End-of-Summer Recap

It's hard to believe the summer is at an end already. But boy, is this Mom ready! The beginning of our summer was so busy and packed with fun trips and activities, but towards the end we have been a little lazy and enjoying some down time. I have been remembering again out how hard it is to be productive with two kids at home, so we are definitely ready to get back to a good routine with school. Here's some random pics from our summer fun that haven't yet made it on the blog.

Early in the summer, Connor went on a streak of losing his baby teeth. He lost his two front teeth back to back, and it has really transformed his smile this summer.

After he lost the first front tooth, the other one looked like a big fang.

One morning I caught Connor trying to pull that dangling front tooth.

Here it is, hanging on by a thread.

Success! (His head is also scraped up from a fall on some concrete.)

Another thing poor Connor has been dealing with this summer is a rash of yucky warts. He's had one on his knee for a couple of years and we keep trying to get it frozen off, but it continues to grow bigger and has formed into a donut shape. Then they started spreading to his opposite knee and all over his elbows. We visited the dermatologist this summer and she is trying to help us get rid of them for good. To the little warts, she applied "beetlejuice" from some sort of beetle that causes your skin to blister badly. After the warts are treated with it, they usually blister up and disappear. But for his bigger warts, they had to be injected (shots!) and it has been a painful process. The ones on his knees are so stubborn and just won't go away, so we are going to have to resume more injections. We're planning to wait until after football season (because he doesn't need anymore injuries to deal with!)

One of his knee warts before treatment. The green spots are the little warts with beetlejuice!

The big bad donut wart.

Getting injections. Poor guy, he was in so much pain.

This is an After shot of the donut wart.

An after shot of the single knee wart -- it's now bigger and donut shaped. UGH!

Earlier in August, we were excited to have Collin home for a couple of days so we decided to celebrate with a fun day at Schlitterbahn in Galveston. We just LOVE water parks, so fun! Kaitlynn still talks about her experience last summer (when she was knocked out of her tube in the lazy river and we couldn't find her) so I wondered how she would handle Schlitterbahn this year. She did great, while her Mommy was a nervous wreck. Ha!

And, we have now reached the phase where I have to send Connor with his big brothers to ride the tallest, scariest rides in the park because he LOVES them and I don't care to join him. His favorite slide is that one that drops straight down (and gives you a major wedgie, haha). Crazy!

The boys taking a snack break after riding some slides together.

Our family pic before dinner in Galveston.

One of the things we have missed a lot since moving to Katy is our former gymnastics/dance place called Cypress Academy. Kaitlynn LOVED her gymnastics and ballet classes, and Connor had so much fun and learned so much at his hip hop class each week. I've been trying to figure out how to get them in a similar place out here, and come to find out that there is a gym out here owned by the same family and offers the same exact schedules as our former place. They hosted a Parents Day Out recently and we tried it out to see if the kids liked it as much as Cypress Academy. The answer was obvious; they love it and can't wait to start gymnastics and hip hop classes there this fall!

Look at that excited smile. She is SO happy to be back in her leotard at the gym!

The "mountain" in the picture is the fun play area for the preschoolers.

Another thing we've been doing is gearing up for Kaitlynn's year of pre-K at her new preschool, His Kids Preschool at Second Baptist Church in Katy. Kaitlynn had never visited before, so we took a sneak peak at her new playground when we turned in some paperwork last week. Boy, is she excited to start school now!

Kaitlynn wanted me to take this picture to text to her Daddy. She is proud of her new playground!

While Connor has been in camps this summer, we had many girls' shopping days. Kaitlynn always has to pick out a purse to bring and accessories to wear. Her fashion sense is interesting :-)

Kaitlynn wore these pink wristbands on another outing.



Ice cream at our favorite new restaurant, All Star Grill.

He loves to make his own ice cream cones.

Summertime always means fun mixed with pure exhaustion. It always makes me smile when I catch my kids passed out, because it RARELY happens. We've pretty much eliminated naps completely this summer, so by the end of the day this has become a more frequent scene:



I walked away for a few minutes and found her completely passed out. Bedtime!

And this time, she didn't even make it into her pajamas.

Daddy carrying her to bed.

Connor showing off his homemade strawberry shortcake one night after dinner.

We still haven't made many friends or met many folks in our new neighborhood in Katy, so we were excited to find out that they were hosting a Back to School party at the model home in one of the newer sections of Woodcreek. It was a beautiful, breezy summer night and we all enjoyed the food, fun, and meeting some new friends and neighbors.

A great turnout for our neighborhood back to school party.

Enjoying the catered icee treats.

Connor took this pic of us at the party :-)

On the last day of "summer" Connor and Kaitlynn made a list of lots of fun things we could do to celebrate. We ended up hitting Katy Mills and enjoying some play time, a yummy lunch, and a last summer visit to the library followed by a cookie treat. It's so hard to believe summer is over!

Bring on the new school year, we are READY!