Video: Happy Trails

Am I on top of stuff or what?! This stuff just happened TODAY and I'm already done blogging about it! There are several posts below.

Video: Goodbye Kindergarten (to the tune of "The Mickey Mouse Club" theme song)

Video: I Just Can't Wait For 1st Grade (to the tune of "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" from The Lion King)

Video: The Kindergarten Class (to the tune of "The Addams Family")

Video: Nursery Rhyme Rap

Kindergarten Graduation/End of the Year Hawaiian Luau

Today was an emotional day for me. I watched my first-born complete the milestone of getting through his kindergarten year. I cannot express how proud I am of him. I am also very freaked out by how quickly this school year passed by! It makes me scared that the next 12 years are going to go by as quickly as this one did, and before I know it, he will be heading off to college and becoming a man. I'm not ready for that! But people, it's coming!

This year has been such a wonderful opportunity for my Trent. He got to go to a brand spankin' new school and if we were staying here indefinitely, he would be a part of the first class to go all the way from Kindergarten through 12th grade in the Education Village. What an honor to be part of that! I wish we could stay here forever. But the Air Force obviously has different plans for us.

Trent also had the privilege of having who I think is one of the best teachers I have ever met, for his introduction into his school years. Mrs. Nicole Duckett is simply the BEST there is! I can't say enough good things about her. She has truly been my dream-come-true teacher for Trent.

Trent has become an awesome reader, writer, story-teller, scientist, and just an overall great person. I'm so excited for what the future has in store for this boy. Now let's get to the pictures from this momentous occasion!

They had a presentation first, where the kids sang songs that they have been practicing, and then everyone headed back to their respective classrooms to celebrate with diplomas, awards, and food!

Class of 2022 Kindergarten graduation--the first at Mossman Elementary



I told Drew to say "cheese" and this is what I got! LOL



4 of the 6 Kindergarten teachers (Mrs. Duckett is the 2nd from the right)


Principal Stephanie McBride

He caught sight of his Bubba, and his face just lit up! :)

The whole Kinder class

My sweet boy!

Back in the classroom

Trent got the "Awesome Achiever" award! So proud of him!

Kindergarten diploma and Awesome Achiever award

Chowing down

Trent and Mrs. Duckett :)

Trent and Jackie, sittin' in a tree! :) I was remarking on how cute they are, and Jackie's dad said, "Yeah, it's cute now, but in a few years, watch out!" LOL!

Me and my big baby and my little baby!

Soccer party Spring 2010

The FC Rockets had an end of season party and trophy presentation last Thursday (May 27th) at Mr. Gatti's. Here are a few pictures from the evening...

Trent with Coach Rick and Coach Sean



Coach Rick, our "team Mom" Rachel (she rocks!), and Coach Sean



The boys dancing



Drew dancing




Trent, Jayden, and Drew

3 visits from the Tooth Fairy

Trent has now had 3 visits from the tooth fairy!

The top 2 adult teeth are coming in!

Urgh! This is a long post!

I am so not doing well keeping up with this blog. We have been sooooo busy lately! I swear, once your kids are in school, May is just another Christmas-time-in-hiding...except you don't get any presents! Ha ha. We've been having lots of fun, and I absolutely CANNOT believe that Trent's kindergarten year is almost over! How did this happen?!

I totally missed posting about our trip to Florida for the shuttle launch. Back in April, we flew out to FL to meet Aaron (who had been there for a few weeks preparing his payload to go on the shuttle). My mom drove down to Houston to fly with the boys and me, thank goodness. I would not have made it without her! Aaron's mom and sister and our nephew flew out there too. We had such a great time. We stayed in a condo right on the beach and woke up every day to some of the most beautiful sunrises I have ever witnessed. And of course, the shuttle launch was pretty much the coolest thing I've ever seen!

This is a crappy picture because we have a crappy camera, but let's face it...no picture will ever do justice to seeing it in person!

I want to go back and see another launch! As soon as it was over (which was very quickly), I immediately wanted more. Too bad the shuttle is being retired. :( We are going to try to go to maybe the last launch, just Aaron and I. And he won't be working for that one, so I may actually get to see him while we're in Florida! :) I didn't see him much while we were there, other than the day of the launch. We woke up at 1am that day to go get on the shuttle bus over to the VIP viewing area (pretty much the closest you can be to the launch pad without having your eyebrows singed off!) so we spent the rest of that day just recovering from being up so early. Poor Trent didn't take a nap all day, so during dinner he fell asleep at the restaurant in his chair, in the middle of eating a roll! It was quite funny! Moving on because I have a lot to cover...

