Swim Team

This summer brought Emory and Ellie's fourth season swimming on a swim team.  For the first three seasons, they swam for the Fighting Turtles Swim Team that was made up of kids from a few different neighbhorhoods in our area because Palencia didn't have enough kids for their own team.  This year we finally got our own team...the Palencia Piranhas.  We have an incredible new pool in our neighborhood just for swim team and our first season we had somewhere between 75-90 swimmers.  It was so wonderful to practice and swim half of our meets in our own neighbhorhood!

 

 

 

Heat winner ribbons are earned for having the fastest time in the pool for an individual heat.  Emory and Ellie each earned a few of these this season.  Way to go! 

Summer Camps

Summer fun started quickly for both Emory and Ellie with camps the first week of summer vacation!  Emory attended a band camp at Pacetti Bay Middle School where he will be in sixth grade in the fall.  He has chosen to play the saxophone so this was his first chance to learn how to do that.

After just four 7 hour days of camp, the beginning band had their first concert!  They were able to play four short songs and the scale.We were so amazed at all that they had learned in such a short period of time!

Ellie attended the first of two weeks of Art Camp at the St. Augustine Art Associaiton.  The first week was all about mixing colors and creating portraits.  She loved every minute of it!

 Here she is showing one of her creations.  A self portrait...see the bow?

They also created a picture that they first drew on paper of themselves and then cut it out of it fabric scraps to form a quilt square.  All of the portaits squares will be sewn together to form a large quilt that will hang on display in the St. Aug Art Assocation gallery for many years to come.  We will get to see it on August 5th where Ellie will be one of the artists displaying her art in the Art Walk.

Ellie's second week of art camp was all about birds.  They learned to draw birds and make several different types of origami birds.  They also created bird nests using many different types of materials wrapped around a balloon.  Ellie's is here in the center sitting on top of the pink balloon (what else would she pick?!?).

She also made a picture of a toucan that they turned into a kite.

Emory is currently in the middle of his second camp.  This one is a Marine Science Camp where he is learning a little biology and also getting to go on lots of day trips to do fun things like snorkel in the springs, canoe and kayak.  He is having a blast and is exhausted each afternoon when I pick him up.  It's great to be eleven!

Father's Day

This Father's Day did not bring our usual trip to the beach for a day of sun and fun.  Instead Dan had to attend the last day of the Bricks 4 Kidz conference for the better part of the day.  We missed him a lot during the day but did get to spend the afternoon in the pool together and enjoy a nice dinner before heading off to bed early.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy!  We all love you!!!

Last Day of School 2010-2011

June 9th finally got here and brought the last day of school.  Along with it, it brought the last time that Emory and Ellie will get on the bus together until high school when Emory is a senior and Ellie is a freshman.

Happy Mustangs!

Emory's 5th Grade Celebrations

The end of fifth grade brought lots of celebrations for Emory.  The first of these came back in March when they went on their big fifth grade field trip to Universal Studios in Orlando.  Nearer the end of the year, the class had their fifth grade dance in May.  Emory surprised us by wanting to go all out and wear a dress shirt, tie and a navy blazer.  He sure did look handsome though once he had them all on together!

On the evening of June 6th, we attended the awards ceremony.  Here Emory received awards for his achievements during elementary school.

The day before the last day of school Emory's class had a pizza party to celebrate and enjoy their last couple of days together as a class and their last couple of days as Mustangs.

They ate pizza and cake and took silly pictures with their friends.

Each of Emory's elementary school teachers is still teaching at Mill Creek, so we were able to get one last picture with each of them.

Mrs. Sprinkle from kindergarten

Mrs. Brocksmith from 1st grade

Emory's favorite teacher...Mrs. Tipton from 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades

Ms. Benton from 5th grade

An Extra Special Visit!

On May 26th we were treated to extra special visitors here in Florida.  Jack, Max, Leigh-Emma and Kenny came to visit us for a long weekend and we were so excited!  Ellie made this super-cute sign to greet them with in the airport.

There were so many things that we wanted to share with Jack and Max during their visit that it was hard to choose what to do first.  We decided to go to the Jacksonville Zoo on our first day since all of the kids love animals and it had a neat dinosaur exhibit going on that we watned to show Jack who totally loves anything dinosaur!

Jack took control of the map when we got inside the Zoo and we were off to see all of the animals.  Jack of course just wanted to know where he could find the dinosaurs! 

Jack rode the zoo carousel on the most appropriate animal.

The neatest part of our Zoo is where you can actually get to feed the giraffes by hand.  It's always my favorite and I couldn't wait to share it with Jack too.  Emory and Ellie went first and were all giggles as the giraffes ate out of their hands.  To my surprise Jack wasn't scared either although he did drop his leaf before the giraffe got to eat it and I didn't get a good picture of him.

Max was such a trooper all day long!  It was a hot day but he stayed in the stroller, enjoyed his pacifier and just took in all of the things going on around him.  How did I not get a baby like this ?!? 

Near the end of our day at the Zoo, Emory and Ellie convinced us that they needed to show Jack the little playground area.  Here they had lots of fun running, climbing and playing hide and seek together and we had to eventually pull them away so that we could go home.  Ellie and Jack were all smiles in the huge bird nest.

The rope bridges were not even a challenge for Jack!

We all loved getting to spend time with baby Max.  At eight months old at the time of his visit, we had only gotten to spend time with him once before at Thanksgiving.  He rarely stops smiling and is just so sweet all the time unless he's hungry...and that boy has figured out how to eat and to do it all by himself too!

  

Here is Jack enjoying his first s'more.  When I asked him he didn't seem too sure if he really liked it, but he did a good job of giving it a try.  Poor little Max grabbed a cactus sitting on a side table while we were making these and it turned into a bit of a sad night.  We were all relieved when he was better in the morning.

Our last day together came much too soon but we made the most of it at the beach!  With all of these little red heads we spent lots of time putting on sunscreen and then we were off for a great day.

 

By the end of a fun day at the beach we all felt like Jack...exhausted but in a good way.

Time flew by during our long weekend together but it was so much fun to see all of the cousins together.  We hope that there will be many more of these visits in the years to come.  Thank you Kenny and Leigh-Emma for braving the flight with two little ones and spending part of your vacation time with us.  We love you all !!!