First Week of School, Chris in Manila

We love our new school!  Both girls love their new teachers, and I am falling in place with the rest of the faculty and my students too.
A few weeks ago, Chris got an amazing promotion, that makes him director of the call center at his company.  They were in the process of opening a call center in Manila, Phillipines, and asked him to go over there for a week.  Which just happened to be the first week of school.  So it was a tough week, and I have a new found respect for single moms and military moms etc!  The girls did ok without him, but now, exactly 2 weeks after he dropped them off in Joplin, they are really ready to see him tonight!  Maybe I didn't feel the need to come home as quick since I knew he wouldn't be there, but we got home late every night.  So that made the time we had at home very rushed with homework and bath and lunches etc in time for bed.  I'm excited for him to get home too!

This is the only pic I remembered to take on the first day of school!

These pictures with the signs are the 2nd day of school.  I ran out of time on day 1!

Loving the uniforms.  G told me earlier this week that she loves wearing uniforms because then she doesn't have to be stressed about what to wear each morning.  Took the words right out of my mouth!

I asked them to show me a tooth smile!

Chris sent me flowers for my first week back.  Love that guy.

Here are last years pictures!

A Week without the Girls

Saturday Chris drove the girls to Joplin, MO and came back to Dallas all in one day!  Since I had in-service and weird hours all week, I worked it out with my mom that they stay with her all week.  It was a blessing, because there were a few days I wasn't home until 8:30 at night!  This is the first summer ever I have not been to StL, and that hurts my heart so much!  I'm glad the girls could go though.  They had a blast hanging out with Aunt Colleen and Shannon, Uncle Ryan, Baby Brendan, and of course the grandparents.  Uncle Craig was even in StL for a night or 2 for business so they got to see him too.  And maybe best of all, Gianna and Sophia got to reunite twice, thanks to my mom coordinating with Rebecca.  Then, after a week, I drove back to Joplin to pick the girls up.  It was wonderful to see them!

Aunt Colleen and Rebecca's baby, Mary

Love everything in this pic!

Aunt Colleen took the girls to the Magic House!

We found a park in Joplin.  Glad to see Ry!

WE stopped on the way home near Lake Eufala- prettiest place in OK if you ask me!

 The next day (Sunday) we hit the ground running- taking the girls to the park with the dog.  This is their latest trick- DarDar running next to G on her bike, while Elia tries to catch up.

This was literally seconds before Daria took off across the street and almost got hit by a car, 

just so she could say hello to another dog across the street.

Then we had a back to school mass and came home to get ready for the first day!

Slipped Away...

School preparation always starts way too early!  This was such a fun summer, I am sad to see it go.  We packed in a lot though!  The last few weeks were spent pretty quietly at home.  Love.

Crafting

Science experiments!

Toe Painting

Quirkle

On our last day home together, we ventured out to the Dallas zoo.  We left at 8:30 and were home by 12.  We were VERY sweaty.  Later on we got all dressed up (just like last year) and went out to eat fancy cupcakes.  A good, bittersweet day.

My fave pic of the day!

Some guy gave us free tickets to the Carousel.
They were so excited!

Adult Time- ATL

Megan arranged for babysitters to come over 2 times while all the adults were in town.  We went out to dinner on Friday night and then to Sweet Water Brewery and The Vortex on Saturday.  So fun to be with my sisters too!  We missed Colleen and Ryan of course!

Bro in Laws

Book Ends.  Chris photo bombs.

*can't fix my wonky pictures... sorry!

Pool, Zoo and Baseball- ATL

Megan has a neighborhood pool just down the street, so we went quite a few times.  The pool has a lot of strict rules, the most important one that you cant be alone under the age of 18.  Almost every time we went, we had the whole pool to ourselves.  We usually packed lunch or even dinner and stayed quite a while.

This is where Elia got her nickname "Elia Franch"

One day we went to the Atlanta zoo!  This was the first day they wore their camp shirts.  Too cute!  It was a very hot day, so off to the pool once we got back.

Missing: Brendan was with mom and dad at the ATL aquarium

One night we went and saw the minor league team play.  Very kid friendly!

Tailgate first

Such a good walker!

Deep Conversations

Cousin Love at its very best!

Cousin Camp- ATL

With school quickly approaching, I am finding less time to look through pictures and create videos and lists like I did for our AZ trip.
 We have put more miles on our beautiful minivan since March than the average family does in a year!  I am so blessed to have 2 months off a year where it is possible for us as a family to do such fun things and see family etc.
We were home for a week in Dallas for 6 days and then we re-packed the car and drove to Atlanta.  Chris flew back to Dallas to work all week and then flew back to Atlanta to help me drive back to Dallas.
Megan and I had been scheming since our visit to ATL last year to come out and do some cousin camp.  I found a lot of stuff on pinterest and sort of themed the week "Dr. Seuss."
We read Green Eggs and Ham, and then made "green eggs and ham" using dyed green pudding and Nilla wafers.  Huge hit with the littles.

We read Red Fish Blue Fish and did a graphing project with rainbow goldfish.

We read The Lorax and did some sweet and condensed milk painting.  Very fun for the kiddos, but the painted papers stuck to themselves and got a little smelly by the next day.

Sorry this Bday card never got to you Uncle Ryan.  It was too sticky and smelly!

Aunt Shanny's genius Shark-Nado picture.

Another thing we did was put white roses in different colored food dye (I couldn't find carnations) and after 3 days, 3 roses were dead, 1 was very light pink and 1 was very light green.  Sort of a flop.  Don't always believe pins from pinterest!  This is a lie!

We did Christmas in July and read The Grinch that day. 

We skyped Grandma and she read them some Christmas stories.

We read Fox in Socks as well but I had no pictures for that.  It was nice to put a little structure in the cousin's mornings.  We re-read a lot of Dr. Seuss at night too.  What a fun week!