Trent's class field day was May 7. Fun, fun, fun, and the weather was pretty perfect. Aaron got to go with us too, which was an awesome bonus. Now that his shuttle payload is done, he has lots more time to be with us for fun stuff like that.

Potato sack race!

Trent's class won the Spirit Award! Out of 6 kindergarten classes! I was so proud!

On May 14, my sister graduated from the Collin College Dental Hygiene program! Since it was a Friday and Trent had school, Drew and I drove up to Dallas that Thursday evening and got to attend the pinning ceremony. She has waited for and worked toward this day for a long time, and I could not be more proud of her! She ROCKS! Today is her birthday, and she is also starting her 1st day as a dental hygienist. I can't even begin to describe what this huge step means for her. Did I mention I am super proud of her?! :)

My beautiful sister Traci with her 1st place Table Clinic award and also the Golden Scaler Award! (Google it--it's a BIG deal in the hygiene world!)

Granny, Mom, Traci, and me

On May 20, Trent's class went on a field trip to Space Center Houston. I volunteered to be a chaperone and was in charge of these 3 sweet boys...

Aidan, Trent, and Bodin

Seriously, when I saw the list of what kids went with which chaperone, I said, "Yes! I got the quiet ones!" :) We had lots of fun, and they were all so well-behaved. Trent got to volunteer to see what it's like living in space! Here he is, "sleeping" in space...

The very next day (the 21st), we headed back up to Dallas to go to the Jimmy Buffett concert on May 22. We went with my sister, her boyfriend John, and my aunt and uncle, Donna and Kenneth. We tailgated before the concert and had so much fun, drinking margaritas, eating chips for dinner--LOL--and talking. The concert was awesome...it was my first time seeing Jimmy, as well as Aaron's, Traci's, and John's. Donna and Kenneth are big parrotheads so they have seen him several times. Here's a few pics from tailgating. I didn't get good pictures during the concert because we were kind of far from the stage...we didn't care though! :)

Me and my hubby

Me, Donna, and Traci

Traci and Aaron

Donna and Kenneth

John eating something, I think!

And one more quick photo...On May 26, Trent's soccer team--the FC Rockets--along with their siblings and some friends, got the opportunity to play soccer with 3 of the players from the MLS team, the Houston Dynamo. How cool! The 3 players were #16 Craig Waibel, #2 Eddie Robinson, and #5 Danny Cruz. They were really good with the kids. They ran some drills with the kiddos, and then the 3 of them took on about 20 kids in a game. It was hysterical--they had the adults cracking up, and the kids had SO much fun! Anyway, here's a picture of the guys with Trent's soccer team (plus a few extra kids).

And that's all I will write for now...More to come...I hope! :)

Running

I obviously have not kept up with my blog for anything, and that includes the progress I have made in running. I have actually worked my way up to running for 30 minutes without stopping. The other day I ran outside for the first time (I usually run on the treadmill), and it went great. On the treadmill, I usually only get about 2.5 miles in 30 minutes. So I was quite nervous about ever running a 5K because I didn't want to embarrass myself. But I knew that running outside was completely different. I wanted to get a baseline for running a 5K, so I mapped out a 3 mile route on Map My Run. I was finished in 32 minutes! I was so proud of myself. I guess I have been holding myself back on the treadmill. It really is a mental thing. But when you don't know how fast you're going when you're outside, you can surprise yourself. And I totally did! I was shocked when I looked at my watch when I was done, especially because I felt like I was crawling at some points when I was running into the wind.

So...my next step will be to run a 5K. I haven't decided when I will do that, but as soon as I find one and sign up for it, I will be sure to write about it here!

Shuttle launch

This has been in the works for quite some time, but I have not had time to blog about it. But I am so excited--we are going to Florida from April 1-6 to see the STS-131 launch of space shuttle Discovery!


