First Day of School!

So back to playing catch up- I might go back and forth for awhile- is that totally annoying? Soon after returning home from our vacation it was back to school time. Sigh, gone are the days that I get to chose the first day of school clothes.

This shot was their idea.

This is his smile- so painful, but he is trying so hard.



Buddy likes to walk the kids to the bus stop.


Bye Bye! Off to first and fourth grade!

SNOW DAY!

So... I know I just finished blogging about our beach vacation in August, but before I continue playing catch up (and I will) I figure you all want to see some snow pictures, right? Tuesday night it became clear a HUGE storm was heading our way. The predictions were for 8-12 inches. We assumed that meant we were getting 8 inches, but we were still pretty excited. It was expected to begin around midnight and the heaviest hitting during the morning commute and continuing all day. The perfect scenario for a snow day. Sure enough the call came around 5:30am. When I finally got up after 9am there was already 14 inches on the ground and it was still coming down. Marc had decided the night before to just work from home (let's be clear his company was still open- state of emergency or not). I decided to make some monkey bread but half way through I realized I did not have an brown sugar. Oh no. Jessica REALLY wanted some monkey bread so I called the neighbor and Jessica suited up over her jammies. What can I say the kids loves her monkey bread. {she is heading to that house in the distance}


The neighbor's kids met Jessica half way with the bag of brown sugar. She brought me the bag but continued to play outside with the neighbors.

(the quality of my images is a little poor since most of these pictures were taken through a window or door- you didn't expect ME to go out in this weather did you?)

Poor Buddy. He didn't know what to do. He wanted to go out but he didn't want to go out. He made a break for it at one point and leaped off the front step and found himself in a hole of snow higher than himself. He then had to try to get out of the whole and back inside. No, we did not help him, we were too busy laughing and taking pictures.


Marc finally ventured outside around 5pm to start the 2+ hours of snow blowing. This gives you an idea of how much snow we got- around 2 feet when all was said and done. We haven't had a storm this big in a long time.

We got a call on Wednesday night that due to the conditions of the road there would be no school on Thursday either. This is almost unheard of, I was sure they were heading back to school. Truth be told a 2 hour delay would have been fine and then we wouldn't be adding another day to the end of the year. On Thursday we all went out to play on the various slide tracks on our front yard. Marc had even started to create some more the night before.

Buddy was a bit more adventurous too. He loved going down the walking path and up the sliding path.



but still- not a big fan.
This one is definitely a big fan!
It is awesome when your front yard is a hill!
This is the only shot I have of their ill conceived and wholly unsuccessful try at getting buddy on a saucer.

Jessica and the neighbors had carved out a fort in the circle area of our cul de sac. Here is a shot of Justin - not too many pics of him since he doesn't like having his picture taken, but he was outside with us.


Marc came home early on Thursday so he could play in the snow too. He really worked on perfecting the various slides.




On Wednesday night Marc snowblowed a HUGE pile of snow at the top of the hill so that we could have a really good slide. This is the view from the top.
Here are some videos I took :

Family Picture Night

By now you all know that one night on our beach vacation is Family Picture Night. We usually try to do it on Tuesday or Wednesday night. Usually in the middle, so we have a nice tan and we are relaxed but not too near the end. Unfortunately Jack's major face sunburn on Sunday meant we had to push it back- then on Wednesday it POURED rain in the afternoon and evening. Unfortunately the weather was very overcast on Thursday night- no nice blue sky or sunset pictures. But we decided Thursday night was much better than Friday night- since we leave early on Saturday and are usually packing on Friday night. We decided to just go for it on the overcast night.

I arrived at the beach with all the kids first and decided to get some pictures of them while we waited. {it seems Justin always ends up next to Emma- think we need to separate them a bit more next time}

And of course the crazy shot!

The girls:
The boys:
Our whole gang {Justin decided he wanted to have his arm around me and since it was a self timer deal and I had about 2 seconds I didn't fight him.}
Our Crazy Shot:
The Hartzogs. Historically the Hartzogs always seem to have so many nice pictures. Sigh- wish I had two kids that would pose and smile at the same time.



The Odells. Poor Jack he had a tough time even doing this little smile- his mouth hurt.

Our Family.




And, one of my favorite pictures- our family in one shot.

Then we decided to take Matt's hat and play around. The kids were also given a few extra cameras so there were LOTS of outtakes from this night.





This is how Justin feels about the end of Family Picture Night.