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....