Emory is VP!!!

We are so proud of Emory who was elected the Vice President of the Student Council at Mill Creek Elementary on Friday!  Due to a few videotaping glitches earlier in the week he had to give his speech again and this time it was live.  He  must have done great because so many people have called and texted me to tell me that their child said it was the best speech ever. 

Way to go Emory!  You Rock!!!

We Love You!!!

Happy Fall!

It's been a long hot summer here in Florida and we are so ready for Fall. We don't get the beautiful change in colors of the leaves that you get up north, but I did notice a little color on the orange tree in our yard last week and it was a few of the oranges starting to turn.  I guess that will just have to do!

On Wednesday night Ellie and I baked sugar cookies, cut them out with leaf cookie cutters and decorated them as fall leaves for her class to enjoy on the first day of Fall.  It was lots of fun!

Happy Fall!

Emory for VP!

It's election time at Mill Creek and Emory is running for the position of Vice President of the Student Council.  The Student Council is made up of all 5th graders at his school.  There's quite a lot of competition this year for each position on the Council because each class was allowed to nominate two people per position.  With eight 5th grade classes, that adds up to 16 people running per position! 

 

Emory has to give a one minute speech (can't be too long when you've got so many speeches to hear!) today that will be videoed and played for all of the 5th graders on Friday morning.  Last night, Emory and I wrote his speech after Dan gave him a great idea for it.  Emory's going to sing part of his speech to a tune of a song that is popular with his peers right now titled "I'm Not Afraid" by Eminem.  We changed the words to pertain to Mill Creek and his position as VP and it turned out really well.  I'm so proud of his courage to get up there and do something like this!  On Friday morning after all of the speeches are heard, elections will begin and they will announce the winners on the afternoon announcements at the end of the day. 

Good Luck, Emory!!!

First Weekend of Soccer

The fall soccer season started this past Saturday for Emory and Ellie.  With temperatures in the 90s it felt more like the summer, especially by 12:15pm when Emory's game finally started.

Ellie is playing with her team from last season and Coach Bryan.  This year they chose the Stingrays as the name of their team.  They had a great game on Saturday and easily won.

Emory is part of the Creeks Academy and has a new team and coach this season.  They played well as a team for their first game and won 3-2.

Visiting the Smith's at the River House

We had a lot of fun on Labor Day weekend, when we went with our friends the Solms family out on their boat.  We were all invited to visit some other friends, the Smiths, at their house on the St. Johns River. 

Ellie really enjoyed spending time with Rose.  The girls were in kindergarten and first grade together and this year Rose is attending a private school so they don't get to see as much of each other as they used to.  They had so much fun jumping off the dock over and over and over again.

Emory and Mack took part in as many water sports all day long as possible!  They went tubing, jet skiing and they both went kneeboarding for the first time.   Hopefully I'll get a picture of Emory doing that soon and be able to add it to this post. 

Dan put on the water skis again after many years and was able to get up after just a couple of tries.  It was a fun day in the sun for all and we're so happy to have great friends like the Solms and Smiths!

Cutting the Grass

The past few weeks, Emory has been really helpful around the house.  It could be because he's growing up and ready to take on more responsibility or it could just be because he wants to earn more time during the week playing XBox, but either way we like it!

A couple of Saturday's ago Dan was out cutting the grass and I thought that I would see if Emory would be willing to help out with this chore too.  He's never shown any interest when I've asked before but today he surprised me and said he would give it a try.  Since he's never touched the lawn mower in his life, he got a little instruction from Dan and then he was off and mowing.

The self-propelled mower kind of pulled him along behind it at first through the extra tall grass but after a couple of passes he actually must have started to have fun because he didn't quit - and was even smiling while he did it. Now he's found out that a couple of his friends get paid to cut the grass so I'm sure he'll be negotiating his rate!

First Day of School

On August 23rd Emory and Ellie headed back to school.  This will be Emory's last year at Mill Creek Elementary as he is now in the 5th grade.  Ellie is now a 2nd grader!  For the first time, Emory will have two teachers.  Ms. Benton is his homeroom teacher and she teaches Math, Science and Writing.  Mrs. Rogers teaches Reading and Language Arts.  Ellie is in Mrs. Mayall's class.

