Awards Banquet

Early this year Emmie did a poster for ALERT about watersheds. The posters were sent to the Richland County Soil and Water District to be entered into a contest. We found out a few weeks ago that Emmie placed 3rd in the county for her age group (2nd and 3rd graders)! We were SO proud of her. Tonight they had a banquet for all the winners. Emmie was super excited to get dressed up and go and I got a babysitter for the other kids so it could be a special night for her with Paul and me. We ate dinner and then they presented all the poster contest winners with a certificate and $25. Emmie was thrilled! We also really enjoyed getting to see all the other posters. There were some really creative ones! We were so proud of Emmie's hard work. We worked with her on organizing her thoughts and coming up with an idea, then she did a sketch of what she wanted to do, then she put it on her poster! This was a great project because she could do it all herself (I did help her place the letter "s" on her title..those are tricky!). I just set her up a spot to work and she went to town! I was so impressed with her final result and she was really proud of herself too!

Emmie's sweet ALERT teacher, Mrs. Lytle, also came tonight to help recognize Emmie. We are so grateful to her for taking the time out of her evening to come!

Mrs. Lytle. The teachers were recognized for encouraging their students to learn about conservation.

Pictures

We recently had pictures done of the kids by friend Chelsea (Chelsea Turner Productions). This was the first time we did pictures with Chelsea and the kids just adored her! We did the pictures at the Horseshoe and we had PERFECT weather for the pictures. I'm pretty notorious for having spring pictures done on freezing days and fall pictures done on sweltering days so this was a lovely experience.
These were some of my favorite pictures from the shoot!

Mr. Scrunchie Shoulders

JP was not thrilled about having to be in a group picture.

Sweet Sisters!

This is probably my very favorite picture...welcome to the rest of your life JP!

Silly girls!

All Together

A few weeks ago we had a half day Thursday and no school on Friday. It just so happened to be the weekend that Ben and Ruth were planning to come to Greenville to pick up some stuff from my parent's house.

Ruth is the best! She found a Mousie (Emmie's security object...it is super hard to find them for a reasonable price) for super cheap and brought it in case we need a replacement (Franklin also really likes Mousie...it's good to have a back up!).

Thursday after school the kids and I headed to Greenville for a weekend with family! Thursday when we arrived we hung around the house.

Ben and Ruth arrived in the middle of the night and the kids were so excited to see them when they woke up Friday morning!

I didn't realize it at the time but, as you will see in the pictures, apparently JP spent most of the weekend on Uncle Ben's shoulders!

We spent Friday going through all the books and stuff my mom had pulled out of the attic.

Ellie reading a book Uncle Ben wrote in elementary school.

The kids really wanted to "go somewhere" so after JP's nap in the afternoon we all headed to the zoo. The kids had a great time (JP was thrilled that they had "baby doats") and after going through the zoo we played on the playground for a bit.

It's always a treat to get a picture of me with all the kids...so rare!

Baby giraffe!

JP loved feeding the goats!

Saturday we hung out and in the afternoon it was warm enough to turn on the sprinklers and play! The neighbors across the street have 4 kids about the same age as ours so they came over to play too.

Sweet friends! They may only see each other a few times a year but they also pick right up where they left off!

Paul arrived in the afternoon and we celebrated his birthday (end of April) and Ben's (early May). Of course since we were all together we had to have homemade ice cream for dessert courtesy of my dad!

Watching Grandaddy churn ice cream is exhausting!

We headed back to Columbia after dinner but we had such a great time having a relaxing couple of days with family!

LOVE this picture!