Nerd!!

Austin has learned to play chess, which is great for a math brain, so I am told, I honestly cannot keep up with all of the rules!!!  But Eric and Austin really enjoy playing and he plays every Friday after school in the Chess Club.

At the end of each semester they have an awards ceremony and this year he got 1st place for all 3rd graders in one semester and 1st place in Bughouse in another semester.  You could go so far as to offer me money to explain to you what Bughouse is and I would wind up penniless as I still have no clue and he has been playing it for 3 years!!!!

Of course, our little guy HATES to have any attention focused on him, so it is REALLY hard to get a picture of him getting the trophy, so here is the best we could get.

American Eagle

I am going to catch up on this year; I swear - but I do say that every time I get on here, so ....

So close to the end of the school year, as it got warmer and the kids wanted to spend more time outside than there were waking hours, we started taking the boat out to a lake close by our house, same lake where Austin caught a nice sized fish several months back ;0

Any who, we took the kids out and while out, we saw what we thought was an eagle fly by!!  Pretty exciting!  So we followed where we thought it had flown, and sure enough, we found it.  Of course, we just had Eric's cell phone to use to take the picture, so it is not the best quality, but it was fun to see!

 Never can tell what you will see when you put down the phone, tablet, computer, etc. ;0

Science Fair

Each year the kids have been submitting a project for their school's science fair; this year was no different, but I have to pull more pictures off Eric's phone ;0.....they did a Hovercraft....as you can see Ansley was SO excited it worked!!

Something......

Is better than nothing, right?!?

Where does the time go!?!

Spring is just around the corner, so we are ready to get back to doing some of this.....

 

note the proper head gear for the red head!!  We learned enough lessons from his mother's childhood to know that he needs a sun hat while fishing at all times!!  Fortunately, he still buys the theory that if Granddad does it, it must be a good idea ;)

Clearwater Beach

Duty calls!!  I had another work conference to go to in September and fortunately the kids had the same week of school off, so we all went to Clearwater Beach, Florida for vacation.  Unfortunately, it rained A LOT!!  So we tried to make the best of it and go to indoor sites while it rained and then go to the beach when it was not stormy.

Turns out Winter the dolphin who is the subject of "Dolphin Tale" the movie is in Clearwater Beach at the aquarium down the street from our hotel, so we went there.  You could play with stingrays....as you see Austin doing below......very slick little guys!!

 

While on the beach, one of Eric's favorite past times is to feed birds....he seems to have "trained" some birds while we were there and could get them to eat out of his hand and he would then pick them up and hold them.....odd bird (decide for yourself who I am referring to ...)

Kids LOVING the water....playing with the sand

Fortunately, there was a pretty large playground area beside our hotel so we went there and played a few times.......Ansley conquering the mountain!

More later.......

DC

  

Better late than never I tell myself....we went to DC in May for a conference for my work and took the time to go to as many sites as we could in just a few days.  Needless to say we walked out little feet off, but the kids were troopers!!  We started our first day there on the main mall and by the end of the four days we had seen as much as humanly possible.  We started down by the Lincoln Memorial....

Austin looking all too thrilled to be in a picture with his mom :); this is in the Lincoln Memorial too.

 

From this picture you can see the day ahead was cloudy and rainy, so we really had GREAT kids who endured a rainy, cool day in DC at mostly outdoor sites. There were LOTS of kids there because at the end of May most of the schools in the area were still in session.  Our school had only ended the week before....just after we left the Lincoln Memorial we went to see the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.  Just before we started walking down the Vietnam Veterans Memorial we stopped to see a few people who were peacefully demonstrating regarding Sgt. Bergdahl; the reason this was interesting was because two days later, while we were still in DC he was released.  Political views aside, we felt it was a neat experience for the kids to be in DC when it happened and talked about the connection to the people we had seen at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

A really cute couple volunteered to take a family photo of us in front of the "big pencil" as Ansley referred to the Washington Monument! It was REALLY cold at this point and we did not have coats, so we were in a hurry to get to an inside place at this point.

Just in front of the White House on one side there is a Boy Scout Memorial; Austin is really involved in Cub Scouts right now, so we walked around and too several pictures I will post later...but this is one of the ones we took.

Of course we went to see the outside of the White House too; this was on our first day there; later in the week we went and saw the other side.  We did not go in.

Constitution Hall

Treasury Dept.

This last one is from the gardens at the Smithsonian Castle (Institution Building); Eric and the kids went there the day I had to go to my conference so I cannot tell you much about it; sorry!  It obviously was a sculpture garden attached to the Smithsonian.  They REALLY loved most of the museums and I am not kidding!  They were not as impressed with the National Gallery of Art, but it was towards the end of one day that we went there and it might be a bit much for little ones.

I will write more once we get more DC pictures up.

Texas!!

We went to the great state of Texas for a quick visit just before the kids went back to school.  We had to go see the family and get our fill of Mexican Food!!

 We were SO excited to see this sign!!!

 We were torn by this sign; excited to see the speed limit, sad to see how many more miles we still had to go!!!  Well, maybe not all of those miles were driven :) to get to Granddad & Nanny, Uncle Scott, Aunt Natalie, Cousin Carter & the rest!!  But we did drive 2200 miles to get there & back!

 Austin had to show Ansley "his" town

 SERIOUSLY!!????!!!!

 This looks cooler in the actual size, but it was too big for the blog

 Hanging out on one of our Aunt Net & Uncle Roy's tractors

A pretty cool picture Eric took of one of Aunt Net & Uncle Roy's silos; the kids were fascinated by them!