Follow-up on our Artist!

I'm still ticked that I can't upload pictures! My computer is blocking it. I think it's our internet settings. I'll figure it out.

Anyway - about a month ago (see 2 posts back) I posted Taite's entry that she drew for the cover of her school directory. Her picture did not make the cover. However, they chose a select few that they featured inside the book. Her picture was amongst them! She was SO, SO excited. She said, "I got 2nd place!" :) We were really proud of her & excited that she got her picture featured in the directory that went out to all of the kids in her school. Way to go, Taite!

5K!

We did it!!! This darn thing isn't letting me upload pictures right now. I don't know why. I've got "before & after" pictures of us with our race #s on our shirts.

Anyway - the race was great! It was my first time to run the entire 3.2 miles. I did fine & wasn't even dying! ;) The weather was awesome.

Here are our times:

Steven - 24 min.
Lewis - 30 min.
Jen - 33 min.

This was a big accomplishment & I'm ready for another one!!

Our Little Artist

Taite's school has a drawing contest going on for their Student Directory Cover. This is right up Taite's alley. She LOVES to draw! Basically, the kids just had to come up with something reflective of their school.

She wanted to incorporate their mascot, the Ponies into her picture. But, she also wanted KIDS in it! Ah, what a great idea....kids on an illustration for an elementary school directory! :) What we loved about her kids is that she thought of two actual 3rd graders, two 2nd graders, etc. to draw. And, it had to be a boy & a girl for each grade. So, if you look above, the two kids on either end are 3rd graders (Braden & Jade, to be more specific). As you go in toward the sign they're holding, there are 2nd, 1st & kindergartners (she, of course is the girl 1st grader!). They're all holding a sign that says "We (heart) Cline Ponies" (I don't know if you're able to see the writing).

Obviously, we know it's a long shot that she'll win. This is her first contest to ever enter, so we had to explain that you can't always win. But, we think she did a great job. I love her creativity and how she has a story behind everything she draws. I'm glad she got to use one of her passions for something like this! How fun!

Paige's 1st Day of School

Paige started preschool on Friday. This is our 6th year at Friendswood Methodist. Things are a little different this year. It's always been a "Mother's Day Out" program, but they're in the process of becoming licensed so they'll be an official "preschool" now. There's also a new director. A lot of people left because they feared the changes. I'm glad we stayed. I feel a kind of loyalty to them since we've been there so long & secondly, things are headed in a great direction! I'll have to keep you posted! Paige is still going 2x a week on Mondays & Fridays. These are actually great days for me to help at Taite's school, so I love the days. Paige was ready to go. We're so, so excited because one of Paige's teachers was one of Taite's favorite teachers. Ms. Donna. She was Taite's teacher when I was SUPER-pregnant with Paige (Paige was born a week into that school year). So, Ms. Donna has literally known Paige since she was born. She is a retired teacher who came back to teach preschool several years ago. She just loves what she does & is 110% "in" to what she does every day. Paige's other teacher, Ms. Angie is a former kindergarten teacher & has kids at Taite's school. She seems really nice.

Paige has 7 other kids from last year's class in her class this year and her good friend Tyler (my old roommate, Michelle's son). So, they were all really comfortable going into the classroom. Although, they had one cryer, so they were really not letting the parents into the room. We had to say a quick good-bye & leave. Paige did fine, but I was kind of bummed that I didn't even have time to get some good pictures. Here's what I got! Better than nothing! ;)

I hope Paige will have a good year. We all know she's the aggressive one! I think she'll do fine. She's really excited & is glad to have all of those friends in her class again. Looking forward to a fun year!....

5K Training!

Yes! That's what it said....5K training!

My brother Steven ran his first 5K this summer. He tried to talk us into doing it with him and Lewis & I quickly declined. I had no desire to run in the summer! Steven loved his first 5K & said he was ready for another one. So, a few weeks later he calls me & says, "okay....I've got it! There's a 5K in Friendswood in October!"

So, there's where this craziness started! Lewis & I told him we'll do it! I have NEVER done any distance running in my life. Even in my young sports days & in high school sports, I was a sprinter, not a distance runner. God forbid a coach makes me run a whole entire lap around the track! I'd run those quick drills no problem, but I just never had the endurance for distance. So, in short - distance running has never even interested me.

