Dinosaur Valley State Park

The first stop of our recent road trip was here, southwest of Fort Worth. It had a number of nice swimming spots and great ledges to jump from. We stopped to watch a couple of paleontologists who were making molds of some recently unearthed dinosaur tracks. Jack, after crossing several swift moving parts of the river by balancing nimbly on slick rocks, declared "I'm good at this!"

Back to (Home) School

Getting MY classroom ready for another homeschool year.  Since it's super helpful for me to not have to create EVERYTHING I want to use or display in our school room, I'll post some of the things I end up making.  I love finding shortcuts courtesy of others willing to share so any of the images marked "Ten Feet Tall" at the bottom are mine, and you can copy them. Since I don't need 20 kids to see what I put up on the walls, regular ed. posters are usually bigger than I want (although I do have some that are great) hence the recreation effort onto standard size paper. Hope it's helpful!

Trey and Bailey were selected to perform in this year's talent show.  After much deliberation, they chose to perform "Dynamite".  They did a great job and by the end of it had the whole school singing along.  They've already started planning for next year.

Trey and Tyler played both soccer and baseball this spring. Too hard to choose, we let them do both knowing that spring soccer is pretty relaxed. Tyler once again played on the team I coached as well as practicing with and regularly guest playing for 2 other teams. This meant that with occasional double headers, he played as many as 5 games in a single day.

And what do Jack and Bailey do during all this? Jack is perfectly content with a bag full of super heroes, cars, and a ring pop and sno-cone from the concession stand.

Bailey was never without little gal pals who also tagged along to big brothers' games. It meant frequent play dates with some of her best friends from school and girl scouts. Not a bad way to spend an evening!

Well, June finds us Rickers busy with nothing.  I've kept our summer clear of all the usuals to allow for all the unusuals that tend to pop up.  Other than Merit Badge camp that Tyler will attend next week, we don't have anything firmly planned.  So far, for the 2 weeks we've all been home together, we've visited the library, played at the fountains, museum hopped, hung out with the local astronomy club to view Venus, fed police horses, played at the beach, and super thoroughly organized our game room.  The kids are enjoying their weekly piano recitals, late bedtimes, and lots of dad time.

New page design.  Proof that I am working on this. I'm giving myself one week to get up to date.  You'll be sick and tired of us by the time you finish going through all of the posts that are about to come. 

Date With My Girl

For Christmas, my sister and I decided to take our girls and mom to the Houston Ballet's performance of the Nutcracker.

We've got a bad case of squirrels. Yes, squirrels. They have taken over our attic. At first it was amusing. We could go up and see them. Then we could go up and see them, and their babies. We'd watch them run across our roof and jump up into the uncovered attic vents on the underside of our roof. They are no longer so amusing. They're loud. They need to go.

Please don't think badly of me...

I bought some rat poison. Three bags. Each bag has little blocks of who-knows-what that are to be distributed around the problematic area. Since the boys are always willing to go into the attics I gave specific instructions and sent them on their way. "Put two bags around the lower attic, one around the upper attic." 1 minute later Tyler declares "did it mom!"

Now, I didn't think it'd take a great deal of time but 1 minute was mighty quick. I asked exactly what they had done. "We put 2 bags in the lower attic, 1 in the upper". I thought a minute, smiled, and asked, "boys, did you take the blocks out of the bag?" Nope. They had thrown the bags, still sealed, into the attic and were legitimately confident in the job they had done. Nice. Luckily they were able to retrieve the bags and get the job done right.

I'm morbidly, anxiously anticipating hearing little thumps coming from my attic.

3 years ago today...

...we welcomed this beautiful boy into our family. He brought sunshine that we were so desperately needing and has been shining ever since. He is simply delightful. 3 years have been so much fun, I can't wait to see what this next year brings!

Happy Birthday my Jack!

My Grandpa's Book!

I'd heard it was coming, and now it's here! This is the story of my grandpa, David Ririe, and his 13 month experience in Hitler's Nazi prison camp after his plane was shot down during World War II. If it's your genre of book, check it out!

11

11 years ago early, early this morning this sweet boy joined our family.
I am so proud of the young man he is turning into. He is kind and compassionate, thoughtful and respectful. I so very much appreciate the example he sets for his brothers and sister.

Happy Birthday my boy.

Squidie

Last week I was greeted at school pick-up with "Mom! I have a squid!" Half unsure of what I'd heard and half completely aware that with Trey, I probably heard right, I questioned his comment. Sure enough, his class had studied the squid and at the end Trey asked if he could have it. I guess there weren't any possible complications that crossed his teacher's mind when she bagged the thing up and packed it in his backpack.
The kid came home like he'd just found gold. I couldn't get rid of it, aside from the fact I'm not really sure how to dispose of a squid carcass. He had already named it, "Squidie". Darling, I know. We now had a dead squid, in a baggie, in my kitchen. I quickly googled "preserving a squid" (never saw that search coming) and Bailey and I ran out to get the necessary supplies. Squidie now sits in a mason jar filled with 91% alcohol on a shelf in Trey's room (details provided should you ever need to preserve a squid- apparently it's a realistic possibility).

A Little Surprise

My sister in law came across this little video clip taken just a month or so before Peyton was diagnosed. Peyton couldn't find his pants...

It's amazing how quickly you forget this child. His sweet voice is music to my ears.

Happy Occasion

Robert's sister, her husband, and their 3 little girls were sealed together in the Houston Temple.
They looked like little angels - 3 little cousins now part of a forever family...