First Soccer Practice!

Pre-K AND her first ever soccer practice all in one week?! Too much for this momma to handle!!!

Rhyan's soccer practices were scheduled for Thursday evenings. The timing was pretty perfect because Thursdays are the end of the week for us... No work for me on Friday and no school for Rhyan! So a little later evening on Tursdays worked out great!

I took Rhyan to her first practice while Jeff kept our sick Mack at home for a normal bedtime and meds.
Coach Henry was awesome! His family is new to the area and he is a pharmacology professor at UGA! Such a nice family!!! He had never coached soccer before and was a little worried about that, but all of us parents assured him that we dont expect our kids to be molded into professionals in U6 soccer :-)

Archer soccer is still a fairly new recreational league so they were being creative with "practice fields". Our team practiced in the green space BETWEEN two softball fields! It honestly worked out fine as there is plenty of space!

Warm up's!

Practicing their "dribbling". The only real goals at U6 are to keep the ball in play and try to get it to the right goal. But they also worked on (as the season progressed) dribbling the ball (which just means not kicking it hard... running and just keeping the ball with you) and eventually passing to a team mate.

This is SUCH a fun picture to me!  She was SO happy and having such a BLAST!

I had the best time watching Rhyan! She was such a good listener and obeyed very well. She took turns like a pro and even shared her pink ball that she brought with her. Coach Henry was SO patient with the kids and did a great job wrangling them all by himself (with NO assistant!). She was READY for her first game!

Rhyan: Starting Pre-K

Can I just take a moment and tear up about the fact that my baby girl is old enough to be in PRE-K?! I know, I'll say that every year, with every new milestone. But this is the first big one, so it felt pretty big! I mean, our life went from completely school free with no real schedule to keeping with a daily schedule of school! It felt like a bigger deal than it sounds when I type it :-)

I had gone to orientation for her school a couple of weeks prior and Mrs Stacy, her teacher, had given us a packet. In the packet, she has asked the parents to take a picture of the kids doing something to get ready for school the night before the first day. I asked Rhyan what she wanted to do and she said "read some books!". She loves her big picture storybook bible so that was the one she chose!

We had to send in the picture on the first day so the kids could introduce themselves and share how they got ready for school :-)

While Rhyan was getting ready for school, Mack was living life on his nebulizer :-( Poor guy!

Her first morning of school was Tuesday, September 3rd. I took the day off. I NEVER take days off. Ever. But I just had to be there to take her to her first day of school and pick her up!

I also made sure she got to pick her breakfast... pancakes "like a 4, mommy, cause I'm 4!", sausage and a banana were her pick, with milk, of course. Gotta make sure she was going on a full tummy!

She eats lunch at school each day and one of the BIG things Mrs Stacy said each kid needed to work on before starting school was being able to be independent at lunch time. That means being able to open your own lunch box, open your foods, clean up after yourself and access your drinks. Some things can be hard (like applesauce) and I honestly didnt know if she could do it all so we did several trial runs and she opened EVERYTHING herself and cleaned up after herself nicely! Made me super proud!

Of course we had to do a "1st day of pre-k" pic. I thought it would be cute to use cute paper for her sign, but then the ink didnt show up so well! :-( You can click to enlarge the pic. And btw, SHE chose how she wanted her hair done and chose her bows.

Her sign says: Rhyans First day of PreK

9/3/13

Hebron Christian Academy

When I grow up I want to be: A princess named Ariel!

LOVE this pic of my baby girl!

She had to take a backpack with her lunchbox in it, a change of weather appropriate clothing and wear her fish tag around her neck for the carpool workers to help her find the right class. I told her all about how I would have to drop her off and couldnt walk her in and she was seriously fine with it! She said "i wont cry! i'm excited! you dont cry mommy". Bless her heart :-)

So Mack and I had the day (well, 4 hours) to OURSELVES! I dont think I've ever had JUST Mack... I learned that day that he is a totally different kid when he has me to himself. I'll just say, I am now a bit concerned about the jealousy he shows when Rhyan is around. I never realized it was jealousy, but he is a MAMA's boy! Wow! He was thrilled to have me all to himself all day!

Here came Rhyan to be picked up in the car riders line! (EVERYONE has to carpool, btw)

 

 

Her first words when she got in the car were "that was FUN Mommy! I want to go back tomorrow!"

Those words made my day!!!

I asked all about her day and she was sure to tell me that it was great and that she couldnt wait to tell me all about it but that we would talk after Mack went down for his nap.Yes, she really said that.

So after we got home and Mack went down for nap, I told her I wanted to know everything. I about died at her response! "Mommy, I want to hear ALL about YOUR day with Mack, first!". I told her we went and got his hair cut. Historically, this has been a tragic event for Mack so she asked if he cried. I told her that he did SO well and she said "Oh mommy! Did you give him a sucker? He deserved a sucker for no crying!" followed by "When he wakes up from nap I'm going to say 'Mack! i'm SO proud of you for not crying and getting your hair cut! You are such a big boy".

I'm telling you, she's made to be a "mama" of some sorts :-)

She did tell me that she loves Mrs Stacy and Mrs Amy. That she did NOT make any friends because they are too busy and you are supposed to be a good listener and not talk. That they went to the gym because the playground is not finished and that they did music time and read a book. And that she wanted to go back tomorrow :-)

Wow, what a GREAT start! We have been so blessed by Rhyan's love of pre-k and Hebron preschool and the fabulous program they put together! We are off and running!!!

Labor Day Weekend!