BUT, I thought I needed a new challenge in my life! So, about 3 weeks ago, I started running! It's amazing - just like Steven told me. Seriously, the first week I couldn't even get around the block. Now, just 3 weeks later, I can run a full mile....even pushing Paige in the stroller! That is a big improvement & I've got 7 weeks to go. I think I might survive. I'm certainly not going for a time goal. I just want to finish. I think I can do it!

I'll keep you posted!

Happy Birthday Paige!

3 years ago on Sept. 1, Paige Briley McCray was born. Crazy how time flies, especially with our second-born. Here we are now with a witty, strong-headed, bright 3 year old.

Paige has been LOUD and strong-willed since day one. I still remember the grandparents saying they could hear her screaming down the hall from the O.R. when she was first born. Her lung capacity has not ceased! ;) She doesn't back down and is persistant about things she wants (oh my!).

At 3, her most remarkable strength is that she can read! She has a HUGE love for reading. She's loved books since she was a baby. Now, I wonder if this love of books began when we read to her non-stop for each of her 8 daily 20-minute breathing treatments she started when she was a baby. It was the one thing that kept her calm during those treatments. Now, she has this almost strange, awesome photographic memory. Last year, she had an obsession with reading Taite's sight word flash cards from kindergarten. Now, Paige has her own ring of cards....with 80+ words on it....and she can read them all. Weird! At bedtime, she insists on reading to us...and she does. You name it, she reads it. Some of it is very, very familiar text, some is new (like books from the library). She reads it TO us! She loves reading. I hope that this love continues. If she has such a passion for it now, I wonder what it'll be like at age 5 or 15? I'll have to keep you posted...

So, on to her birthday party. The day before, she helped make her cake and chocolate cupcakes. We are a "yellow cake" family, but we always make chocolate cupcakes for friends who'd prefer chocolate! She had fun helping...and eating batter!

The next morning, the cake had cracked. Who knows why. The cake wasn't dry. I'm no cake expert, but I've made a lot of cakes and this was the first time this ever happened. Paige didn't mind &, in my old age, I decided it's not worth stressing over this stuff. So, here's her cake!

She decided on a Wiggles theme for her party & we had it at gymnastics. She started gymnastics classes last week at the same place Taite goes. She loved her first lesson & was glad to finally get into the gym and not have to just sit & watch.

The party was fun. There were about 12 kids and they all had a good time....and so did the adults!

We're celebrating tomorrow evening with our gifts to her and some left-over cake. We got her a training wheel bike, so I hope she'll enjoy that.

Here's to our Paiger...Paiger-ator...Paigee....our family wouldn't be complete without her!!

First Day of First Grade!

Taite was ready to go back to school. Although, I don't think she was ready to give up her days watching Disney Channel! ;)

When we went to find out her teacher last week, the first thing I noticed on her list was that there is a BOY named Tate in her class!!! All I could think of is, "are you kidding me??!" Okay....7 years ago, we picked out a "unique" name for our first-born. Me, Jennifer M., the school teacher thought it would be nice to name her something different so she wouldn't have 4 kids in her class with the same name (this did happen to me one year in elementary school!). Anyway - who would've thought that 6 1/2 years later, not only would she have another kid in her class with the same name, but that someone is a BOY! Argh! Taite got in the car as we left the school & said, "I don't want to be Taite M.!!! I'm just Taite!"

At meet & greet on Friday, we met Mrs. Krenek. She's new at Taite's school. But, we recognized her from our church & Taite remembered that her son was in her CCE class a few years ago. She seems very, very nice. When we got a chance to talk with her one-on-one, I told her about (our) little "problem" having a boy named Tate in her class. I assured her it had nothing to do with the boy himself, just the same name. Mrs. Krenek looked right at Taite and said, "it's not going to be a problem. Your names are spelled differently & I'll just call you 'Taite'. You don't have to be Taite M. If I ever need to clarify, I might say your last name, too, but I don't think we'll have to worry about that!" She was so sincere and put Taite (and ME!) at ease about it. Bottom line, we'll get over it!!!

Monday morning, Taite had a very, very hard time getting out of bed. We're quickly reminded that she is NOT a morning person. I think you can tell in the pictures! ;) It wasn't that she didnt' want to go to school - she just wasn't ready to wake up! It'll take several weeks to adjust.

The first day went great! She got to be the line leader & take the attendance on the first day. How cool is that for a 1st grader to do that on the FIRST day of school!? She was so excited. She really liked her teacher and met a few new kids. She does have one boy in her class from last year - he was also her "bus buddy" and they were good friends. So, she was excited about that. Her two "best friends" from kindergarten got in the same class together. What are the odds? There are TEN 1st grade classes. We figured they'd all get separated. Oh, well. Taite actually didn't seem to mind. It'll be okay.

