August

August has literally flown by and it was chock-full of happenings! I haven't made blogging a priority and this is going to be a different sort of post than I'm used to doing. For one I just can't share all of the photos from the month because there would be too many. I will share a few. Let's get this started! 

August began with our church's annual clothing giveaway. I am always so honored to join my family and work this amazing event that blesses hundreds of families in our community.

The new Harry Potter book came out and we waited for our book to arrive and B Boy was so thrilled when it finally arrived. He read it in 2 days! It was written in screenplay form, but I loved reading it like that. It was a great story!

I am on the boards of both my kiddos' school PTO's. For one PTO, I'm a co-treasurer and the other one, I'm the secretary. The month began with lots of meeting and preparing for a BTS teacher lunch at the elementary and a BTS teacher breakfast for the middle school. We also got ready for open house at both schools and both PTO's had tables to promote membership and sell merchandise. It was a very busy couple of weeks! I've been busy as secretary compiling the membership and volunteer forms and inputting that into our spreadsheet. We also sell spirit wear that we have to keep up with orders for. As treasurer, I've been helping with deposits and other events we have at school. Yesterday, we had a "Muffins with Mom" event at the elementary. It was a raging success. Over 800 people attended!!! That includes the moms and kids. We definitely learned a few things that we will implement for our Donuts with Dad event. I also run the social media for one of the PTO's. It's busy but I so enjoy being involved and becoming friends with the moms I get work with all the time!

We did quite a bit of swimming this summer! We swam weekly at the city pool and went to the community center often. The kids are such fish now! B Boy has been teaching himself the backstroke and other tricks in the water. He loves to jump in from the side too! C Girl is more conservative in the water and she must get that from me! The kids were both shocked when they saw me swimming in the pool. They did not know I knew how to swim!!! I thought that was SO funny. I do like to hang out in chairs by the pool and read and often when I am in the water, I just hang out without swimming around much. It brought to my attention that I needed to swim with them more!

I mentioned earlier in the summer that we planted a garden. It was our first foray into gardening with the kids. Tim & I had a garden very early in our marriage, but that was long ago!  We had a large learning curve and boy, did we learn a lot! We ended up having to move the cucumbers because they were taking over and we had to tear out the squash because they weren't producing and taking nutrients from other plants. What it surprising to me is that we planted a little late and our garden is the healthiest it has been the entire summer. The last month, it has been so green and producing food left and right! We have lettuce, green beans, green peppers, cucumbers and carrots! We also have a tomato plant that is finally just now producing. Tomato plants need the nights to get below 75 degrees or they won't produce. I think it's likely that we will have fall tomatoes and even fall produce from the garden. That works for me! I'm just so happy that we grew food from seeds - it's so satisfying!

We took July off of C Girl's piano lessons and we began with a new instructor in August. Her previous instructor got married and then moved so we found a teenager whose mom works with Tim. C Girl seems to really like her! I'm just so glad she is still wanting to continue learning. I think it will be so valuable for her to have that skill!

As I mentioned, we had Open House at the schools on the Thursday before school began. With B Boy, he got the same teacher that C Girl had last year so we are very familiar with her and that felt so comfortable! C Girl on the other hand, was beginning middle school so that is all unfamiliar territory for us! She has a homeroom teacher and then rotates to other classes with her homeroom group. She has a male homeroom teacher and that really weirded her out at first! She has to come to find it totally normal (her literacy teacher is male too) and he teaches science and that's her favorite. We went one night this week to a "Walk in my Shoes" night where we got to go through her schedule and meet her teachers. I really enjoyed that!  C Girl is LOVING middle school! I have been telling people that she was born for this! She loves the increased independence and responsibility. I can't wait to see how the year plays out!
Most of us were looking forward to the first day of school! I think B Boy would love to be at home 24/7! Momma was very excited to have a little alone time again! I needed my schedule back. I LOVED our semi-lazy summer but it was definitely time to get back on track! Look at these cuties!

Backing up a bit- B Boy turned 10 on the Saturday before school began! I can't believe I have two kids with double digit ages! How did this happen! We had his birthday at a place in Fayetteville called Arkadia Retrocade. It is an arcade with tons of retro video games. You pay $5 to enter and you can play all the games you want for as long as you want. He had a few friends at the party and they had the best time playing the games! Tim loved being able to play childhood favorites, Q bert and Pac Man! 

C Girl turned 11 on Tuesday of the first week of school. She had asked for a sleepover for her party and we scheduled that for the Friday of the first week of school. Tim had a back to school party at his school after the day ended and when he got home, he took B Boy to a Naturals game so that they would be out of the house for most of the party. C's theme for the party was "flowers." We had a couple of crafts (the girls hot glued flowers on plain headbands and we made elastic hair ties.) They also painted their nails, did a photo booth and watched a movie. They had such a fun time! We had tacos for dinner and of course, cake!

The next day, we had a little party with family who came to celebrate with us. It is a busy week having 3 parties, so I have tried to be very low key with the gathering for the family. It's still very important to us because we know that family wants to see us and we certainly want to see them. We love to celebrate the births of these children who were miracles to our family. The odds were not always good for the outcome, but we were blessed with two beautiful, healthy kiddos and I never take that for granted. I'm so thankful that they have grown up knowing both sides of our family and feeling such love from their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. That is a treasure.

Since C Girl turned 11 before September 1st, she was due for some vaccinations. I scheduled them and it ended up being during the first week of school. It was rough. She is terrified of needles. My heart was breaking the entire time. I'm so glad I asked Tim to meet us there. I don't think we would have got it done without holding her down if he hadn't of been there. We will have to go through this again with the boy next year :-/

I'm still mentoring the same girl I was with last year. She was SO happy to see me the first week of school! I was so happy to see her too! I tell C Girl about her and C wants to meet her so badly! Hopefully someday! She is a joy to talk to and we have been playing games after she eats lunch each time. I hope to encourage more people to be a mentor in their local schools!

Baseball has begun for the fall! B Boy is very excited! He has had a few practices already and his first game next weekend. Church activities start back up after Labor day, so it is going to be the busy season again. I love fall though! Football is back! The Razorbacks have their first game tomorrow! We signed up for Playstation Vue so we have the Espn's, the SEC network and the NFL network - the boys are in heaven!

We have been working for months to get me scheduled for an MRE (this is a type of MRI that can see in more detail and emits less radiation. UAMS is the only facility in the state that has this capability.) I had my appointment with a GI doctor there towards the end of August. His assessment after examining me and going over health records is that he believes my Crohn's is in a more fibrous state than inflammation. My last CT showed areas of thickening of the intestinal wall and diverticuli-pouches in the intestines. This indicates that food cannot get through well or at all and is straining my intestines. This would explain the continued bloating, fatigue and pain that I experience. He has scheduled the MRE, but has also recommended surgery to resect the problem areas. The test will give doctors a better idea of what is going on before going in for surgery. My test is scheduled in mid-September and the surgery would be scheduled after that (no dates as of now.) Surgery can give years of remission so this can be a really good thing! We will see what the results of the test show!

On a final note- I think the blog posts here may look a little different from here on out. It is a combination of it not being a huge priority right now and that my kids are getting older and I want to respect their privacy if they request that. I will still write about what we do, but I may not share as many details or stories. We will see how it goes. This blog is a treasure to me and I love looking back at old posts. You forget so much the older you get and it always brings memories back to me! 

Happy September and happy football season! Go Hogs!