Be Strong & of a Good Courage

Back to school time is filled with family traditions. One of my favorites is kicking off the year with a special family night, introducing our family theme for the school year. We took down last year's theme off the fridge & put up our new theme.

This year we choose a scripture from the Old Testament. It is Joshua 1:9 which says:

"Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."

There are so many amazing truths & applications within this scripture that we will have fun talking about during the next year. Monday we kicked off our new theme, talked about the scripture and what it means to be strong and to have good courage. Everyone wrote or drew a picture of someone/something that that was strong and showed courage.

Hayley's Drawing about Daniel being strong and having courage

We also talked about not being afraid when we are in new situtations, like school - that we are never alone. As Jake said, "You mean I can have a little bit of Jesus in my heart with me so I won't be scared." That's right buddy!

This is actually the 2010 youth theme for the church as well, so there are so many amazing things online to help reinforce this theme like this music video .

We ended with a fun treat to remind us to Be Strong!

1st Day of School!

It's BACK TO SCHOOL time!

Michael is a FRESHMAN!

Trevor is in 5th Grade.

Hayley is in 3rd Grade.

Jake is in Kindergarten!



Can you feel the excitement in the air?

Ready for School!

Hayley, Jake, Trevor, Michael & Ade
August 23, 2010

Early to Rise

In addition to starting high school today, Michael had his first day of early morning seminary at church. Seminary is from 6 - 6:50 am here, so it was still dark when he left.




Because we live so close to the church, Michael & his friend Ade have time to come back to the house before catching the bus to their high school. They got back just in time for another breakfast with the younger kids and the 1st day of school pictures. It should be a great year!

Getting Ready

Friday was the annual ice cream social/meet your teacher at the elementary school. Michael came with me to coordinate meeting the different teachers at the same times for Trevor, Hayley & Jake. It was good he was with us, since Jake & I had to visit the Nurse's office just minutes after getting to the school. Apparently Jake's knee wanted to get a close up view of the concrete, so we gave Nurse Garcia a little practice before the big 1st day of school. But once the cut was cleaned up, Jake was as good as new & ready to get on with the ice cream.

Jake has the same kindergarten teacher that Michael had 9 years ago. I had to snap a picture of the 3 of them together.



Hayley got to meet her teachers, both great teachers we've had before.




Afterwards we enjoyed a fun Blue Bell popsicle. After we had the popsicle, I said it was time to go. Jake informed me that we couldn't leave before they brought out the ice cream. I explained they gave us popsicles instead this year & he was not impressed. "What kind of school is this, don't they know the difference between ice cream and popsicles?!"



I think it is going to be an interesting year for Jake & his sweet teacher!

Palm Beach

One of the fun prizes at the Houston Public Library Summer Reading Program was free tickets to Moody Garden's Palm Beach down in Galveston. We wanted to take another trip to the beach before school started, and we'd never been there before, so we thought we'd check it out for free. So Thursday we packed up the car & had a fun family day at Palm Beach.




I checked it out briefly online before we went & saw they had white sand, free umbrellas & chairs and some fun stuff for little kids. Unfortunately, it wasn't really on the beach so the only water to really splash in was a pool, which was still fun (just not the beach some peeps in our family were really looking forward to). But soon everyone was have a blast.



They have this area with 2 small water slides. Luke was delirious with laughter, loving to go down the slides. Everyone had fun on the slides, teaming up and going down together in groups, as well as separately.

In the same area there were also all these things you can push to spray people with water. Michael, Trevor & Jake had a blast ambushing the innocent bystanders. Michael was such a good sport, and would let other small kids catch him "unsuspectingly" and get him slopping wet, and they would just laugh so hard.

While the 3 Amigos were busy terrorizing small children, Hayley and Luke were having fun in the sand.

We got a good rainstorm while we were there, mainly while I was burying Jake in the sand. It didn't last long but the rain felt good and cooled things off a few degrees.

We tried to take a picture of all the kids before we left for the day, but Luke was pretty tired by that point and wanted nothing to do with the picture business. So here is one of the funnier ones as we gave up trying to get everyone smiling.

Despite what the last picture looks like, we really did have a great time and loved spending the day together to celebrate the end of summer.

And what says summer best than driving thru Sonic on the way home during Happy Hour and getting 1/2 price slushes for everyone.

Good times!!<>

Wrapping Up the Summer

Just a few random things from August...

We dogsat our friends cute dog for 10 days. Luke was petrified of Lexie the first day but slowly warmed up to her. By the last few days, he would run up to her and say "Hi" and then pant to her in baby/dog language. It was pretty funny. And he loved grabbing her dishes any chance he got...thank goodness they were usually empty when he grabbed them!

Also this month, Michael wrapped up another season of basketball, this time playing with a AAU team that went to tournaments all around the Houston area. They played their last tournament & then had fun a week later at Schlitterbahn in Galveston.




The last week we've been busy getting ready to go back to school and doing a few last chance summer fun things like having a Harry Potter movie Marathon.

Oh, fun summer days - we will miss you!

Unaccompanied Minor

The middle of August, Trevor took a solo flight to Washington DC to visit his Mangum cousins in Northern Virginia for a week. This was Trevor's first time flying as an unaccompanied minor & he did great. Of course, Trevor made friends with the flight attendants who gave him all sorts of extra treats on the plane. He had the same group of attendants on the flight back and they thought it was great!

Trevor had an amazing time visiting his cousin Myles and family. This was the only family that wasn't able to make it to the Mangum Reunion earlier this summer, so it was so great that Trevor was able to go visit one of his favorite cousins. They made the most of their week together, hitting a Washington National baseball game, swimming, visiting Gettysburg, and having fun at Splashtown Water Park.

And of course, they still had plenty of time to do one of their favorite activities - playing video games!

We were all excited for Trevor to come home and tell us about his adventures. He had us laughing so hard at dinner, telling us about some funny experiences on the airplane he had. Jake and Hayley wanted to throw a surprise welcome home party for him so they made him a banner & we made one of Trevor's favorite lemon cakes.

Thanks to Uncle Marc & Aunt Jenn for sponsoring Camp Trevor with Myles this summer! It was AWESOME!

The Library

We love the library & are always so excited to sign up for the summer reading programs that the local libraries offer. The amazing prizes they give out are a great incentive to read lots and lots of books. So this summer we spent a lot of time reading thousands of pages of so many, many books. We discovered some new favorite series along the way.





We gained a newfound respect for all those working at library who kept the shelves stocked with so many great books. Thank goodness for those summer volunteers they have! Our favorite volunteer was a kid named Michael...maybe you've met him too?






Michael logged 33.5 hours of volunteer work this summer at the library, going in to work at least twice a week for the 2 1/2 months of the reading program. He capped off the summer by working one of the children's games at the end-of summer party. Needless to say, that was our favorite stop at the party!

When they wern't busy hitting up Michael's game spot, Jake spent most of the evening dancing up a storm with the children's librarian & Luke was busy stealing Jake's drink.

Yay for books and fun libraries!