Family Pictures

We had family pictures taken in June down at the beach. The photographer put together a few of her favorites and put them on youtube. To view them click here.

We did traditional family pics up in the dunes and then went down to the water. With Caroline and waves it was not long before she was in the water having a grand old time.

Surfer Girl

There was a photographer at the beach the last couple of days and he has some pics of C riding the waves on his website. I am headed down Friday to watch her surf and will get some pics of my own. Until then, click on the link and you should be able to see the pics he took. There are usually several in a row so you can click on the arrows to move from picture to picture.

http://www.gscottsgirl.com/images/TSC-3/pages/DSCF0260.htm

http://www.gscottsgirl.com/images/TSC-3/pages/DSCF0261.htm
http://www.gscottsgirl.com/images/TSC-3/pages/DSCF0265.htm

Her friend Tres http://www.gscottsgirl.com/images/TSC-3/pages/DSCF0312.htm
http://www.gscottsgirl.com/images/TSC-3/pages/DSCF0336.htm

http://www.gscottsgirl.com/images/TSC-3/pages/DSCF0337.htm
http://www.gscottsgirl.com/images/TSC-3/pages/DSCF0338.htm
http://www.gscottsgirl.com/images/TSC-3/pages/DSCF0341.htm look at the kid behind her. She is in maybe 2 feet of water! Gotta love the easy waves.

http://www.gscottsgirl.com/images/TSC-3/pages/DSCF0379.htm
http://www.gscottsgirl.com/images/TSC-3/pages/DSCF0468.htm great series.
http://www.gscottsgirl.com/images/TSC-3/pages/DSCF0476.htm smiling for the camera

Happy Birthday Caroline

Caroline had an awesome Science Seventh birthday party today. Here are the highlights.

Decorations- yes we used posters from my classroom. We put them up all over the house.

We had six stations inside the house (magnifying glasses, tornadoes, check the weight, UV beads and sunscreen, make a hat and of course snacks). Most of the stuff was from my classroom or scavenged from other classrooms in my hallway.

C's best bud Ryan. We invited all the girls in the class, the girl scout troop and Ryan. He was a bit overwhelmed but hung in there.

Safety first!!

We also had a couple of outside stations. We made goop or silly putty and we made volcanoes. the volcanoes were a hit! we went through two large boxes of baking soda as the kids exploded things over and over. The hand washing got a bit out of hand so c had to go change clothes.

I love decorating cakes. C told me she wanted a world map cake this year. I had it worked out on paper when Hunter suggested I make a globe. I have never worked with a sphere before, but had fun trying. When we put the globe (yes it is all cake and icing) on top of the base (also all cake and icing) it sank a bit and Africa got lost. But overall I think it looks pretty great!

Blowing out the candles- or melting the Arctic circle depending on how you look at it.

She is now in playing with, you guessed it, Littlest pet shops. You can not imagine how many new pet shops she got. Many of the girls at the party are the ones she plays LPS with at extended day (after school care) so they were excited to see what Caroline would be bringing to the playground this coming year. Of course Kaya was the hit of the party (thank you Grandma Mary and Grandpa Jim) and she has already made a camp fire with Kit and Kayley.

Now all we have to do is sit back, eat cake and wait for 8:55pm so she can actually be 7.

Here we go again

June 1 brought the beginning of hurricane season. We usually don't see any real tropical disturbances until mid July and then we don't see any coming this way until September (The Great Storm and Ike hit the same weekend 108 years apart).

But this year we had Alex come ashore on June 30. Now, it came ashore hundreds of miles from here, but we had high tide (over the bulkhead), rain and wind for a week because of it. Now we have another one coming on its heels. This is our tide at 7 am this morning.

This is my favorite weather site. Click on computer models for a look at where they think the storm will go. We are the bay shaped like a K closest to the Louisiana/Texas line.

Hopefully we will dodge the big ones again this year.

VBS program

C and her friends Maddy, Ellie and Roy had a great week at VBS. One of the women in our community has lived all over the world and has all sorts of wonderful artifacts that she brings out for the kids to play with.

This year she brought a set of ong kloons- a musical instrument from Africa. The kids learned to play Jesus loves me on these and performed on the last day of VBS. Each child plays one note by shaking the instrument- the perfect thing for this crazy crowd.

after VBS

Caroline and some friends are attending VBS at the local Tiki church this week. On Tuesday I picked up all and we headed to Maddy's (next to Caroline in the top picture) to do some swimming. Three hours later we had some tired happy kidos so we are doing it again on Friday! The first two kids were in Caroline's preschool (Ellie and Roy), all three girls are in my GS troop.

San Marcos trip part 1- Aquerena Springs

The forecast said wind so we packed up and went to the Hill Country to go tubing for the weekend. New Braunfels had some flooding early in the week and they closed the river to tubers so we moved over to the San Marcos river which flows out of the Aquerena Spring.

Saturday morning we went over to the Aquerena Spring Education Center (part of Texas State University). They had a great wetland boardwalk where we saw lots of fish, turtles, birds and dragonflies. This hawk was protecting his turf. He flew off when we walked by, but landed again on the same picnic table.We took a glass bottom boat tour around the springs. Caroline is not frooping (a word C created years ago which translates as "throwing up in your mouth" ) in this picture, but is looking through the glass at the spring bottom.

After our "science" morning, we grabbed our tubes and set out for the river. Our float was about an hour and we did it twice before succumbing to hunger and heading back to the hotel for our next adventure.