One year anniversary

July 22, 2008-July 22, 2009



It has been one year exactly since we moved to Lula, and it has flown by!! It has been a tough year to say the least, but I am so grateful to have a place that my children and I call home, especially after living in other people's houses for the year and a half before we moved here. As crazy as it may seem, this is the longest Kit has EVER lived in one house, and it is the first time Riley has ever completed an entire school year in one preschool!! So, thank you to everyone who has helped us through this rough time-which is pretty much everyone we know, so thank you ALL!!
**Quick update:
Riley has completely recovered from his broken arm and surgery.
He is a swimming MANIAC- he loves going swimming and I am amazed just watching him swim so well-considering his lessons at the Y last year were a joke. He is a little fish!
He is excited and slightly apprehensive about kindergarten, which might be my fault. I don't want him to be behind the other kids, so we have been working on writing and recognizing sight words this summer, and he is not a fan of that.

Kit would gladly go to kindergarten with Riley, she says she is a grown up and tells people she is 5 if they ask how old she is!!
She turned 3 on Monday, and I will post about her party when I can get the pictures off my camera, having to use the old one...long story.
Has recently become obsessed with our dog, she follows Lulu around calling her baby-not sure what that's about!
Kit is a little fish too, she swims with her face in the water-don't know where she learned that. She can almost keep up with Riley in the pool, and whatever he does-she does it too.

I am doing ok, trudging my way through the projects and finals of my summer classes. I will be glad when they are done, but that also means it is time to go back to work!
I am excited about this year though, now that I actually know what I am doing!
I am slightly looking forward to being back on a schedule too, despite all my great intentions of having a set schedule for the summer- we have not had any kind of schedule. Kit has missed her naps more days than not, which I'm sure her teachers will appreciate!
I am totally loving this weather too, how awesome is it that in July we are in the mid 80's?!?!?

The sky is falling, the sky is falling!!!!!!!

Meet Chicken Little! Riley went to spend the day with Mr. Bobby at his farm a few weeks ago. He came home tired, dirty and with a CHICKEN!! Apparently it was the runty chicken, the only one that Riley could catch and he begged to bring it home and Mr. Bobby said ok because he didn't expect it to live more than a few days. But, here we are, two and a half weeks later and Chicken Litte, or Chickie for short is doing just fine! It will walk over to me if I talk to it, but I have only touched it once and that was because we were having a torrential downpour and I felt bad that it was outside. It is living in our little tykes playhouse as I didn't have an extra chicken coop laying around and Lulu is VERY fascinated by it. She hasn't hurt it, but she'll get right up on it and push it around with her nose so I think she might hurt it if she gets the chance. The kids were outside carrying it all around and playing with it for the first week, but now the novelty has worn off and I have to remind Riley to go check on it and feed it. Anyway, this is just more proof of just how country we are becoming and I thought everyone might get a laugh out of this!!

Riley's pictures

Sometimes I make the mistake of letting Kit play with the camera, and it ends up broken and I have to send it in to be fixed. Riley, however, is careful with the camera (yes I know he's 5 and she's only 2!) and he takes the most random pictures, as I'm sure all children do. I usually just delete all of them, but this time he asked me to save them and put them on the computer for him, which is how he thinks of our blog-just on the computer. So, here is Gainesville through the eyes of Riley!!

Fourth of July, Calhoun Style

We spent the fourth over at my parent's house in Calhoun, and this was actually the fourth year in a row!! I know that might not seem like much, but considering all the moving we have done in the past four years, it's a lot to me! We went over on the first to have a few days with Oma and Grandpa, then Dan and Summer came up on the 3rd. The kids and I camped out friday night in a tent-which I will NOT do with Kit again until she is 10 years old. She stayed up until 3 in the morning!!! I was so tired and sore the next day, and I even slept on an air mattress! Riley and I built a big fire (with just a little help from Grandpa and Uncle Dan) and you can see how proud he is! My dad and Dan did the fireworks again, and the kids had a blast with the sparklers and shooting the roman candles (safe, right?). We had a great time and the only rotten part was taking the tent down in the rain sunday morning, yuck!

Kit's big girl bed!!

While the kids were in Newnan I painted and set up Kit's new big girl bed. As you can see in the video she was kind of oblivious at first, I had to point it out to her, but she loved it! She has done so well in it too, I was worried that she would be up and in trouble (like her brother!) with her new found freedom, but she has not had any problems with that, she lies down and goes to sleep easily at nap time and at bedtime! When Riley moved to his big bed he had to be closed in his room and I had to take out all the toys because he would stand on them to turn the lights on, so I am thankful Kit has done such a great job! I didn't want Ry to feel left out so I got him a transformers tshirt, which came with a free poster, and transformer bowl and plate. It wasn't much but it made him happy!