First Vacation of the Summer...

Our first vacation of the summer is being coupled with Marty's conference for work in San Jose, CA. Since San Jose was home for us 11 years ago, we decided to head out a few days early and catch some of the places we remember visiting long ago. We flew into San Jose and were so excited to be back near the mountain and welcomed the cooler air in California. First stop for vacation... Target apparently! Most of our travel within the US is to Wisconsin where my parents keep car seats for the kiddos. Totally forgot to bring car seats out here and it was somewhat a necessity. It was about half the cost to purchase the car seats than it was to rent them so off to Target we went to pick up a couple of car seats and a few other random things while we were there! Then it was off to San Francisco where the air temperature just got cooler....

Addicted to Wii...

Saying that Drew loves the Wii is somewhat of an understatement at times. He usually goes in waves where he is addicted to a game on the Wii and wants to play the minute he walks into the house. This was during one of those waves where he wanted to play from morning til night. He was on the Mario Sports Mix kick and he totally was playing this in his sleep. This picture does not do justice the buttons and movements he was still making with the remote after he drifted off to sleep.

Graduation...

It's hard to believe that day has already come and gone. Drew had his graduation ceremony yesterday morning and tomorrow will mark his very last day of preschool. The next time he enters his classroom he will be a Kindergartener... oh my!!!!

The performances were amazing -- you could tell how hard they had worked to sing all their songs perfectly. Drew did AMAZING! I held it together the majority of the time but when the teachers talk about how much they will miss the kids... it got to me as I will be there tomorrow!

So here's to closing the preschool chapter of our lives...

Drew getting his certificate from Ms. Natalie and Ms. Cathy...
Taking a picture with Madi after the ceremony.

With Miss Sharon -- the sweetest and best 4 year old teacher EVER!!!

Playing favorites...

So my kiddos definitely have their favorite things...

For Drew it is hands down baseball... Play catch with him, pitch to him, just give him a glove, ball and bat and he is a happy boy. Good thing it is crazy spring baseball season and he has plenty of practice at home and usually one or more games a week to him busy.

As for watching baseball - well... he takes after his daddy which means he is usually yelling in frustration at the TV telling the Brew Crew that he can't watch anymore and then proceeds to ask to play Wii instead. Which our game of the week is Super Mario Sluggers -- Imagine that... more baseball! Love the passion!

Playing for fun with his little bat and bouncy ball...

This has to be one of my favorite pictures of Drew ever... it reminds me so much of what this precious boy is all about lately!

And my sweet Madi... what can I say... She LOVES to play school ALL... THE... TIME and the apple does not fall far from the tree. I spent countless hours playing school when I was her age and all through my elementary school years. I had textbooks and teacher guides from teachers that I would help at school... So when we checked Madi's teacher's auctions at the carnival and saw that she had offered up student teacher for the day one little girl's dream day at school was not far off as her daddy was about to pay whatever he needed to and would have done just about anything to give her that opportunity. What an awesome daddy?!?! So Thursday April 28th has been on Madi's radar since the minute she found out she would be student teaching that day! She was so excited she woke up an hour early and couldn't sleep. She cheerily got in the car and couldn't wait to get to school. Her teacher is SO amazing and set out this incredibly special day with presents at the end to boot. My sweet Madi walked out of that school with the biggest smile I have seen in a long time and declared that was the best day ever -- even ranking it above spending her 6th birthday at DisneyWorld being spoiled endlessly! That's pretty big stuff!!!

Here is Madi grading morning work...

Mrs. Maggart supplied her with a clipboard to walk around the room with and check in on all of her students.

Mrs. Maggart also had her own special desk set up for the day

Her clipboards with her daily plan and checklists... oh how Madi loves a checklist.


Her very own reading group...

Reading a chapter of their book to the class at the end of the day.

Top that off with getting to bring two friends to the classroom for lunch and the bag full of goodies from Mrs. Maggart... she had one incredible day!

My sweet boy...

So I owe these pictures to Katie... and not due to my lack of taking pictures but due to scorebook duties! Thanks for snapping these pictures of Drew for me Katie -- they turned out way better than if I would have taken them!

Spring Break

So I vowed this year I would be better about taking pictures of everything and anything! Do you think that has happened??? Ummm NO! Needless to say my camera batteries (yes I have a backup) had been dead for a month and I decided to charge them when I was packing to head back home from Spring Break. Seriously a month and not a single picture snapped! Despite my lack of pictures... I still wanted to document our Spring Break as I like the blog to look back and remember funny stories and things we did that I tend to eventually forget! So here is my photo-less Spring Break post! Spring Break this year was... eventful! We decided to drive to Wisconsin... we left Saturday evening about 45 minutes later than anticipated... not bad considering who we are talking about and I think we remembered just about everything! Yay Me! The time changed over night -- Marty was really ecstatic about losing another hour of sleep on top of the driving hours! :) The drive took 17 hours and 15 minutes which was actually one of our better times! Needless to say when we were about 10 minutes from the Wisconsin border we spotted trouble! White and fluffy trouble -- SNOW! Seriously -- it was spring break -- it was supposed to be springy. It doesn't matter when we head to Wisconsin lately... Fall, Spring or Winter -- there seems to be snow! Watch out 4th of July -- it has happened before and it is bound to happen again and we seem to bring out the best of it! :) Though the snow didn't cause any driving complication, it was still snow and it was still COLD outside! I refused to bring winter coats on a Spring Break trip so we toughed it out for the first couple of cold days and then it wasn't too bad but I have to say that snow never melted the whole week. Arrived at my parent's house around lunch time and settled in, ate and then got ready to go to my sister's new house. It was so fun seeing their new house. When it was time to head out, we loaded up the van... grandma forgot her purse... oh grandma -- so we turned around. No more than 2 blocks back away from their house and less than 12 hours in the glorious state of Wisconsin -- our windshield cracked! Agh... Now granted it had a little help -- it had been chipped for awhile but seriously! So now the van needed a new windshield... that was a work in progress over the next couple of days but we managed to get it done pretty painlessly! The last few days of our trip were spent up in the Wisconsin Dells. Water park, chlorine, hot tub, chlorine, lily pads that tore up Madi's hands, chlorine, playing cards til the wee hours of the morning, shuttles, more water parks, chlorine, waterslides and chlorine... By the way did I mention chlorine??? They go a little overboard with the chlorine there. A few days full of fun later... Madi was covered in scrapes, broken blisters and bruises, we were all exhausted and it was time to hit the road back to my parent's house. One last Friday fish fry, tearful goodbyes and we were back on the road. Exactly 17 hours and 15 minutes later... we arrived back in the sunny 80 degree Texas weather and collapsed! Then Sunday came! :)

Spring is here and so is BASEBALL...

Baseball season officially started this weekend with opening ceremonies and the first game. This is the only picture I have of Drew before his game as I managed to acquire the official scorebook keeper job for our team! Hopefully... I will manage to get some pictures at some point! Drew had a great first game... getting on base for both of his hits and batting in a run! Yay Drew! So for now GO GIANTS (the RRYBL ones -- not the other ones)!!!!