CMS Color Run

Matthew's middle school had a FUNdraiser that was a color run. They had to pay some money to participate and then you could pay more to get more bags of color if you wanted to, and they could also earn bags by winning games.

Here is the before:)

Matthew had fun doing it and it was kind of fun to watch also.

 And the after...

Some buddies

Allison's 9 Year Measurements

We had Allison's measurements done about 6 weeks (9/27/17) after she turned 9  with our wonderful pediatrician, Dr. Annemarie Tull, but here they are:

Weight: 84 lbs  89%

Height: 54 5/8   80%

Eye Sight 

Right: 20/20

     Left: 20/15

Blood Pressure 110/78

A Note About Allison

Allison is in 4th grade and her teacher, Mrs. Williams asked the parents to write a note to her about our child. I wrote it and I figured why not put it on my blog as well.

This is what I wrote:

Allison Thomas is a very sweet and happy child. She is very loving and wants everybody to feel loved. In our church she is known as the ward hugger. She has a list each Sunday of people she has to hug and they are so sad when they don't get their Allison hug. When she sees someone crying she wants to give them a hug to make them feel better.

As you have probably seen, she is very interested in having rainbow colors no matter what it is. Whether she loads the dishwasher, puts the colored plates away from the dishwasher, any colored bowls, folders, markers ANYTHING that can get put in rainbow color order she does.

She LOVES writing in cursive and reading cursive. I think her fascination with it started by tryin gto read something like it was a secret code and she finally figured the code out and loves being in the club now.

She loves to read and is constantly reading whatever book she can get her hands on. She always wants to do her reading stuff before anything else.....but then doesn't want to stop:)

Allison usually tries her very best to be a good and helpful kid. She strives to Choose The Right.

Allison used to play flag football, basketball, soccer and swim on the swim team but she has learned that her absolute favorite sport is swimming and really excelled last summer. She qualified to go to Champs in a few events and even won a 1st place medal in her division. She wants to do more and more and more swimming. Those other sports, though fun, she just wasn't as into as swimming. She has started taking a dance class but it is only for a few weeks.

Allison has been such an incredible big sister to little Michelle. Before Michelle was born, in Allison's nightly prayers she would always pray for a baby to come to our family. Allison was almost 7 when Michelle was born. Even when Michelle was just a few months old, I mentioned that Michelle had a stinky diaper. Without saying anything, Allison came and took Michelle from my, took her upstairs to her changing table, completely cleaned and changer her (I watched from the door) and brought her back down and gave her to me. She was so proud of herself and so was I. Just like that Allison has been helping Michelle from day one. Now that Michelle is 2, Allison has lots of fun playing with her and loves listening to her talk. Allison thinks Michelle is just the cutess ever. Allison loves to show Michelle off to everyone she knows. Allison is like a 2nd mom to Michelle in some ways. I hope the wonderful bond they have is always there.

Allison loves to talk, just like her mom.

Allison also loves to go to school and is sometimes sad when there is no school.

One more thing about Allison, she has a direct line to Heavenly Father. ANYTIME something goes wrong she prays and her prayers get answered. Her immediate response to losing something or something bad happening is to pray. I hope she always keeps that communication open with our Heavenly Father.

Dear Friend

Sometimes in life you get blessed with a very good friend. I am so glad she was born on this day. I have cried way too much on her shoulders but she is always there for me. I love her to pieces and wish that I got to be around her more. Though I have many pictures of our kids together, apparently we only take pictures just the two of us, when we are moving. The first picture is from their moving away party when they were moving from Bryan and the second picture is when SHE drove 2 hours to come help me pack up my house all day, then drove 2 hours back. Who does that??? Yeah, this friend did.

Janine Toole is just the best!!

Officially Celebrating Allison's 9th Birthday

 We tend to not be home when Allison has her birthday.

This year we did her birthday party in July because we were going to be gone and so many people leave in August because swim team is done at that point so swim families finally go on vacation like us.

So, Saturday, September 2nd we officially recognized that Allison had her birthday with out tradition donuts and chocolate milk for birthday breakfast and then for dinner she chose Texas Roadhouse because she wanted to get on the saddle and have them recognize her with their Yeehah!!

She LOVES sprinkles on cakes and donuts and cupcakes and she is LOVES RAINBOWS!! She always makes thinks rainbowish or she loads the plates in rainbow order, puts them away in rainbow order, her notebooks at school are in rainbow order. She is so cute. She is a huge sweetheart, most of the time. She is fun to be with, talks non-stop, is starting to like having her hair, and nails done, probably because I am into that more now so it is a bonding thing for us. She can be friends with anybody and she is so loving, also known in the ward as the ward hugger. Those on her hug list miss their hug if they don't get it on Sunday:) She is smart, loves to read, enjoys being girly but can also hang with the boys. She works on her piano, though not always happily:) She loves to be with people and and LOVES to make crafts and cards for people. Love my 9 year old girl.

Back to School 2017-2018

I need to blog more, and I say that every time I actually do a post but I think I like the immediate feedback of facebook so I tend to post on there more.

Anyways, September 5, 2017 was our first day of school.

Allison is a big 4th grader and she is in Mrs. Williams' class. Apparently Mrs. Williams keeps going back and forth from 3rd to 4th back to 3rd. She has taught about 30 years and about half in each grade. Allison's friend and neighbor had her last year and Mrs. Williams tends to not send home a lot of homework, which I am a big fan of. Allison wanted the teacher Matthew had in 4th grade but didn't get her but then to make it worse, two of her closest friends aren't in Allison's class, but in the class with the teacher Allison wanted. So sad:(  Oh well. It is now almost the end of the second week of school and Allison is LOVING her teacher, probably her second favorite so far, we will see how the school year ends. Allison loves being a 4th grader and being on the second floor now because that is where the BIG kids have their classrooms:) It is hard to think that Matthew was a fourth grader not long ago, our first year at this school. 

Matthew is now at his seventh new school and he is a sixth grader. Here, middle school consists of 6,7,8. I don't like it...because that is not how I grew up, but also I feel like I am sending him to the wolves. I know there is so much for him to learn and still feel like he is so little and can't do it all on his own. I guess they figure it out though. He has been super excited to get to change classes, and he is also very excited that he FINALLY has a male teacher. He wanted the one male teacher last year but didn't get him. In this school there are a couple male teachers but there are 4 different groups of subject teachers which means, there are 4 history teachers and 4 math teachers, 4 language arts teachers. If you are on the same team as somebody else that means that though you may not have the exact class period with them, you will have the same History or Math teacher. I am not used to such a large school. In fact some of our Jr High teachers were also High School teachers AND our choir teacher taught grades K-12. Our band teacher taught grades 5-12, because that is when we started doing band. I really wish my kids got the same thing because I really liked it. Oh well.

Chickahominy Middle School is our new adventure. Matthew is excited to have his own locker and overall just be on his own more. In this county, there are A days and B days, which means you don't have the same classes every day which also seems really weird to me. They have like an hour and a half classes each day whereas we just had 55 minute classes, but every day. It is just all so new to me, I feel like I am drowning most the time. Matthew seems to have it down.

There is a kid that lives right across the street named Ethan that was in Matthew's fifth grade class and he is on Matthew's team this year....though they don't have any of the same period for their classes. They are pretty good buds.

Here is Matthew' schedule for 6th grade:

Neighbor Twins

This is our next door neighbor. 

Michelle was born a day earlier than Zoe and even in the same hospital!!

How cool is that?

Zoe is an only child right now so she has really cool big toys.

Allison has fun playing with these girls.