2nd Grade Christmas Party

The second grade collected toys for CASA and took them to Jerry’s Chevrolet.  They sang Christmas carols and had cookies and hot chocolate.  Then they came back to the school to have their party.

We had a good time.  I think we are all ready for the break.

 

The boys with their teacher, Mrs. Westmoreland.  We really like her, a lot.  I cannot say enough about how much I really like her.  Keep in mind, when we left Beck, the boys had teachers that we specifically placed.  So, Hagen had his teacher from Kindergarten that had moved to 2nd.  He had a teacher that knew him, knew him very well. 

Mason had a teacher that he had build a relationship with over the course of first grade.  Some crazy bond that they created and she personally picked him.  She wanted him in her class and made sure he was in there… and he was.  He loved her.  Yes, I ripped him away from that.  Mom guilt.  But, I have met Mrs. West four times now and each time, I can’t speak enough about how much I like her.  I think for a transition year for them, she is great.  Perfect. 

So, how are the boys adjusting?  It is hard.  Harder than I thought.  I tried to use Jeremy’s analogy of the Band-Aid.  We ripped it off and it hurt, but I was ready for it to heal.  Is it healed, nope.  It still hurts.  The boys still miss their friends.  We miss our friends.  We miss knowing everyone.  We miss going to the school party and knowing everyone.  Hey, I miss going to the boys’ school and the school secretary knows not only me but each of my kids’ names.  It’s hard.  It’s harder than I thought. 

Here are the boys with a few kids from the party.

We are adjusting.  We are settling in.  It is taking time.  Some days are great, others are hard.  Would we do it again?  Yes.  Without a doubt, we see the big picture.  We see what we did and why.  It’s just hard getting 7 year olds to see the big picture, too.  Thanks for your prayers as we continue to adjust. 

Hope’s Landing

We went to Arkansas for our annual Christmas Trip.  While there, Grammy took us to a place that helps children with disabilities.  They use horses for some of their therapies.  We were able to meet some of the horses.

 

We also met Santa.

Polar Express Field Trip

The boys did the Polar Express Train Ride into the Stockyards.  Funny enough, the boys did this exact field trip in 1st grade, but it was in Grapevine (same train, Santa, etc.).  But, they still had fun.

Their teacher sent pictures from the trip.

Sweet boys!

 

Perk of the Job

During finals week, I have conferences set up with my students.  Mason ran a fever one night and I think he was fine, but we worried about letting him to to school and getting sick there.  So, I took him to school with me.  While I was conferencing, he went to the computer lab room connected to my office.  I think he had way more fun doing this than being at school. 

Oh well, a perk of my job being able to spend the day with this sweet boy instead of having to take the day off or send him to school.

Brock Basketball

Thanks again to my friend, Sheryl.  Since she lived here already, she was able to get the information about the basketball team before we even moved here.  So, by the time we moved here they were already on a team and were able to start practicing immediately.

It also helped because two kids on their basketball team were also in their class. 

I also thought their coach was really nice and worked well with the boys (I can’t imagine coaching 1st and 2nd grade basketball!)

They also had a great referee for each of the games.  He was wonderful.

The boys’ season wasn’t the greatest, but they loved it!  Basketball, again, seems to be the favorite sport.

 

Christmas Decorations

After the Thanksgiving celebrations, we talked Jeremy into helping us put up Christmas decorations.

We even talked him into Christmas lights outside.  I honestly didn’t think it looked too high – until I tried to help and about half way up the ladder, I discovered just how high it was.  So, I stopped and only encouraged.

But, we thought he did a great job! 

(That rabbit looking thing in the front yard is a deer!)

Family Pictures and Thanksgiving

Since we were now close to family, we hosted for the first year.  So fun being able to host! 

Thanksgiving turned out great!  I did not get a picture of everyone.  Oops.

Gran’s Birthday

We made Gran her must have chocolate pie for her birthday.

I find it funny that for Gran’s birthday, she seems to be singing the loudest!  Ha!

My Best Friend

Going through pictures and found this one from our night out in November.  Love her!

80s Night

Our good friends from TC invited us out for a night of 80s.  Jeremy is a huge fan of 80s music, so he was very excited!

Silly boy, having too much fun!

Sweet friends!  Glad to know even with us moving, we will still make it a point to get together.

Halloween

Thankfully, we have a friend that already lives in Brock near our neighborhood.  Her neighborhood does a big get together for Halloween that includes a cook out and trick or treating.  Since we had just moved in, I really quickly came up with the football players idea.

We went with Sheryl and her kids to the party.

October Wrap Up and Moving

The day the movers came, I took Izzie and a few breakable things we would rather move instead of the movers.  I sent this picture to a friend to show her Izzie.  (She is a dog-lover.)

Her husband sent back a message saying there is still so much room left in that vehicle.  So, to be funny, that evening we loaded down the car and took a load that wasn’t taken by the movers.  Here is a picture I sent back and said better?

He wrote back and said, clearly you have never played Tetris!  Ha ha ha!!

This was our first house guest!  EEEEKKKK!  Thankfully, I found it dead and our pest control company was out the next day!

I did not miss this site on my way to work or home!  Yea for no traffic work days!!

And… this was our view from our back porch.  Doing homework on the back porch was oh so fun.  If you can spot Hagen, he is close to the end of our property line.  I love the red barn in the distance.

10 Years Married

We were set up through mutual friends.  A complete blind date when I opened my door.   Who could have imagined 10 years later, here we are.  I love him more than I did when I married him, more than I did last month and I’m sure I’ll love him more next month.  I can’t imagine my life without him.  I know he feels the same. 

Here we are about to go out on our date to celebrate 10 years together.  He wouldn’t tell me where we were going.  I took this picture and honestly, he looks pretty much like he did when he picked me up in August of 2003.

He took me to Lonesome Dove.  I love this restaurant.  It is a Tim Love restaurant and I am a huge fan of his restaurants.  This is where we had our rehearsal dinner. 

See, who couldn’t love him more?  He knows me so well. 

After dinner, we ran into these two.  Angie and Matt (Nate’s parents)…. they share the same anniversary – same year and everything!  So fun!

Wrapping up a few loose ends

As we ended our time in Trophy Club, we found how hard it was going to be.  We had wonderful coaches.  Hagen and Mason had the same soccer coach from the age of 3.  He was a wonderful coach and taught the boys amazing soccer strategies.  He is probably the single reason why Hagen likes soccer so much.  (I couldn’t find a recent picture of just the boys with Coach Randy.

 

We also have an amazing baseball coach, Coach Shane, again the same coach since the boys started playing baseball.  He was so patient and helped the boys with their batting. 

 

The boys also had their best friends from kindergarten.  Hagen made fast friends with Henri when he broke his glasses the first week of kindergarten!  EEK!  But, this must have been a bonding experience, because as it turned out, Hagen and Henri became very good friends. 

Mason and Nate became very good friends in Kindergarten.  They continued being great friends even though in 1st and 2nd grade they were not in class again. 

They even had their first sleep overs with these guys.  Such good friends.  Would the boys ever find friends like the ones they already had?

Then we had to think about all our wonderful friends we have made.  I don’t have pictures of them all, but I know some of the girls have helped me.  I can’t think of the number of times I called Kelly asking what Henri had in his folder for his homework.  Or the times I called Angie asking if she understood was Nate’s homework was…

But here we were, selling the fort.  Packing up our life in boxes.