Sunday, August 03, 2014

The kids spent a good portion of the beginning of summer in the pool.  Here are a couple of fun swimming pics.
























Ethan graduated from Elementary school!  Okay, okay.  I'll be the first one to admit it.  A graduation ceremony from elementary school, is really a bit much.  I think a rally at the kids' school would have been a little more appropriate, but instead we all went to the Junior High School and had a full-out ceremony.  So silly.  

That being said, there was one, and so we went.  Ethan looked dashing as always in his little suit.  (He just loves that suit and he wears it any chance he gets.  Funny, right?)   


Mom and Dad Jones were visiting and were able to attend with us.  That made it even a little more special for Ethan.  He was very proud, as he should be, and had a wonderful beaming smile plastered on his face for most of the ceremony.  Here he is walking up to get his little diploma.


And here he is with Grandma and Grandpa Jones.  Emmett looks especially pleased with himself. 


It was nice that Ethan was able to take a couple of pictures with his friends.  This is Christian.


 And Matthew.



And this is his best friend at school, Lucas.  


Ethan was laughing the whole time because even though the school took two other really great pictures of him earlier in the school year, the picture they chose to put on his diploma the latest picture that they took.  Well, Ethan's picture was the one where he forgot about picture day and his hair was sticking all the way up.  It's a pretty classic photo.  I'll post up a snap shot of it (I didn't want to buy a whole school package, but I couldn't NOT get the photo at all.  I ended up buying it as a magnet.  Tell me that isn't awesome hair?!



 We had a lot more fun hanging around at home with Mom and Dad.  Here are a few fun pictures.











Thursday, July 24, 2014

One last May blog.  (As usual...I'm so very far behind!)  The twin's Birthday!  My little premies turned 10!  Two digits!  They are so awesome.

Robert and I have decided to pare down the gift giving to one main present (or a couple of smaller presents) but I felt that just handing over one present was too anti-climatic, so I decided to make the 'giving' of the present a little more fun.  For the twins, I set up a bunch of different codes to break for a scavenger hunt to find their gifts.

The first clue was simply a GPS address along with a extreme close-up picture of a BBQ grill.  The close up just showed a tiny section of the grill.  Once the twins figured out it was a GPS number, they had to ride their bikes to find it.  (They used an app on Rob's phone.)


Taped to the bottom of the grill in a neighboring community park, was a small piece of paper with a group of numbers and letters.  The kids had to figure out that this was a library code for a book.  Once they figured it out they rode their bikes to the library and searched out the book.


Inside the book was a sheet of paper with numbers on it.  They had to search out a page number, then a paragraph number, followed by the specified word in the sentence to figure out their next clue.



The librarian had the next clue for them, which was a silly riddle cut up into a puzzle.


The riddle described a tree that we would sit by to watch the kids practice soccer and also watch Robert attempted to fly his broken kite.  So off they went...


The last clue was hidden pretty well up a tree.  (That was fun to hide!)


Ethan helped me with this one.  I gave him the riddle for the clue and he wrote symbols to create the cipher for the clue.  Once they figured it out, we went off to the tables at the park.


Alaina got her self a couple of drawing books (and pencils.)


Austin got a couple of cereals because his real present was a lego subscription (pley.com) where he can rent out lego sets for three months.


The twins' party was also very fun and VERY easy.  A local video store has a back room that you can rent out and watch any movie you want (we saw Around the World in 80 Days)  All we did was invite the kids.  They provided all you can eat popcorn and I brought in pizza, cupcakes and ice-cream sandwiches.  The kids came.  They watched.  They opened presents.  They left.  And the store did the clean up.  Nice.