Memorial Day weekend

We went to South Carolina for a long Memorial Day weekend. We had fun visiting with Sallie and Carl in Aiken (and with Grammy once she got there from spending a night in the Atlanta airport) and visiting with the Martins and Wilburns in Lexington. (A lot has changed in Lexington since we moved six years ago.) The kids enjoyed playing with Sallie and Carl's dog, Allie, and fishing on the pond behind their house. We met Joe and Jennifer and the kids in Columbia - we hadn't see them in 4 years and it was nice to finally meet Carter. We had fun catching up, eating at D's Wings and walking around the new Carolina Stadium (where the USC Gamecocks play). The new stadium is state of the art! (And we're wishing we were there this weekend to watch the regionals.)

Uncle Carl and Jenna with one of the fish she caught.

Jenna had two "firsts" while in South Carolina. Uncle Carl took her for her first ride in a covertible.

Jenna also had her first ride on a motorcycle (and it was on a Harley Davidson).

On Saturday night, Seth and Uncle Carl made dinner for us. We had fried pickles, hushpuppies and fried shrimp.

One of Seth's catches.

Awards Day

Fifth grade awards day was held on Tuesday, May 18th. We are very proud of Jenna and her many accomplishments. She received six awards along with her promotion certificate. She received the Presidental Fitness Challenge award, a certificate for chorus participation, an Award of Merit for Safety Patrol, Certficiate of Excellence for A/B Honor Roll, Certificate of Excellence for Perfect Attendance this year. and the President's Education Award along with a letter from President O'Bama. This is an award for students who maintain an A average throughout fourth grade, the first semester of fifth grade and have "excellent" scores in either math or reading on their TCAP test (state-wide test). In the one picture below, Jenna is accepting her promotion award from her teacher, Ms. Tow.

FIELD DAY

Jenna's fifth grade field day was today and I was able to get over to the school for a few of the events. Field day brings out Jenna's competitive nature!

Mother's day

I had a very nice Mother's Day. The kids gave me my gifts on Saturday evening - a Beverly Lewis book, a gift certificate to Bath & Body Works and flowers. Jenna made me a new mousepad for the computer. They also got some death by chocolate ice cream that we all enjoyed. On Sunday we went to O'Charley's for lunch after church. After we came home I sat outside to enjoy the warm sunshine and read.

May 2010 Floods

April showers didn't bring May flowers this year....it brought more showers....more like May floods. It started raining early Saturday morning and at times it came down in buckets. Steve and Jenna were at church, I took Seth to the high school for band and then went grocery shopping and came home to unload groceries and clean. Because I was busy cleaning, I wasn't paying much attention to what was going on outside. About 11:00 a.m., my neighbor Kim, who lives across the street from me called and said, "I know now why we have flood insurance." I looked out my front window and was shocked by what I saw. Her back yard backs up to a common area and there is a creek that runs behind the common area. It had flooded over and water was covering the entire common area and into the back yards of all the houses on the opposite side of the street from us. The water was rushing water and we were amazed at the speed it was traveling. The weather played havoc all day. When I went back to the school at 1:00 to get Seth, I drove through another deluge of rain. We got soaked running from the school to the van. (I only had one umbrella and we had to use that to keep the trumpet dry!) We had one tornado warning in the afternoon. Jenna was across the street playing with Kim's kids, so she stayed there and was in the closet with the kids for protection. Seth and I were in our mud room (our only "safe" place) with our bicycle helmets on (only we forgot to put our shoes on). We decided since we were in the laundry room we may as well fold the two baskets of towels that had just been washed! (Steve braved it and didn't get into the mud room with us.) Thankfully no tornado touched down near us. Our church was supposed to have a dinner at night but cancelled it because roads all over town were flooded and closed. Thankfully we live close enough to the church that Steve was able to drive over and get us some to go boxes for dinner! Church this morning was cancelled too. We woke up at 5:30 to the tornado siren going off but so far no bad weather has come our way and we haven't even seen any rain yet (but I think that is fixin' to change by the looks of the skies). Now we're waiting to hear if school is cancelled for tomorrow. If they cancel for two flakes of snow, I'm sure they'll cancel for flooding. There are some parts of our county that are in bad shape this morning. Thankfully for our neighbors the water in the common area receded overnight, but if more rain hits today, I'm sure the water will be in their backyards again.

Kids' Music City Marathon

Jenna completed her third Kids' Music City Marathon on April 23, 2010. Kids grade K-5 thru 6th have an opportunity to participate in this event. They have six weeks to run 25.2 miles on their own then they go to LP Field the day before the Music City Marathon to run the last mile together with kids in their grade. This year Jenna ran with fifth and sixth grade girls. There were only about six girls from her school in fifth grade who ran this year and Jenna finished second among those girls. She ran with her friend Lindsay and Lindsay finished first from their school. Jenna enjoys running and is looking forward to trying out for the track team when she gets to middle school next year.






Allison, Jenna and Lindsay get ready for the race.


















Jenna and Lindsay head to the finish line.

















Jenna shows off her medal.

Last Weekend of Spring Break

It's been a great spring break with lots of gorgeous spring weather and the kids are enjoying their last weekend of spring break. The South Carolina Gamecock baseball team is in town for a weekend series at Vanderbilt. Last night we went to the game and the Gamecocks won 3-2. We are going back for game #2 today at 2:00. It's supposed to be a gorgeous, sunny afternoon with temps in the 70's....just perfect for sitting outside and cheering on our Gamecocks! After the game today Seth is going to head to a youth group bonfire. The rest of us will head home to help get Steve ready for his trip to IN on Sunday. He'll be leaving Sunday afternoon and will be gone for a week for work.