First Day of Kindergarten for Brady and back to PDO for Kinley

Today was Brady's first day at Kindergarten. He was so excited. He walked right into class and like it was nothing new. I even did pretty good! I made it all the way back to my car before I broke down into tears. I know God's plan is for us to raise our children to be independent adults and this is the first major step in letting go.

I picked Brady up from school today and he was all smiles. He said "I LOVE IT!" He is so excited to go back tomorrow. He went on and on about his whole day. It seemed like a success.

Kinley has Brady's teacher from this last year in PDO. We really love her teacher and it was so easy to let her go somewhere we felt so comfortable with. The only thing we were sad about is that her playground playmate was no longer there (Brady and Kinley played on the playground every day that they were in PDO this summer). She had a great day, too.

Outside Brady School:

Outside Brady's door at school:

Brady in his seat in his class:

Kinley's back at Trinity PDO:

Kinley was quick to play with her friends from her last class:

My sweet angels...

Matt's family genes are very dominant

Matt just came back from Houston with lots of pictures. We were looking at some of the pictures and realize how much our kids look like Matt's side of the family. Below is a picture of Matt when he was young (top) and a recent picture of Brady (bottom):

Below is Matt's mom Patricia (top) and a recent picture of Kinley (bottom).

We tried to find a similar of picture of Kinley with her mouth closed but seeing Kinley with a closed mouth is almost imposssible :) (I have recently started calling her motor mouth).

Kinley's dance costume and our new water slide

Kinley's dance recital is coming up June 8th. They are dancing to a tap number named "I'm a little Teddy Bear." Kinley is only kind of interested in dance so this may be our only dance class but at least she looks cute! It has been clost to 100 degrees in Lubbock the last couple of days so I decided we needed something to cool the kids down. Kmart had this water slide on sale so we bought it and have had the best time.

My first vegetable garden

I have always wanted to have a vegetable garden and this year we finally did it. I am so excited! Matt built me two garden boxes and we fenced off the area to keep the dogs out. The area still needs some work (weeding and the fence) but I think it turned out really nice. We also got a dwarf fuji apple tree. It will probably be next year before we have apples but I can't wait. Here are some pics:

Some time at the park...

We finally have some warm weather. Of course, most days there is plenty of wind to go right with the warmer temperatures (good old Lubbock). On Tuesday it was absolutely gorgeous, so the kids and I went to the park. It was so hot (90's), however, that the kids wore out pretty quick. This picture was taken as we were leaving and their faces are very red from the heat. We had a lot of fun!

New Pics of my kids

Arent' they getting big??? I just can't believe my babies are 5 1/2 and 3 1/2. This Thursday we register Brady for kindergarten. It is gonna be so hard on all of us. Brady is such a home body, Kinley will be bored without her playmate and of course, I miss him terribly. What a joy they are to us.

CRAZY weather!

We had some CRAZY weather today!!! I haven't ever seen clouds swirl around so close to me and for such a long period of time. We had several funnel clouds forming right around us but none of them touched the ground. I am probably exaggerating but one of them seemed like it was in my back yard. That particular cloud came down about half way. At that point, I dropped my mop (and no, I still haven't got to finish mopping) and went and grabbed the kids and we hid in the laundry room for shelter. The good news is that we have not had a tornado so far (the weather seems to be just thunderstorms now). The picture below is one of the first clouds that really started to concern me. It was really swirling and if you look close you can see a real low cloud right above my neighbor's tree that got sucked up into the tail. Praise God for keeping us safe!

My Valentines Tulips

Matt and I have had 13 Valentines Days together (isn't that wild). All of those 13 years I have received tulips. The reason being: Our very first Valentines Matt gave me a precious moments figure. It was a little boy holding tulips behind his back and puckering his lips. The saying was "the best tu-lips in town." This figurine was sitting in a pot of tulips.

Upon first glance, these flowers look like normal tulips...

However, this year's tulips are the prettiest thing I have ever seen!!! The blooms are unbelieveable...

The sad part that I admit with shame is that at first I was a little disappointed because of the predictability of the gift. God is teaching me even through this that sometimes unexpected things come out of the expected gift. Matt is such a wonderful husband and father and I am so lucky to have someone who never forgets me and always remembers our wonderful memories.

My favorite

This is my absolute most favorite picture! It is, of course, right after Kinley was born. This Valentine's I told them they could pick a sweetheart to give a gift to. They picked each other all by themselves!!!

Where we are now...

So I am very new to the idea of blogging but I think this will be very fun (if I ever make time to keep up with it). My first realization is that I need to take more pictures as I have no recent pictures of Matt and I and I have no pictures since Christmas. Time gets away from me. Hopefully, through this I will be more aware of how the time has past.

My two wonderful kids are 5 and 3 are are so much fun (not all of the time but most of the time). My most favorite things about the stages they are in right now is that (1) Kinley calls any day other than today "laster day" just like her brother used to do and (2) that Brady's passion is making people laugh (this is not always at the best times or places but reflecting on his passion for finding laughter gives me such pride in him). They truly adore each other. While still getting on each other's nerves sometimes, they have so much fun together and are best friends.

Matt and I are working towards are 11th year of marriage; I can't believe it has been that long. While we do not have a perfect marriage (as no marriage is perfect), I believe with God's help, we do make the perfect couple. No other person is more perfectly made for me than Matt. We both have discussed on several occasions that the things we couldn't be more opposite on are the things we need each other the most on, so that we can find balance.

That is a summary of where we are now in our mostly perfect life.