Rest of August

 

First Day of 4th Grade

 

Leona gets to be in Miss Whitlock's inaugural class. Miss Whitlock doesn't know how lucky she is to have Leona in her class! Leona is trying to put on a brave face in the photo, but she was actually super bummed. Ms. Allen, her much loved dyslexia teacher from last year, unexpectedly didn't come back to Coyote Ridge this school year and neither did Mrs. Dawson, who Leona was hoping to get. Additionally, none of her friends were in her class. Not an auspicious start to the year, but Leona is a sweet friend and a hard worker, so she was still hopeful as to how the year would go.

First Week of August, Last Week of Summer Vacation

We went to Little Elm Beach with the Stevens Squad and Beck. Everybody had a great time swimming in the lake and trying to stay cool in the obscenely hot weather. There were mud fights, swimming and floating contests, and a general good time.

I have no idea what was going on in this photo, but people were having a good time, except, maybe Tim. He doesn't look like he's enjoying himself that much. He looks like he might be regretting that he doesn't have brothers.

The Bernhisels invited us to go tubing with them, the Carlsons, and the Stevens. The kids had a blast and it was non-stop fun as they took turns riding on the tube or chatting with friends on the boat. Tim steadfastly refused to ride on the tube, but he enjoyed eating snacks on the boat. I was really proud of the girls for being super sweet friends. All of them wanted to go as fast as possible, but voluntarily went slower on one of their turns so that a friend could ride with them and not be scared. Leona also stood up for a friend when another friend was making fun of her for wanting to go slow. I was so happy to see her unafraid to take a stand, even when it was a friend who she had to stand up to.

More photos that I don't know the origin story to. I do know that Leona was standing on a stool. This feels a little bit like a flash forward to what Leona will look like when she's a teenager... if she goes through a pioneer fashion phase.

We celebrated the last day before school starting with a trip to Chick-Fil-A.

 

End of July

We stopped by Gma and Gpa Roueche's house on our way back to Texas. We only stayed for about 48 hours, but it was fun to see them.

We had a Primary party/service project

 

North Dakota

This was the view from the cabin where we stayed in North Dakota. It was also generally representative of the rest of North Dakota. There was not much there. We did learn that canola and flax are major exports of North Dakota because we googled to discover what crops were growing in the fields of beautiful yellow or blue flowers. The town we were staying in had a population of 24 and it was the county seat. 

The wildlife in North Dakota seemed to be prairie dogs and grasshoppers. There were so many grasshoppers that it almost rose to Biblical plague levels. Every step you took hundreds of grasshoppers would fly up into the air. The kids enjoyed trying to catch them.

They're pointing at a prairie dog right behind them. The soundtrack of our hike there was a chorus of squeaky toys, or rather it was a host of angry prairie dogs trying to get us to move along.

 

South Dakota

You know you're in South Dakota when... instead of cows on the side of the road, there's bison.

Mt. Rushmore did not disappoint! Neither did South Dakota in general. While we were a little disappointed that we couldn't follow in the footsteps of "National Treasure" and go behind the faces to discover a treasure, or "North by Northwest" and climb down the presidents' faces it was still super cool to get to see the monument in person. You could still get pretty close and see it really well which was cool. We did watch both of those movies while on this trip. National Treasure 2 was a big hit. North by Northwest was less of a hit, except for the love scenes. Those got a big reaction. Clearly we are no longer in the phase of life where we can hope that things will just go over people's heads.  The lines, "I'm a big girl." "Yes, and in all the right places." Generated much mockery and guffawing. 

fulfilling a Jr. Ranger requirement to hug a tree. Clearly she was very enthusiastic about it.

There were a couple places in the parks where we hiked that had holes blasted through rock in order to continue the roads. They were only big enough for one car to drive through at a time so you had to sort of try to guess when the cars on the other side were going to let you through/play chicken.

We also did some hiking in South Dakota. The area that we did our biggest hike in was called the Needles. It was really beautiful and the kids had fun climbing on all the rocks. 

All around town there were bison statues. The kids started calling them like you call Herbies in the Herbie game. First it was fun. Then it got competitive. Then it got shut down.

Let it be known that while I am responsible for the pants being tucked into socks (tick prevention) I was not responsible for assembling the outfits.

The kids loved the RV that we stayed in. Collin and me not so much. It felt like sleeping on a boat as you could feel the whole thing move in the wind.

While we were in South Dakota we decided to do an Alpine Slide. There were two tracks, one was the fast track and one was the slow track. Neither track ended up being that fast, but it was a fun thing to have done.

 

First Week of July

Taken at 4th of July Fireworks

This was a group effort Lego creation. They each built their own room to live in in the house. I'm told that parents have to live in the backyard. Rude.

Leona gave her Barbie a cut an color. All I could hear when I saw it was that line from Toy Story 1 when Stinky Pete get's put in a random girl's backpack at the airport and the Barbie in the backpack turns to him and says, "You'll like Amy. She's an artist!"