grow at HER pace.

Her SEARCH teacher emailed me these pictures last week.  In May the gifted students had the opportunity to dissect OWL PELLETS at school.  Basically, they got to cut open owl throw up . . . SO EXCITING & SO GROSS.  She was SO excited about it.

She got partnered up with a boy who did NOT want to touch anything.  He was SO grossed out by the whole idea of owl throw up that poor Cadence did most of the touching.  She loved it though.  She found an entire mouse skeleton inside her owl pellet & had a blast piecing the bones back together again.  Science has always fascinated her.

I think the thing that made me laugh the most about Cadence dissecting owl pellets was that I did

THE EXACT SAME THING

when I was her age.  I was in 5th grade instead of 4th, but I was 10 years old just like she was.  I also was partnered with a boy, but luckily my partner was all about touching the owl pellet.  He cut it apart, & my job was to piece our skeleton back together.  We also got a mouse skeleton in our pellet.  I found this picture in my journal from when I was 10.  I couldn't help but put it on this blog entry.  It's amazing how I remember that day like it was yesterday & now I have a DAUGHTER doing the same thing.  It's crazy how fast time flies.

Swimming Fun

The first place we took Oma after she arrived in VA was our swimming pool here in Eagle Harbor.  I love the cute little pool they have here.  They have a splash pad, a kids' pool with sprinklers & a slide, a kids pool (2-3 ft deep) & of course the big pool for grown ups & seasoned swimmers.  The pools are by our lake & our clubhouse.  (Have I mentioned how much I love where we live?)

We pretty much stuck to the kids' play area since we have KIDS.  Boy did they have fun.  Cadence & Lorien swam in the big pool a little bit because they're pretty good at swimming, but the little ones LOVED the slide & sprinklers.

Because Canyon was barely a month old, I wasn't allowed to swim 

(I had to wait a full 6 weeks for my body to fully recover before swimming.)

So I hung out with my little guy in the shade & watched everyone play in the water.  It was HOT & the water looked SO NICE.  I was a little jealous I couldn't get in & play too.

We had a blast with Oma.  We hope she comes back soon so we can swim with her again.