Rocking Portland with the 25th anniversary tour!

Hmmm, im getting the bug again! Awesome trip over three days on naches trail… Woot woot!

Johnny and i getting some bonding time!

The kids got off to their 1st day of school, on time and even a little early!  Shawn drove them but only after leaving the house so quickly without me noticing.  I called and had to ask him to turn around because the kid’s class schedules were still sitting on the couch in the living room, I hadn’t given them lunch money AND I hadn’t had time to pray with them before taking off.  Momma was just a “little” panicked.

Last night I climbed into bed around 10:30pm and heard Sarah crying down in her bedroom. I went down not knowing if it was a bad dream or something else making her little heart sad.   Turns out she was dreading going back to school. We’ve talked about this a few times over the summer, many times actually.  She HATES the cussing and swearing and being around all that negativity all day long. She even tried begging me a few months ago to homeschool her instead. I’ve been praying with her and I’m trying to encourage her by telling her that we truly believe that God has our family at Gaiser MS for a reason.  I can point out positive things, friends, teachers, but she doesn’t care. I assure her we’re doing what we can to make the experience as positive as possible – that’s why we feel so strongly about dropping the kids off and picking them up every day and keeping them off that school bus at all costs. But I don’t know how long we can keep that up. I’m certainly not going to share that with her and stress her out further, we’re just praying that God shows us how to get another car and still be financially responsible or find a creative solution.

We had our HS small groups over last night for our end of the year BarBQ. Sarah asked a few of my girls to go down to her room and help her pick out an outfit for the first day of school.  She ended up with all 9 of them piled into her room, combing her closet, raiding her jewelry drawer, etc.  She may not have an older sister, but she certainly has my SG girls looking out for her! <grin>   We ended up at Payless Shoes yesterday and found Sarah a pair of black and white “fake Converse” that look cute on her (note this year’s photo).  AND, because of the style of clothes she wears, she can wear them with jeans and a t-shirt or some of her cuter funky outfits.  She also wore one of her new pairs of jeans today that are a perfect fit. Yesssss…   

Johnny was wearing one of his new shirts (that he loves!!!) and his new tennis shoes last night. He says they’re the most comfortable shoes he’s ever worn!  (Adidas “running” style shoes instead of the bulky skater-type shoes)  Unfortunately the rest of him looked like he was ready for a flood.  After taking stock, I quickly realized that even the athletic pants he’s worn all summer long are now WAAAY too short!!! Ahhhh…  I’m going to pick them up from school and have to at least get 1 pair of jeans at Target or something. He is going to SERIOUSLY get made fun of! LOL.  Scratch that.  Shawn just informed me that he’s picking the kids up and I won’t have the car tonight like I had hoped.  I guess I need to make the time to dig around the find his cargo shorts for tomorrow’s outfit.  Pants shopping will have to wait until tomorrow.  And I just realized that neither of the kids have gym shorts/t-shirts so I’ll need to add that to my shopping list.
I’m off to clean the house. It is always so nice to get back into a routine and only clean it ONCE a day.  That has to be one of my favorite parts about the kids going back to school!  And despite the challenges of this summer, I missed hanging out with both of them today… <grin>

b

Becky and the kids headed off to Michigan for a couple of weeks… they had a pretty good plane ride… on the flight from texas they flew on a huge plane with nine rows across and tv’s in every headrest! Heaven for kids (and mom!…)  not bad for bumpy iphone pics…

Johnny can find video games anywhere, apparently!

See? Dr. Pepper tastes the same even without carbonation!

So... We're here, and we need to be...