We decided to head up to the mountain house with Jeff's family for Labor Day weekend this year! I was so glad we did for several reasons, one of which being that it was the last weekend before Rhyan started PRE-K! And I was thrilled to soak up the entire weekend together as a family :-)

We headed up Friday evening after naps. We decided to do sleeping arrangements a bit differently this time and put mack in one room, Rhyan in the other, and Jeff and I slept in the downstairs living room by pushing two twin size cots together. It was an arrangement that we all actually preferred! Usually Rhyan sleeps in the living room but then we have to be super quiet when we get ready for bed or if we wake up before her!

She was excited to be sleeping in the big girl room! (on a KING bed!)

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Since the 4th of July was such a "washout" (literally), we were also pretty excited when Sky Valley decided to reschedule their fireworks to  Labor Day weekend! We decided it would be so fun to take the kids!

Unfortunately, with Mack being sick, we just didnt think it was wise to take him. I hated for him to miss it, BUT, he is only 2yrs old and while we can play around with bedtime a little bit, fireworks dont even start till after 9pm. So it was probably best that we let him stay back with Jeffs parents.

SkyValley did their traditional pancake breakfast Saturday morning, which we had a great time attending! And I just have to mention that there was a lady with about a 9 month old boy sitting behind us and he kept screaming bloody murder (not upset, just screaming). She turned and apologized to us and I just smiled and told her "you dont even know. it doesnt bother me at all... i'm smiling b/c i'm just happy its not my son!" :-)

That night, Highlands put on their fireworks show, so we decided to meet up with my best friend from hygiene school, Cara, and her family (they live in Franklin, NC, just about 20 min from Highlands) for dinner and to watch the show! We had a GREAT time visiting and oh my, dinner was delish! It was at a grocery store with a restaurant inside. Called Mountain Fresh (i think?!). So good!

Cara and Josh have 3 kids and decided to leave their son back, too. So it was fun to just have our older ones (who are all girls) hanging out! It seemed to take forever for it to start, but it was fun hanging out and catching up. Jeff and Josh always seem to get along great, also, which makes hanging out so FUN!

We had a great time just hanging around the house on Sunday... playing and chasing each other.

And then in the afternoon, we decided to go exploring! Of course, Mack needed his "lightenin queen" hat and sunglasses to explore. Duh!

We headed down to the waterfall, which the kids thought was GREAT! It was a beautiful day, so of course, i brought along my camera and tried to get a few pics. Jeff was thrilled ;-)

Jeff let the kids take off their shoes and walk around in the water, which was COLD! I dont see how they tolerated it for so long, but they stayed in and played and threw rocks for about 15 minutes! CRAZY!

Btw, Jeff had decided to shave his head that weekend. I about died. Thankfully, he's let it grow back. Shew.

We also decided to go on a walk! It really was pretty fun! We made a game out of seeing if we could find different items (squirrel, bird, flower, moss, butterfly... what was funny is that some of those things the kids found but they were STATUES! ha!)

Look at this amazing view we enjoyed on our walk! That house is in a GREAT spot!

It was such a lovely weekend. The weather was nice! The only thing that was difficult is that we were in the midst of potty training Mack...
He had shown interest a week prior and I had started working with him. Long story short, as long as I took him once an hour, he stayed dry! Even on the drive up there, he stayed dry! So we only brought night time diapers (which we put on him only at night b/c he was staying dry at nap too!) and even one morning he woke up dry!
However, we had started him on steriods on Friday for his bronchitis and what I didnt realize is that they can make you very thirsty. So by saturday morning, he was drinking 2 cups of water every couple of hours! PLUS the cup of milk he had with breakfast. So he started going through clothes like crazy. :-( We ended up having to go out and buy him some diapers b/c he couldnt stay dry at all! I felt badly b/c he had made SUCH great progress... completely dry for an entire week! But thats what the prednisolone did :-(

Unfortunately, we have not been able to re-capture the success that we once had. I'll probably try again in March or so. I really think that he's mastered being able to go on command, but he doesnt recognize the pressure and feeling of needing to go until its too late if we dont take him on schedule. And I dont want to have to take any kid to the potty on schedule. Not at his age, anyways (at that point he was barely 2). So we will wok on it again, when we all have the patience and when Mack can stay healthy enough to stay off of steroids! (he's been on them 3 times since September!)

But overall, great weekend full of fun and family!

Influencers Conference

I've been so blessed to have been a part of Bethlehem Church as a whole... but one of my favorite things is that I get to serve on the worship team! With some incredible people! Singers, members of the band, lighting/tech crew, sound crew, and of course our fabulous leader, Joel Goddard! We are BLESSED with some serious amounts of talent!

At the end of August, Joel set us all up to go to the Influencers Conference put on by Influencers church  based out of Australia. Jesus Culture led worship for the weekend so you know there was great music :-)

The conference was Thursday-Saturday. I knew ahead of time that I wouldnt be able to go to Friday evening or Saturday morning but planned to go to Thursday evening and Friday morning!

I met up with the crew (went from work) Thursday night! And got to sit next to these lovely ladies!

As it turned out, Mack ended up getting sick. I was literally ON MY WAY to the conference Friday morning while my mom kept the kids when the Dr's office returned my call telling me that their only opening that day was in 20 minutes! So I turned around immediately and grabbed mack and headed to the Dr and called Joel on my way to let him know...

I was sad to have missed out on Friday, but as it turned out, my baby boy had bronchitis and an ear infection. And I was very glad I took him as we were heading out of town to go to the mountain house for Labor Day Weekend!

But really, time spent OUTSIDE of church is probably the best way to really get to know the people you serve with! This was no different! I had so much fun getting to hang out with Julie and Kimberly! And soaking up some Jesus Culture wasnt that bad, either ;-)