Drew's 10th Birthday Party

Peyton in Pre-school

Can you believe it? My little 3 and a half year old is heading to pre-school in less than 2 weeks. He is going to a private pre-school and it's just three days a week. He is so excited about going to school like Drew! I am excited and sad all at the same time. Though it will give me some nice alone time with Zion. Zion has never gotten to have me by himself, so this will be exciting.

Visit with Grammy and Poppa

Well, since my grandparents have been spending so much time in MA with my great-aunt and great-grandmother (who have been ill), it has been quite a while since I have seen them. Normally I see Grammy and Poppa about 5-6 times a year, but I hadn't seen them since March, and in March it was only for the three days that I drove to MA for. So, I decided to surprise them a few weekends ago and take Peyton and Zion (Drew wasn't with us that weekend) and go visit for a few days. We had a great time, besides the fact that it took 6 hours to get there when it should have only been 3 and a half. Traffic was terrible.

They were VERY surprised and happy, and even more surprising Peyton and Zion did pretty well in a house FULL of "may nots."

Here is a picture of the boys with their great-grammy and poppa.

Pool Days

Yep, it's Zion. Who else smiles like that?


The kids have really been having some fun this year in the pool. They love it, so I thought that I would share some cute pictures of them.


This is Peyton and Zion and my niece Callie Rose (Alan's sisters daughter)

That's my brother- in-law Brad throwing Callie Rose into the air, she loved it!

Above are my nephews Jameson and Aaron (Aaron is behind Jameson), and yes, my brothers names are Aaron and Jamison as well. Crazy huh?

Drew's SOL scores

Okay, so I wanted to share some exciting news. Sometimes I am afraid that Drew gets lost in the sauce with having two little brothers that get soooooo much attention. Well, not this time, the entry is all about him and his wonderful SOL scores. On his math part of the SOL's, he only missed one questions, so that gave him a grade of "superior." On his english portion he missed three, so that gave him "above average" as his score. We are so proud of him, what a little smarty (he gets it all from me, LOL). He is getting ready to start 5th grade, which is unbelievable! This will be his last year before junior high school (big gulp). Time is just flying by so fast. Anyway, I just wanted to share his great news.

Some Normality?

Well, we have less than two weeks before school starts here, and I think that we may have some time to recover from the summer. As a lot of you may know, my parents went on this wonderful European cruise for two weeks, leaving Alan and I with two of my younger siblings, Emily and Jamison. Ethan (another sibling), finished up being in Colorado for the Summit program and joined us for the last three days of the visit. It was great to have them and to be able to spend some time with them. Since I moved out right when I turned 18, Emily and Jamison were only 4 and 5, so this is the most time I have spent with them in one sitting since then. It was also nice to spend some time with Ethan prior to him leaving for JMU (which he did so today).

We had a busy two weeks with them, trying to make it fun and enjoyable and more like a vacation rather than being "babysat." Peyton and Zion adore Auntie Em, so they had a very hard time when she left. Peyton cried for a good 20 minutes begging me to bring back Emily.

We celebrated my 27th birthday while they were here (the 19th), Emily made me a wonderful red velvet cake and she and Ethan babysat while Alan took me out to a nice dinner and movie. We had a great day.

Mom and Dad got back safe and sound yesterday, and they had a very good time. Now back to reality for them. :->