Amusement Park Fun

Saturday night was a lot of fun! David's work had a family night at the amusement park, along with a picnic meal they provided. The four of us had a great time! We played miniature golf, ate hamburgers and hot dogs and rode as many rides as we wanted. The weather was perfect, too. Love spending time with the fam... Especially when they behave! :)

Friday Night Lights are back...

It's that time of year again. We attended our first football game of the season last night. We ate our semi-traditional meal at Rosa's with friends, then headed to the game. This was not a home game because we played at Kimbrough in Canyon, but it was close enough. Our team played against Randall in what they're calling "the battle for Bell Street". It wasn't much of a battle last night---US=56, THEM=0. It was a total blowout, but since it was the first game, it was still fun. For us, anyway!

David was a little melancholy. He really misses having a kiddo playing. I was actually relieved! No worrying about injuries, playtime, etc. I was a little sad not to get to wear my parent shirt, though. :(

Times. They are a changin'!

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Converse is back in style with the kiddos. Hadley chose black for the first pair---and bought hot pink shoe laces to put in occasionally. Cool!

Stink Eye

I thought I'd share one of many shots of Ty giving me the ol' stink eye. Ha!

We've just barely heard from the boy. Guess he's not missing us as much as I thought he would. Classes start tomorrow. He still doesn't have his books. Ay yi yi. What's he been doing the past three days?!

Back to school

We packed up and took Tyler to Tech yesterday. His new car was amazing! We packed everything in it---except the dolly, which we carried in our car. He still had room to spare and it all loaded very nicely in his Element. It's just made for hauling stuff--perfect for this occasion! We need to get a bike rack to accommodate his bike, but it's not urgent. I think he made a terrific choice in cars.


Here he is following behind us.



Tyler and his roomie---Andrew.



Andrew's decorations for the window. Who needs curtains!


The view from their window. It's a little hard to tell much, but that is the new water park. It has a couple of slides, a lazy river, etc.


The room is SO small. The furniture is built in--all along the walls. Tyler's bed is connected to his desk as you can see here. The other side of the desk is the back wall. You can see he's already got the important stuff up and running--stereo, ipod and computer!


A friend from Amarillo is sitting on Ty's bed and his roommate is standing in front of the refrigerator/entertainment center. Note the cardboard "shim" on top of the microwave to hold the TV. Genius.


This is the front wall. Not much space!


Tyler's closet. The small chest you can see is attached to the bed on this end.






I snapped this as we drove away. Tyler is in the doorway walking in. He was pretty droopy by this point. I think he was *almost* sad to see us go. His first day of class is Thursday. Til then, he's checking out the campus, buying books and getting acclimated and ready to study. We hope!



Hadley and Lance had their first day of school today. It has been a really busy couple of days... Hadley started high school! and Lance started 7th grade.

As you can see from his smile, Lance was a little nervous. When I picked him up this afternoon though, he was in a great mood and had a great day. He knows a lot of people in his classes and thinks it will all work out well.

Hadley's schedule changed a bit from registration, but she was thrilled. Now she has her three BFF's in four classes. Two of those classes have all four girls in them! I'm not quite sure how she got so lucky, but she loves it. Alli is in the wrong geometry class, so we're hoping that adjustment won't mess things up. Guess we'll find out tomorrow. Anyway, we survived the marathon that was the last two weeks and are ready to go. Hope you have a great week!

Family pics

I conned the kids into taking some family pics last night. It's usually a MAJOR pain, but they actually cooperated this time. We got some great poses and looks, but I blew the focus in quite a few. :( It's hit or miss doing it remotely, and last night had more misses than hits. We did get at least one that I really liked that's also worth printing. Yay! (these aren't the ones--just thought they were fun!) One of these days, I may have to break down and hire someone else to do the work. Nah... probably won't happen. I'm way too cheap!

Right now, I'm taking a break from the packing, etc. as we leave to take Ty to Tech tomorrow. Say a prayer for us---I need to keep my sanity!