I think it's going to be a good year. I'm doing a lot more PTO stuff this year. I think it'll be fun. Right now, I'm busy organizing the raffle for Taite's fall carnival. It's a HUGE, huge event which has brought in over $100K the last few years. Craziness. It's fun. I like being involved with school again. One day I'll be back teaching, but for now, I'll just enjoy being the mom of a first grader!

California Magsigs Visit

In mid July, Bill, Mindy & Luke came for a visit from California. They stayed at Mom & Dad's for a week & we drove up every day to hang out with them. The cousins all had a fun time together. They'll have even more fun after Luke's brother arrives in October! We hadn't seen Bill since last July, so it was great to catch up with him.

Port Aransas

My posts are out of order, but I've been busy this summer, so I haven't been updating regularly. BEFORE our Frio River trip, we went to Port Aransas for a week with Mom & Dad. We had fun at our super-nice condo with 4 pools, the beach and fishing on our boat. We went to Corpus one day to the Texas State Aquarium. One day when we were out on the boat, a dolphin swam RIGHT up to the boat. Dad has a great picture of it, but I didn't have my camera out. It stayed there for a good minute. VERY exciting! Check out some highlight pictures of our trip:

No beach trip is complete without a picture standing inside the mouth of a shark...

Frio River

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Okay, okay....something new! I made a slideshow of our Frio River trip pictures. You'll have to take a look! We had a GREAT, GREAT time! We went with our college friends, JimBob & Terrie, his sister's family & two other families. All together, we had 22 people, including 12 kids. We had fun catching up with old friends and the kids had tons of fun playing in the low, low river! We're ready to do it again next year!

4th of July

Taite started riding a 2-wheel bike in May. It was her goal to be able to ride her bike in the 4th of July parade this summer. She had a great time decorating her bike & she did a super job riding in the parade. Lewis even survived the heat, walking along with her! We were really proud of her for accomplishing her goal! Here are some pics from the parade....

Swimming

Just a quick post.....I have lots more pictures and stories to add later....

Paige took 6 weeks of swimming lessons beginning in June. She did NOT like them at all & pretty much screamed every lesson. (What, Paige screaming? I've never heard of such a thing!....)

Amazingly, she learning a LOT at her lessons. She's a little fish in the water now. She loves swimming across the pool and diving for diving sticks.

She is swimming to Lewis in this picture....not doing a dead-man's float!

And, I thought I'd include a picture of Taite floating on her back....

A little video of Paige diving for a squid....

End of School

I sent a lot of you my slideshow of pictures from the end of the year. But, here's a post anyway.

Taite was busy her last week of school. She had Field Day, Olympic Day at gymnastics, kindergarten graduation, and play-at-the-park day. It was a fun week.

Blogspot is only letting me upload 5 pictures today. I don't know why. Maybe I'll add a few more later.

Olympic Day was really cute at gymnastics. This was their first year to do this during class-time. The girls had learned routines on bars, floor, & beam. They all did a good job. It was neat.

Kindergarten graduation was the day before school was out. It was really cute. The kids sang some songs & walked across the stage and received a diploma from the superintendent. It was very well organized. They had a little reception in her classroom afterward. My picture of her walking across the stage didn't turn out that good, so here are a couple from her classroom.

It was a good first year of school for Taite. She was SOOOOO sad on the last day. She didn't want it to end. She says she'll miss her friends and Mrs. Vermeer.

She has a crafts camp next week & we have several trips planned for the summer. Paige also taking swimming lessons twice a week for 6 weeks. She's only had one lesson & she screamed the whole time, but said she liked it when it was all over! Tomorrow is lesson #2. We'll see how she does.

I'll keep you posted with our summer events! Have a great summer!!!

2 Wheels!!!

We have a big milestone, here!! We took the training wheels off of Taite's bike this weekend. She tried her first time Sat. night & we never really let go of her. Sun. afternoon, Lewis was going with her, let go & she went! We're still working on stopping! That may be harder than riding.

We've learned one thing....this is definitely another parenting "event" that really makes us appreciate our own parents. Running along side of a wobbly bike is HARD work. It's also hard to run along side, bent over, holding on to the back of a bicycle seat! Lewis & I had to take turns. Obviously, we're out of shape. I think we may try "relay" bike riding in our future attempts! :)

She rode again Monday after school & did great, again. She's going about 3 or 4 house lengths, so I think that's a good start. Her goal is to ride her bike in the 4th of July parade! I think she can do it! Practice, practice, practice!

