Trip Down South

 We met Grammy and Grumpy in Tuleta, Texas, where Grammy grew up and we used to spend time in the summer helping Papa in his little grocery store.  The store is still there although it's no longer open to the public, but it sure brought back a lot of memories!

 

 Stacey and I spent so much time climbing this tree!

We found Lindy's name in the concrete from over 50 years ago.

The inside of the store still had some of the original shelves and the old Tuleta Grocery sign.  Such wonderful memories in here.

We made our way to North Padre Island and hit the beach again.  I tell ya, these boys never get tired of sun and sand!

The highlight of our trip was going aboard the USS Lexington aircraft carrier with Grumpy, who made many landings on it and trained other pilots on it during his Marine days.

They've converted it into a really amazing museum and we spent hours going all over the ship.

The boys nervously walked the plank out front.

 Alex's favorite spot was the engine room, with countless dials and buttons.

Ben's favorite place was the top deck when he got to ask Grumpy the hundreds of questions I couldn't answer at the museum in Pensacola.  It was very cool hearing Grumpy tell the boys about his old plane, the A6.

Thanks for a fun getaway, Grammy and Grumpy!

Florida and Alabama

As soon as school ended, we made a beeline for Pensacola beach to relax and unwind.  I can't think of a better way to kick off a summer!

These are beach loving boys!

 

 

 We rented a great apartment in this beautiful house and it was a perfect location with a private pool in back and a family restaurant two doors down.

These boys never get tired of the beach!  And lucky for me, any beach is my happy place.

We loved the laid-back feel of Pensacola and the great family places with playgrounds and sand under our toes.

We did take a quick break from the beach to visit the National Naval Aviation Museum, which was more than worth the trip.

 It had so many planes!  We didn't cover the entire museum because there was so much to see and do.

 

Fresh seafood and new friends...one last dinner to wrap up a great trip!

 Just a few short hours away, we spent the rest of the week at the farm in Alabama.  Ben was dying to get behind the wheel of his favorite truck and he did all the driving he could in the pasture and along the private dirt roads.

 On one occasion, the heat and the bumps rocked someone right to sleep.  Did I mention that Ben's beloved blue truck has no air-conditioning?  And this was a record year for horseflies?

I forgot to take the confetti eggs in March, but I remembered this time!  We left some pretty decorations on our bridge.

 

We enjoyed a pretty fantastic sunset on the porch one evening...

...and while we were sitting outside we found some tiny residents in the bushes out front!  We saw these tiny bunnies for the rest of the week but couldn't quite convince Matt to let us bring them home.

 We also saw some gorgeous sunrises.

The kids had some great luck fishing on the pond.  Ben's whopper beat everything Matt and I caught!

The only family member that was VERY unhappy about our trip was Casey, because our Florida rental was not open to pets.  Not only did she miss out on Alabama (which turned out to be a good thing because those baby bunnies would not have been happy to meet her), she had to spend time at the kennel and eat (*gasp*) dog food.  She spent two solid days sleeping off the experience at home. But she's a dog and we were immediately forgiven!

Another Year in the Books!

We wrapped up the school year with a fun field trip to the Downtown Aquarium with Alex's Challenge class.  It was the most fun I've had on a field trip because I only to keep up with three kids (Logan, Ryan, and Alex) and there was so much more to see and do at the Aquarium than I expected!

The boys LOVED the shark train!

 

Petting the sting rays was lots of fun as well.  Our second time through I realized you could buy little fish to feed the rays, so it was much more exciting.

Lots of energy in this crowd but they were such good kids.

 

Back at school, I volunteered in the literacy library nearly every day to help check in thousands of books.  Alex was happy to pop in and say hello (many times) and I laughed so hard when I saw him with glasses!  Apparently a VIP privilege in his class is wearing glasses frames.  Now he won't stop bugging me to get his eyes checked because he wants his own glasses.

Finally, we had the celebrations of learning.  The second grade theme was the walk of fame and it was just amazing!

My last days with a second grader!!  sniff, sniff...

 

The kids each got up to present their favorite parts of second grade...

 

Alex with his wonderful teacher.  Thank God for women with character and patience who teach our little ones!

Outside the classroom on the walk of fame...you have to read why Alex is a star...

On our last weekend before summer, Ben spent some of his birthday giftcards and was thrilled to find Beatles records.  Once again, I'm convinced this kid was born in the wrong century.

I dragged everyone to the Museum of Natural Science because I was thrilled we got to see the corpse flower bloom.  It only blooms for about a day every 5-7 years and smells terrible...who wouldn't want to experience that?

It was totally worth the trip and after we recovered from the smell, we enjoyed the butterflies, like my very favorite Blue Morpho.

 

The kids just had to get through 2 1/2 more days before their big summer break and I got to celebrate Ben's year in his classroom.  Each kid presented a fun fact about a country he had researched.

 

They also presented maps and each discussed a topic they'd covered during the year.  I was so proud of Ben because he did a fantastic talk about Karankawa Indians.

Ben and his sweet teacher.

They could barely contain their excitement on the last day of school!

A side-by-side comparison of the school year.  Where did the time go?  They look like different kids!

Now it's helllloooooo, summer!!