Welcome to Second Grade!

Well, today was the first day of second grade for my little (big) Jackson! I can't believe that it is already time for him to advance to yet another grade level! I vividly remember my first day of second grade. I met my best friend, Sheliah Poole, that I kept all the way through middle school and still keep up with now! We bonded over our identical Kitten Trapper Keepers! It's the little things, right?

Anyhow, Jackson was pretty excited this morning even though he was kind of quiet. I asked him if he was excited & he said he was. I think he likes the idea of growing up. What is up with that?! :) He gave me absolutely no problems getting up & out the door this morning & i didn't even have to remind him to brush his teeth. I think he was just ready!

We had plenty of time to take some pictures too, of course. (But then again, I did set the alarm for a few minutes early to ensure that I did! )




At first, he wanted to ride the bus this morning. But I nixed that idea. No, sir- the first day of school belongs to ME! I get to walk my boy in & make sure he is settled. But then, I thought, maybe he was too grown for that, so I offered to just drop him in the carpool line. But he said he wanted to be walked in. (Yay!) So, that is exactly what I did!

I walked him to his door & even chatted with his teacher, Mrs. Daves, for a few minutes. I really like her. She is a hugger. She gave him a big hug when he walked in this morning & when she saw I had brought extra class supplies from her wish list- she even hugged me! :)

She was thrilled when I asked her to take a picture with Jackson because "she likes it when parents keep up with scrapbooks and stuff!" I am going to like this lady! (And it helped that she said she loved Jackson's freckles! See, we are on the same page already!)

Doesn't she just look like a fun teacher who wants to be there & love on some kids?? This is going to be a great year!

ps- Jackson informed me this afternoon that... "Mrs. Daves lets us take our shoes off in the class if we want!!" Yeah, he is gonna love second grade!

Birthday Wreath

The latest project around here has revolved around a certain little birthday coming up! I saw this idea pinned on Pinterest (here is a direct link to the tutorial!) of a birthday wreath made out of balloons. And I just had to give it a shot! I thought it would be so cute to bring out about a week before each birthday in the family. And i have to say that as i was making it, Jackson was really intrigued (Eli was too into the movie on the screen to care!). But Jackson wanted to know just what i was going to do with ALL those balloons! So alas, here is our birthday wreath!

I am going to add a ribbon with a little "Happy Birthday" sign on it too, but haven't gotten around to it yet! I did add some sparkly pipe cleaners for a little pizzazz though! :) Glittery is always better, right?!

I just love it! And it is such fun, kid friendly colors! But you could make it any color you want! I bought bags of solid colored balloons & mixed and matched the colors I wanted. But for a girls only house, it would be cute in pinks/purples etc! I almost stuck with only blues and greens, but I am glad I changed my mind and added the whole box of crayolas, so to speak! :)

Ft. Fisher Chronicles: The Rocks

We headed out one evening to the rocks at Ft. Fisher to have a picnic dinner. After we got there, we decided to take the opportunity to take some photos since it was high tide & as a result, there would be no starfish hunting after eating! Boo!

Before I really got serious about trying to get some decent pictures of the kids, I went ahead & let them get their sillies out!

As it turned out, there were plenty of people around, so it was kind of hard to get 1) a picture with only our kids, rocks, & ocean it it without 2) the sun in their face or a random beach goer... But we did the best we could & this is what we got! Enjoy!

This was totally unprompted... and we aren't sure what this hand motion is... but I thought it was sweet!

Ft. Fisher Chronicles: Day What?

So, yeah... I dropped the ball on updating the rest of the beach photos, huh? Sorry about that, but we got home from the beach & then headed back to Wilmington for Jen's wedding. Then, well, I just lost my motivation. There are soooo many pics! So instead of giving you a day by day run down, I am just going to upload a lot of photos to this post & not sweat it! :)

After the guys left, it rained for another 2 days! Ugh! But the good news was that it always broke for a least a little bit in the evening when we were able to go to the (wet) beach or hit the pool for a little bit. During the days, we kept the kids busy with movies...

and a LOT of games! Eli was especially fond of Alphabet Go Fish! (while the adults played a LOT of Canasta!)

The upside to hitting the beach in the evening meant we got to forego the sunscreen! Once it hit dinner time, we just couldn't bring ourselves to lather up 5 kids with sunscreen! But there were plenty of other opportunities the rest of the week! After the rain stopped, we had 3 gloriously beautiful days to spend! Here are some pictures from the rest of our week! Enjoy!

With low tide came plenty of opportunities to try to catch all the little fishies! Jackson worked at this for hours!




Aunt Becca rocks at sand castle building!

I have a ton of pictures from one evening when we went to the rocks to have a picnic, so I will do one more post on the beach for those pics! Sorry for the lack of words here, but I have all ideas most of you are here for the pictures anyway! :)