**A Little Update: On day #4, she rode around the block 4 times without us holding on! :) We had to run beside her. Thankfully, I only had to do one lap (after which, I thought I was going to pass out!). Lewis is a better jogger than me! She's doing great. What fun!!!

Here's a video of her first ride without us holding on....

Cake Balls!

We have a new recipe! Cake balls! They are DELICIOUS!! We made our first batch Easter weekend and the girls & I experimented with some new combinations this weekend.

Here's the recipe...

Ingredients:
1 box of cake mix (your favorite flavor)

1 can of frosting (your favorite flavor)

Almond bark/melting chocolate....vanilla or chocolate (I found "melting chocolate' at HEB...you can get colored melting chocolates at Michaels or Hobby Lobby)

Cook cake per package directions in a 9x13" pan. Let it cool for a short period of time. Crumble up cake into a separate bowl. Stir in frosting. Mix cake and frosting together with a hand mixer. It will now be a play dough-like consistency. Place mixture in the fridge for a couple of hours to allow it to chill.

After the mixture has chilled, use a melon baller or your hands to make small balls (about 1"). Here is a picture of our balls. We had made a yellow cake and a chocolate cake....

Now, put the balls in the freezer. My directions said to put them in the freezer for 6 hours. I don't think you need to leave them in that long. Although, I found that the longer they were in, the easier they were to dip later...

After the balls have chilled in the freezer, melt almond bark or melting chocolate in microwave per package directions (it only takes about a minute!....easy!). Place a toothpick into a ball and dip into melted chocolate. I used a spoon to drizzle some over the top of the balls to get good coverage.

Add sprinkles, nuts, etc. to balls while they're still 'wet', if you'd like. Allow balls to cool on wax paper. I left the toothpicks in my balls, because we felt they were easier to eat later. If you want them to look "prettier", then you could carefully take the toothpick out while they're cooling.

Here are some pictures of our finished balls. None of them are "perfect", but they were yummy!
Here is how we packaged some for Taite's CCE teachers....

One of my friends puts the balls on lollipop sticks and makes them into cake ball sticks. How fun!
A note on our flavor combinations. As I said, I made a chocolate (devil's food) cake and a yellow cake (our favorite). I also had 3 different types of frosting: buttercream, chocolate & cream cheese. I also dipped in either chocolate or vanilla almond bark. I colored the vanilla bark with pink Wilton dye. So, here were our combinations:

• yellow w/ buttercream icing, dipped in vanilla (one of our favorites)


• yellow w/ buttercream, dipped in chocolate (yum!)


• yellow w/ chocolate frosting, dipped in chocolate (not my favorite cake/frosting combo.)


• devil's food w/ butter cream icing, dipped in chocolate or vanilla (okay)


• devil's food w/ cream cheese icing, dipped in chocolate or vanilla (pretty good)


• devil's food w/ chocolate frosting, dipped in chocolate (YUM! tasted brownie-like)

If you just google "cake balls" (like I did), you can find lots of recipes, ideas, and ways to "present" these yummy desserts!

You can only eat one or two of these at a time or you'll have a big belly ache! They're so rich. Delicious, but rich! Enjoy!

Mini-Me

With Paige's new haircut, she REALLY looks like me as a kid. Check out Paige now and me as a 2/3 year old. No doubt she's my daughter!!

Haircut

Paige got a haircut last weekend. She will not let us put ANYTHING in her hair....no clips, bows, headbands, etc. So, it was time to go short. A simple haircut that is low maintenance! Here is the before & after.

Seeing Mindy & Luke

We got to see our nephew Luke & sister-in-law Mindy at her parents' house last weekend. I'm so glad we went up for this quick visit. It was really fun to watch the kids playing together. Luke is 14 months now and is just cute, cute, cute! Here are some pics from our visit....

Grandpa & his grandkids...

Grandma with Taite & Luke....

One of my favorite pictures of Luke...

On a side note, we stayed in a hotel overnight. Paige hadn't been in a hotel since we were at Disney last Jan. She was captivated by this "place" we stayed. It was her first time to sleep in a bed (she's still in her crib at home)! Oh, the joys of toddlerhood....
We also had a 'scenic' drive through College Station and Stephenville, where Lewis went to school his 1st 2 years of college. It was a nice weekend with the whole family!