I have to admit that I asked them to hold hands for this picture as they walked down to the bus stop but they seemed happy enough to do it.  Some how the bickering of the summer melted away as they went back to school.  This will be their last year getting on the same bus and heading off to the same school until Emory's senior and Ellie's freshman year in high school. 

Ripley's Believe it or Not

When the last week of summer vacation arrived, I asked Emory and Ellie some of the things that they wanted to do before going back to school.  One thing that they had been saying all summer was to visit the Ripley's Believe It or Not!.  I've only ever been to one myself and thought it was just okay but since the one here in St. Augustine is the original, we decided to check it out one morning and see what strange things it had to offer.

This Ripley's is located in a massive old castle/house.  It was kind of musty with creeky wood floors and a huge staircase but that just added to the mysteriousness of it. 

The exhibits were strange, mostly silly, and about what I remembered from before.  There did seem to be a extraordinary number of exhibits built out of toothpicks though!  Being that we are in St. Augustine there was an entire section devoted to pirates that the kids enjoyed.  Aargh! 

One of the neater exhibits was located outside and it was a "log cabin" built inside of a hollowed out log.

Pool Fun!

Lots of hot summer days were spent by Emory and Ellie in the pool.  This was definitely the best investment that we ever made and (almost) a necessity here in Florida!  This particular day they were having lots of fun floating in their tubes and blowing water out of their noodles at each other.

Hopefully these are the memories that they will take away from this summer spent together!

End of Summer Trip

Our end of summer trip this year took us just a little south to Orlando.  We had season passes to Universal Studios and Emory had been asking since the grand opening in June to go and check out the new Harry Potter section of the park.  We also had points to use or lose at a Hyatt so we started off our trip there.  What a wonderful surprise this resort turned out to be!  We could have stayed for days and never run out of things to do.

Emory and Dan enjoyed paddling the water bikes around the lake on property.  We took out a four person paddle boat before I went and got my camera.  All I can say is that is a lot of work!

We all enjoyed  trying out the kayaks.  Much easier than the paddle boats!

Glad that we didn't see this sign before getting into those kayaks that sit just a few inches off of the water!  Actually I asked  and it was only a precaution.  No alligators had been seen recently.

Ellie did really well paddling the kayak.  Check out this synchronicity!  She was having so much fun.

There were three pools connected by grottos and waterfalls and waterslides too.

After a fun day of water activities, it was time to clean up, put on the Thing 1 and Thing 2 tshirts and head off to Islands of Adventure at Universal Studios.

Emory and Ellie were in goofy moods and couldn't resist having fun with the Twizzlers.  Could they possibly have eaten too much sugar?!?

We made it to the Harry Potter section of Universal Studios shortly after 6pm.  After hearing horror stories of people waiting hours to get not only onto the rides but also just into the shops we were pleasantly surprised with very short lines.

The whole area was liking stepping into another world altogether.  According to Emory, it really did look just like the descriptions in the book.  I guess the millions of dollars spent to create the world of Harry Potter was worth it!

The buildings were massive and so detailed.

We could only wish that there could have been a little real snow to cool us off.  It was HOT! ( I love the snow owl!)

Emory enjoyed being surrounded by all things Harry Potter and drinking "butter beer" ( a frozen drink that tastes like a combination of butterscotch and cream soda) but his favorite part had to have been getting his very own wand.  He spent time checking out all of his options from Harry Potter's wand to those of the evil characters but in the end chose the wand that he would have had based on his birthday if he were a student a Hogwarts.  It's name is Ash -- and he loves it!

The next day we headed over to the Nickelodeon Hotel where we met our friends, the Solms family.  This part of the trip was a surprise for Emory and Ellie and ALL about the kids.

Here comes the signature Nickelodeon "slime" (or green water as it happened to be at the pool).

Ellie was able to choose the theme of the room that she wanted and she of course chose SpongeBob!  The kids loved the room and would have stayed in there if we let them.

What's not to like with bunk beds, your own tv and a light and speaker in the wall right beside each of the bunks.  It was kid heaven!

There were lot of characters to visit.  Here are Sydney,Ellie, Emory and Mack with SpongeBob.

Emory and Ellie with Boots.

All four of the kids clowing around with the Dora statue.

My favorite...the chair from Blue's Clues.

There were really neat water slides too.  The kids preferred this one because it had a rope net to climb up to get to the top and it was really fast with tight spirals.

It was a fun place to visit...but once just once!