Trick or Treat 2017

If you asked, half of our family would say Halloween is not their favorite holiday. Ansley and I like it; Layne is wavering depending on his mood; Garyn and Daddy would both say its their least favorite! None the less, everyone participates and we enjoy it!

Garyn chose Luigi; Ansley chose Mal from Descendants and Layne eventually chose a blue Power Ranger. He had at one point wanted to be Luigi like Garyn but changed when he saw all the options.
Next year, we will start looking for costumes earlier because we have some issues finding what everyone wanted! We thankfully got Ansley's in the mail the day before she had to wear it to school. And then Garyn's had to be hemmed because it was a man's size!

To start, the kids got to dress up at school the Friday before Halloween as a fundraiser. Emma rode with us that morning so we had almost the whole crew! Layne was not going to be left out!

In fact, Layne had been wearing his costume quite often. It was so funny to look in my rear view and see a blue Power Ranger!

The kids also painted pumpkins for the school contest. Ansley wanted Mal just like her costume and Garyn wanted a world with an Eagle (school mascot). Layne, again, couldn't be left out and painted a monster with eyes that were crying, he said.

We had a church get together and all the kids wore their costumes. We love our new church (not so new anymore but since last blog posts it is!) The kids all enjoy getting together and playing.

Probably can see Ansley wasn't Mal here. She got the red fish headband from a teacher at school and decided she wanted to wear that instead. I had to figure out the rest! Just never know with Ansley!


Halloween night, we went to some friends' house that live in a big neighborhood near by. We have been trick or treating there the last couple years and its impossible to get to all the houses even! Which makes for lots of candy!

The boys got tired of walking pretty quickly. They decided it wasn't worth the candy, haha! Brinkley hitched a ride some too!

This last one is on here because we got a good laugh out of it! We went to see Nana and Poppa Halloween night and they had their Halloween lights on and had put a Christmas tree up with the lights on. To make it funnier, Tyler had announced that Christmas music would start playing on the radio earlier that night. He and Nana love Christmas and are ready to celebrate!

Also, sorry about all the video ones. Its not actually a video put has the short motion on my phone when looking at it so the computer is reading it as one. I will have to figure that one out!

Eclipse Day!

This August we got to witness a total solar eclipse here in Sale Creek! We had totality for 1.5 minutes here at our house, whereas Chattanooga was for seconds and even Soddy was like 30 seconds. For this reason, we decided to have a party to allow people to see the totality for longer. Nana and Poppa threw the party at their house!

It was fun letting the kids see but also worried us moms some. There were lots of news report advising to be extremely careful! It worked great though because the kids were preoccupied with each other and we had to actually stop them to look!

Cool event to witness and good friends to spend it with!

First Day of School, 4th grade; 1st grade; and preschool

Summer goes so fast! We are already in school full swing but wanted to remember the fun excitement about our first days this past fall!

Garyn didn't say much about school in the days leading up. That night before he did say he was excited to see everyone and see who all was in his class. Mrs. Elrod is his teacher this year.
The 4th and 5th grade hall is in the back of the school so we haven't been back there much! Neither of us knew much about Mrs. Elrod so we were both anxious to see how this year would go!

There were several people in his class he had never been in class with. I'm still trying to remember everyone's names. And as usual, he is doing well in class and Mrs. Elrod is great!

Ansley had a familiar face! Ms.Dent was Garyn's teacher for 1st grade, not that she remembers that!
Even still, Ansley was excited to have the same teacher. She doesn't have many people in her class from last year so that took getting used to. I went to eat lunch with her one day and she was sitting with boys.(Not that this is bad, she just usually plays with girls more) I asked about it and she said she wanted to sit there so she would be next to her friends from last year sitting at a table next to her. She has since started making friends with girls in her class but it took some getting used to. She also had to get back in the swing of being away from mom and home. She cried a few times after the first few days, not wanting to go. We had to start offering a shopping spree for not crying all week. She loved that idea! After two weekends, we scaled it back until we didn't even need to mention it anymore.

Ansley was pretty excited the night before, I went to lay at her first day outfit and found that she had already done that and had shoes ready too!

Layne has his same teacher and is in the 3 year old room again since he won't go to Kindergarten til 2019. He now has class with Brinkley though so he was excited about that! (And we love Ms. Debbie who he has again!) The first day of school, we got report that Brinkley held his hand all day and another girl was kissing him on the cheek! Starts young these days......:)

Layne still likes school for now and gets excited most days. He did however have a couple of weeks were, when I took him, he cried to not go. He would go fine for Pop.

I totally forgot to do his picture in front of the chalkboard but here is him starting to write his name!