Blowin' a new horn

Today, we went to the music store to buy Lance a new trumpet. Last year, we were lucky enough to borrow one from a friend. Since he's going to continue playing, we decided it was time to buy him his own. The store was a popular place to be today, filled with kids and parents preparing for the upcoming school year.

The new trumpet is shiny and pretty. And expensive. I think I need to go into the instrument business! :) Actually, while the instrument itself is expensive, they make it as painless as possible to afford one. The store offers all sorts of options---and they'll take it off your hands if your kiddo changes his mind. But, I've decided if playing trumpet boosts Lance's lung function as much as I think it did last year, he will play FOREVER.

Lance is pretty excited about his new toy---it's much improved over last year's model. And it's all his. I think he deserves it!

Summer Reading

Ahh the joys of honors classes... This year, Lance had two assigned books---The Giver and a choice of 1 of 6 or so other books. He chose Summer of the Monkeys for his second book. Hadley was not given a choice. She had to read Life of Pi and Genesis and Matthew from the KJV of the Bible.

Last year, Lance finished his summer reading before school even let out for the year. When it came time to take the test at the beginning of the next year, he didn't remember too much. So, he decided to wait til closer to the start of the year to read. Good idea, I said! :)

Tyler actually has a summer book to read, too. They gave it to him at orientation and I don't think he's even cracked it open... I tried to say something about it and David informed me that it is now up to him to get it done. Guess I won't get an ugly email if my son hasn't done his homework--they'll just fail him. And you know what that means. AC Badgers all the way! Maybe that'll pull more weight than a scolding from his mommy. Time will tell...

Dorm Cool

So this is one of Tyler's recent purchases: pajama pants with Mario Bros. gaming stuff on them and a t-shirt with Chunk from Goonies on it... He thinks it'll be cool to wear around the dorm. ;) I think he's all set!

Red River snaps

Just sharing a few from our trip to Red River before we picked up Hadley and Tyler from camp. We had a great time. Lance enjoyed having our full attention, and we relaxed and enjoyed our time very much!

We, well "they", fished a LOT. We hit the little pond there in RR, as well as the river and some beaver pond areas a few miles outside of the town. Lance caught his limit every day--and then some! We only kept five--threw the rest back for some other lucky person to catch. :) While they fished, I read and took pictures, of course!

We had an ongoing game of Risk during treatment time. It lasted the whole trip! That is one LONG game... Our condo had a catwalk and loft area where we slept--Lance thought it was about the coolest thing ever. We rode horses, did some hiking and had a picnic. It was a very nice few days...

Dixie's Funeral

Here is a sampling of the snapshots I took at Dixie's funeral. I'm sorry it has taken me so long to post them.

If you want copies of these, I have set up a trial account--good for two weeks--with a company that will host the photos and allow you to download the full sized images. You can also order prints through them. Since this is all new, I don't know much about that option. (It doesn't benefit me in any way for you to order prints, so please don't feel obligated to order!!) The company doing the prints should be a good one, so if you want to use them, feel free if that's easier for you. If it were me, I would probably just download the full sized images and print the way I normally print my own digitals.

To get to the site, go to janicestewart.zenfolio.com. Click the Fortenberry gallery, then enter the password "dixie". Click on any shot you'd like to see larger. From that larger view, you can right click and choose "download original" and a save box should open up on your screen for you to save to your computer.

I hope this makes it easy to share photos--please let me know if it doesn't work for you! According to a message on zenfolio, they will have site maintenance late tonight into early morning tomorrow. If you can't access it during that time, try again later.

Let me know what you think--I'm considering opening a permanent account with them so I'd love to hear your feedback before I do that. Love you all!

Update: no cavities for Hadley or Lance and they decided to let Lance's last baby tooth come out on it's own. Yay!

Also, we got Lance all registered. He has a couple of classes with friends that we've talked to so far--hopefully more as we get to talk to them. We ran into Chris F. and Jennifer as we were leaving. Hopefully, the cousins will have a class or two together again this year.

Happy Tuesday!

Posting from the waiting area in the dentist's office. So far, ty has one cavity and a chip to repair. Lance is getting a baby tooth pulled and the rest TBD. Yippee! (That was sarcasm, by the way.)

