One of the many things that I love about James is how creative he is in incorporating spiritual matters into everyday events for the kids. He drives Rilyn and her friend to school each morning. The drive is probably only a little over 5 minutes long, easy to veg out or try to wake up for the day, right? That would be what I would do anyway! But James? He devised a memorizing scripture game that he “plays” with Rilyn and Cole each morning. They work on memorizing one scripture passage a week and if they have memorized it by Friday morning, they go to donuts for a quick treat! He started this last year and I thought it was so cool. This year, he is challenging them with harder, longer scriptures. What a way to start off each morning! This is Rilyn reciting from memory Romans 12:2.
Archive Page 54
drive them into the Word
homecoming dance
The Falcon football/cheer teams had a “dance” Saturday night to celebrate “homecoming” where they would announce a homecoming queen and king for each division. (They draw a name out of a hat for the queen and king, so this has nothing to do with popularity.) I volunteered to take dance pictures that night and the one I took of the girls and James turned out cute, don’t you think?
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| Gotta love Ella’s face! |
James was able to video the big announcement of the night!
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| This is Rilyn starting to get nervous and scared because
she thought winning queen meant she had to dance with the king! Poor girl! |
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| So excited now! |
After the dance, she told me she ‘felt’ like she was going to win. 😉 Both my girls are apparently party animals as they wanted to dance the night away. (They get this from James!) They were hilarious to watch, (we have some video!) and so cute too!
32!
James was such a good sport on his birthday! Having 3 kids, (2 of which are in extracurricular activities), means busy weekends. And when your birthday falls on a Saturday, well, you can just assume the day won’t be all about you, (like I wish it was!) After Rilyn’s game, we took a little time out to have daddy eat some of his favorite Jello cheesecake and open some presents!
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| Daddy reading Rilyn’s card she made for him! |
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| James’ birthday hat courtesy of Rilyn! (The other Mickey
ear collapsed. These girls always have Disney on the brain!) |
falcon homecoming game
On James’ birthday, we attended the Manor Falcon football/cheer homecoming festivities. Rilyn received her first mum, cheered at the Falcon football game at the Manor high school stadium, and went to a homecoming dance where they crowned a homecoming king and queen. Wait, how old is she?!? 6 or 16? 😉 This post will just be the homecoming game pictures. Stay tuned for the dance pictures!
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| I’m the team mom so I get a special pass to be on the track! |
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| Rilyn is at the end cheering for the team. |
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| cheering with her mum |
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| Shouting out to the crowd to get them pumped up! |
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| Rilyn’s fans! Four families came out to watch her!
(And that’s Rilyn’s sign I made, another Falcon homecoming tradition) |
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| Then at halftime, they announced the cheerleaders names as they stood on the field. |
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Happy Birthday James!
Go Aggies!
Tonight is the Aggies first Big 12 football game. Of course, here in the Paquette household, that means we need to show our Aggie spirit and dress accordingly! I’ve mentioned before how much I like dressing the kids in Aggie clothes. Here are the girls new season shirts (with bows, socks, and earrings too!)
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| seriously cute Aggie shirt! |
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| who doesn’t love Hello Kitty?! |
And we can’t forget Asher! He has been pretty sick this past week, so he isn’t looking so happy, but mama wants a picture, so here you go!
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| That’s How I Roll |
The girls have lots of Aggie accessories, but Asher gets the shoes. My mom bought him the cutest shoes! They are called Team Squeaks, and whenever he walks, the shoes ‘squeak’. Well, they are cute for a little while, then they can get a little annoying… 🙂
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| You will hear him coming! |
friday night lights
Rilyn had the opportunity to cheer the Manor Mustangs football team as they ran onto the field during their homecoming game on Friday night. Going to this game brought back many memories of when I was in high school! Rilyn was mesmerized pretty much the whole night because this was her first high school football game which is pretty different from Aggie football games, (cheerleaders, homecoming king and queen, drill team, mums, garters…) I’m sure that going on the field and looking at the HUGE crowd cheering was pretty cool too!
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| We added a little Manor red to support the Mustangs! |
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| Rilyn taking it all in before the team comes out! |
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| Team is getting ready to run out! |
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| All ready! |
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| Football players running by! (Rilyn is in the middle of the picture.) |
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| You can see Rilyn’s head in between football players running! |
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| We won the game! |
Dino Park
Today was Ella’s first field trip (she has 8 field trips this preschool year!) They went to the Dino Park and I got to tag along! (Love being a stay at home mom!)