Aaron's payload that he has been working on for it seems like forever is going up on this shuttle. I can't even tell you how many hours he has spent on this--being out of town almost every other week, "getting off work" only to come home and work for the rest of the evening and weekends via computer and phone...he has sacrificed a lot to get this done. Don't ask me what it is though, because I have no idea! :) Most of what my husband does is way over my head! All I know is that it is a DOD-approved science experiment. That is the extent of my knowledge. Hee hee!


Anyway, so he has to go to KSC (Kennedy Space Center) on March 22, and we will be joining him April 1. My mom is coming down here to Houston to fly with the boys and me (thank goodness--I was not looking forward to flying alone with 2 children), and we will be meeting Aaron's mom and sister Jenn and our nephew Kody there. We have a few days to do some fun stuff with the kids, and then the launch is on April 5 at 6:30am. I am PRAYING that it doesn't slip because planning this trip has taken a lot of effort and time. If we get there and don't get to see the launch before we have to come home on the 6th, I am going to be so upset! This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing for us, and I am so excited that it is something Trent will actually remember. How cool is it that he will be able to say he saw one of the last shuttle launches ever! And we are so excited to get to share this with our families. We haven't seen Jenn and her family in a few years, so they have never met Drew in person. It's going to be such a fun trip! Can't wait!

Losing teeth

Trent has now lost 2 teeth! He lost the first one on December 30.

He really started to talk with a lisp after he lost the first one. It was so cute!! He may still do it, but it may not be as noticeable to me anymore.

The second one he lost was at the Houston Marathon that Aaron ran on January 17. This is him when we first got there, waiting for Daddy to cross the finish line...

You have to look really close, but you can see that there's still only one tooth missing. After Aaron was done with the marathon, we were all hanging out celebrating, and I gave Trent a crunchy granola bar. That must have been when the tooth came out. We had some friends there that we hadn't seen in a while and we told Trent to show them his missing tooth. So he did, and I did a double take and said, "Where is your other tooth?!" Apparently it's somewhere in downtown Houston...or he swallowed it. Only God knows! So this is him after we realized the tooth was gone.

So...what do you do about leaving your tooth under your pillow for the tooth fairy when you have no tooth? This is what parenting is all about...improvisation! We had Trent write a letter to the tooth fairy explaining the situation. Here's what it said:

Dear Tooth Fairy,

I lost a tooth. No really, I lost my tooth. I cannot find my tooth.

Love,

Trent

HYSTERICAL!!! I love that son of mine!

Kindergarten Drama

I know I haven't blogged in FOREVER, but I just had to write this story down so I could have a record of it.

I went to Trent's school today to volunteer and to take some boxes of Kleenex to his teacher. As I was walking to the classroom, they were on their way out to go to recess. I stopped to say hi to Trent and I could tell something was wrong, so I asked him what was wrong. He didn't really respond. About that time, Mrs. Duckett was passing by me and said, "Lover's quarrel." (Trent has a girlfriend in his class named Jackie. They've been an "item" for quite some time.) I just said, "Uh-oh" and went on to the classroom to drop off the Kleenex's. Mrs. Duckett came back in real quick while I was in there, so I asked her what happened. She said she wasn't really sure but apparently they were yelling at each other at lunch. So I went on about my volunteering and she came and found me a little while later and said, "Ok, I got the scoop at recess!" :) Trent had to sit out for a few minutes (because he was talking--surprise), so while he was sitting there, she said he looked so sad so she asked him what happened with Jackie. He started crying! He said that Jackie said Ethan was her boyfriend and not Trent anymore. Mrs. Duckett told him that she loves him and his mommy loves him, and it's going to be okay. I went to the classroom later to talk to her about something else, and the kids were in there so I got to see Trent and give him a hug, and he actually seemed fine at that point.

Fast forward to a few minutes ago when Trent got home. He told me that he had a little trouble today, but that it was all worked out now.

Me: "Oh? What happened?"
Trent: "Jackie changed her boyfriend to Ethan, but then Ethan changed it back."
Me: "How did she change her boyfriend?"
Trent: "She did Eeny Meeny Miney Moe, and it was Ethan." (I about fell out of my chair at this point laughing!)
Me: "So how did it end up?"
Trent: "Ethan told Jackie, 'I'm not yours', so it changed back to me."

Sounds like Ethan is a pretty good friend! :)

All because of an ill-fated game of Eeny Meeny Miney Moe!

I promise I will catch up with my blogging soon!