After this, we head to registration for Lance, a vball game and then to girls night out for me! Yippee! And that time I mean it!

Wedding

Went to a fun wedding this weekend! A dear friend's daughter got married to a wonderful guy. It was an outdoor wedding at a beautiful home with a private lake, swimming pool and gazebo where they said their vows. David and I could totally live there! :) Unfortunately, the humidity was very high and the high temp for the day was near 100. Needless to say, we were all melting! The colors of the wedding were orange and hot pink--I was not sure how it would look, but it was terrific. Loved the combo! She had fun paper lanterns in orange and pink strung all over, with lights everywhere. It was really pretty.

Stan and Jennifer lived here when Jenna was born and were among the first of our friends to have a baby--Jenna became all of ours! They moved away when she was about a year old.

Jenna and Caleb had some amazing engagement photos and a while back, I shared a link to their unique proposal. Here are her bridals, if you're interested...

Anyway, because of the unique proposal at the Chick-fil-A grand opening, Chick-fil-A provided some free food and of course, the cow! I didn't take a lot of shots---I was busy visiting and havin' fun but these are a few of the shots I did take, along with one David took of me and Jennifer. (should have taken that at the beginning of the evening instead of the end. ay yi yi!)**the two attendants on the left of the collage are the brother and sister of the bride, and her little sister is shown again on the bottom left.

All in all, it was a very fun evening!

Happy Wednesday!

Sorry for the blog drought lately... I've got lots of pictures to go through and post and I just can't seem to get it done. I'm working on a way to post some of the pics so that anyone who was interested could download full size images for better prints. I probably won't put all the images up, but at least the family events like Dixie's funeral. Anyway, it's coming. :)


We took Hadley over to the church parking lot the other day to teach her how to drive a standard. She was amazing!! The jeep only died twice the whole night---she's got great coordination and picked it up right away. We even let her drive some by herself~note the one-handed driving already... If we get the paper work and initial classwork done, she can get her learner's permit in October. Watch out world!




Another Duct Tape week... We've been hosting this group of kids for our youth's in-town mission trip. They've worked at a downtown shelter a couple of times, spent some time with a group of special needs kids, did a car wash to benefit a resource center, etc. Lance has had a great time. The boy on the left was "in charge" at our house--he's going to be a sophomore. The next kiddo is Rena Madeley Adams' son. He will be a freshman. The next two kids are just entering the youth group and will only be in SIXTH grade. Yes, that's right. They are one year younger than Lance. Yikes! They've been a great bunch of kids and we were happy to host them.

**Grandma--the boy next to Lance is Tammy Nash's son. Tammy's mom or grandma or both--can't remember for sure--is an acquaintance of yours. I think Tammy grew up in Happy?? Maybe mom will know who I'm talking about if you don't. Anyway, thought you'd be interested to know that! :)

Hope you have a great day!

Crazy kids

This was Hadley and her friend, David's, grand entrance to Alli's birthday party tonight, complete with the Superman theme song blaring from the radio. Ah, to be young and crazy again!

I've got a lot of other pictures to share--I'm sorry I haven't gotten them up yet. Soon!

Goggles

Just a fun picture to share. Lance looked so cute as he went off to swim with the youth group tonight that I had to take the shot and share it with you. Don't ya love it??

I've got others---from our trip to Red River and from Dixie's funeral, but I haven't had a chance to wade through them to see what I ended up with. I'll try to post those soon.

Have a great week!

Family

Some of our family has gathered to attend the funeral service of my sweet great aunt, Dixie, who passed away after a long battle with cancer. While I hate the reason we're together, I love the time it affords us with family from out of town. Tonight, we went to Jen and Jim's for sandwiches and lots of talking and laughing. And, I must say that I think I come by my love of photography naturally...

Just because it's so much fun...

Tyler has been SO picky about his car since he got a new one... He doesn't want anyone else to drive it---he doesn't even want to use it to mow! So, of course, while the cat's away, the mice will play. Ha!
**I'm printing this to send to him at camp. It's so much fun being a parent!