First Day of School

Wow, they day finally came.  First Day of School, and now two big boys hopping on that bus.  Sam has a new teach at Chelsea Park, Mrs. Vaughn; and Davis has Sam's kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Garrett.  They both love their new teachers.  Sam is reading like crazy.  Magan says Davis is pretty tough to wake up on the mornings.  And Mom now gets to listen to princesses sing all day from little Belle.

Silly Sartins at our House

Ahhhhh....Another set of cousins at the house.  And this time we had to add a seat back to the Odyssey to hold them all.  They came down to stay for a couple of nights, I don't see Stella, and can't remember if we had her with us or not, too many kids around.  :)  

Magan had all of these young'ins with her taking Davis to meet his new Kindergarten teacher...Mrs Garrett!! Same teacher that Sam had.  And she is just as bubbly as ever, or at least that's what Magan told me, I was stuck at work.  

I did get a chance that evening to share with the Sartin's the Junkin classic "Cindersmelly" for a bedtime story.  It is a wonderful story of a young girl overcoming her troubles with flatulence to find a prince that falls in love with her beauty...and smell.  I guess one day I will need to write it down, as it seems to have worked itself into a rather funny fractured fairy tale over the years.  The next night I read them the story of the Nimby Nimby Gna...but alas "Cindersmelly" seems to always get more smiles.

Magan then took the kids to the Leeds park, where they had a blast of course.  She said that Davis and Addy were taking the baby carraiges down the slides.  Then I got to meet them at Chick-Fil-A for lunch, but I think they were more excited about the Cow being there.  And closed out the day with some slip and slide time.  So I guess I should have come home complaining that the house was a mess...just kidding, I'm not crazy...but Magan was so tired, I don't think she would have hit me...hard.

Work/Vacation in Dothan/Panama City

We got a late start on a Monday evening on our trip down to Dothan, can you tell which kids did not get a nap in preparation for our vacation.  Always exciting to be in a hotel or as Belle says "My new House".  Magan found Sam and Davis the Monster Truck ramp on clearance before we left, so that ended up being a good toy for the room.  The Residence Inn in Dothan was very nice, but the lobby smelled like B.O.

Magan spent the next day meeting up with old Church friends from Honeysuckle Road.  Mainly with Courtney and Aaron, and their little cuties Caroline and Landon.  The caroussel at the Dothan mall, I remember little Sam on one of those horses.  :)  Davis and Caroline became good friends, and Belle LOVED to dress up in Caroline's princess dresses.

And of course the kids were ready to go swimming since it had been raining all day.  The scuba masks were popular, and Sam even learned how to swim, although he can not do it without the scuba mask...funny.

And then we got to have supper with the Craig's at our favorite steak place in Dothan...Conestoga.  Great Steaks, Great Cheesecake.

Mention my worktime just briefly...in the evening when we got home, I went back to work in the Lobby trying to get some commitments completed.  So two things, the lobby still smelled like B.O. and was not a pleasant working experience, plus many of the supervisors/managers from the corporate office were also working there in the lobby.  So the cool thing was John's future boss was there and asked me how he was doing, and if he was ready to come to work in the Spring.  I told him he was ready, but then I think I also mentioned that he had been "bumming around all summer".  Sorry John, looking forward to working with you though.

Anyway, the next day the kids went to a park area, and from all their stories, I think they had a great time.   All of the kids were very excited each time they spotted a new decorated Peanut which are popular in the Peanut capital of Dothan.  Caroline and Davis were so excited to see the one below that they jumped to hug it and knocked it over.  After church that night, we went out for some frozen yogurt.  Go ahead and skip the "Strawberry Banana" flavor, not so good.

Luckily we wrapped up everything we needed to do for work on Wednesday, so Thursday we were able to begin our vacation time that morning.  Here is the roll cart as we were moving out of Dothan and traveling to the beach.  There are two things that I really liked doing while down in Dothan, and even though they are cheesy and Magan rolls her eyes at me for, she let me take the kids.

1.  Camping World - How great is this place?  Indoor shopping for RVs.  Getting to jump in the RVs and pretend you are going to Disneyworld [kids were doing this, not me ;)], and Belle's favorite...getting to jump on the beds.  Mom ditched us here, but luckily came back to pick us up.  If she didn't, we might have had to buy an RV to get back home.

2.  Florida Welcome Center - Free little cups of orange juice and grapefruit juice...Brochures from every theme park you could ever want to go to...How do people not stop at this gem?  Although we almost didn't stop as rain was pouring on us, then just as we crossed the line into the Sunshine State, it stopped, allowing us our free samples and brochures.

We finally made it to the beach, and our view was amazing.  :)  We were stuck on the backside of the Resort, but were upgraded to a 1 Bedroom Unit, which was huge.  Lots of room to spread out.  With little sunshine, and little time when it was not storming, we ran out to the beach first thing.  Probably telling Davis about the severe undertow, and how it could take him out in the ocean far away was a little too extreme.  He understood the danger, but then got really sick  in the small waves, scared about the "undertow".  He was probably looking for some strange marine animal that went by that name.  Belle loved the water, even as we had to "spit out the yucky" alot.  She was OK, till dad let too many waves hit her.  And Sam, did I even have to say that he was too busy building to play in the ocean.  He did come out with me the second day and we had fun "karate kid" kicking and jumping the waves.

Magan and I do not have cable right now, which pretty much does not bother us.  But...The olympics are pretty big, and since vacation is the only time we get to watch, we had the olympics turned on whenever we got a chance to watch.  Even when the boys were asking us to go to bed so they could sleep in the living room, we kept asking them to let us watch "just one more event".  Then they fell asleep, so we could watch as much as we wanted.  Davis liked the olympics, but liked to try anything he watched.  The picture below is his high diving routine.  His pommel horse routine was also very impressive.

As Sam, Davis and I were going down to the pool the next day, we saw three teenage boys that looked very familiar...I finally said "Hey, I know you", then not remembering the word for cousin, I tried to explain that we had the same grandmother.  Then as they translated my old-manese into teenager talk...they explained that my Aunt Kim and family were staying just 3 floors above us in the same resort.  Great!  We went up there to see them and it was great getting to visit with them a bit.  Kim and Mike later came down to the pool area with all their kids and Haley...they were going to eat supper at another restuarant with Aunt Carol and Aunt Jan, but we had eaten a late lunch, so we didn't make it.  But looking forward to seeing everyone on Labor Day.

Our last day was nice, but we took some time to go to pier park and look around.  And the icing on the cake was the stop at Kilwins to enjoy some ice cream and treats.  Fun quick vacation.