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| Ella loved this T-Rex head! |
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| I love her face in this one. She’s thinking, “Guess I’m being eaten alive.” |
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| Jake and Ella acting like T-Rexes |
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| don’t remember what this little guy is called |
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| Brontosaurus |
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| Stegosaurus and Ella’s class |
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| Jake and Ella (could pass for siblings don’t you think?) So sweet. |
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| our Ella Bella |
busted up
I don’t know if Asher is just becoming a little boy and not a toddler anymore, but Asher is getting VERY WILD. Running everywhere at full speed, not watching where he is going, hitting his sisters, head butting me while I’m trying to sleep in! 😉 On Sunday afternoon, Asher ran into the back of our couch nose first (although the frame is covered by fabric, it is still wood under there!) at full speed chasing a ball. I didn’t see it, but I heard the thump and then I see his face with blood everywhere on it. (His nose immediately started bleeding when he hit the couch and then he smeared it all over his face because he didn’t know what was happening.) It took awhile, but we finally got him to calm down and stop touching his nose. Then on Tuesday at preschool they tell me he walked into a pole hitting his nose again! Ugh! This boy is crazy! Here are my best attempts at getting his bruised and swollen nose. We think it’s not broken, but I’m told by Dr. daddy that I need to take him to peditrician on Friday if it’s still swollen.
I’m sure there will be many more boo boos with this Busta’ Man (our nickname for him since birth and now we know why!). I remind myself, I’ve seen worse. Anyone remember Rilyn’s forehead injury? My poor babies!
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| bruise and swelling on his right side of his nose |
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| the bruise |
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| swelling |
schlitterbahn in september
Water parks. They are frustrating for a person like me. Why? Because I feel that it is an event with my kids that I MUST document with high quality pictures, however, a water park is not exactly the best place to bring my very nice camera and lenses. So, I did take pictures today, (with my friend’s camera), but begrudgingly. I really wanted to get ‘the shot’ where the girls are flying down the slide in their tubes, but of course, I can’t. So if we were near our locker, and I was in the mood, I got out the camera and took a few shots. So what I’m trying to say is that I’m not super excited about these pictures. 😛
We thought today would be a good day to take the girls on their first trip to Schlitterbahn in New Braunfels. Today is the second to last day that the water park is open this year so I thought it wouldn’t be too crowded. We had promised the girls to go this summer, (they had even been saving their chore money for tickets), and summer came and went so fast that before you know it, September was here and we were down to the last weekend it was open! So we really were praying for good weather! As I checked weather.com in the car halfway there this morning, it was slightly nervewrecking to read 95% chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. We told the girls our game plan-go on as many slides in the morning as possible! But after we bought the freaking expensive tickets, I decided we would battle the rainstorms and spend as long as possible there! 🙂 When we got there, the girls were excited and then Ella, after seeing the tube slides, quickly decided she was scared and wanted to go home. You can see the fear in her face in this picture.
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| Ella is not so sure about this place! |
We forced our girls to go on the tube slides (another drawback of uncompassionate parents), and the water was FREEZING! After all, it was an overcast day and it was only 80 degrees outside! Ella was not a fan of any of the tube slides. But we promised we would head to the kid section and then she relaxed a little.
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| Rilyn |
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| Ella |
James really wanted to do the Boogie Bahn ‘ride’ where you try to boogie board. He asked me if he looked like a Californian after the ride and I told him Californians don’t boogie board with their glasses on. 🙂
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| time to boogie |
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| good thing I have my glasses on so I can see the water splashing in my eyes! |
The lazy river was a hit especially when they found an alligator to ride on! James was having fun trying to tip them over!
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My thoughts that Schlitterbahn wouldn’t be crowded were wrong. We waited on a slide that was labeled “high thrill” for an hour and a half and Ella fought us the whole time. She made up excuses, cried, made us hold her…but we didn’t budge. Remember, we have very little compassion. After the slide was done, she told us that was best slide ever. (Using lasers, they project a dragon head on a waterfall that is falling over you in a dark tube so it looks like the dragon is eating you.) It was Rilyn who was complaining how scared she was!
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| my freckled beauty |
Then came the rain. It poured for like 30 minutes. We were COLD and WET. Not fun. But we walked to the last park (there are 3), to try and enjoy a couple more slides. The girls were done with slides though and we didn’t want to really wait in the long lines, so we opted for the kid area again. This park had a pirate ship.
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| Ella going down! |
Rilyn took it upon herself to be the ‘slide lifeguard’ at the pirate ship area. For 20 minutes I saw her at the top of the slide making each child give her a ‘ticket’ (a high five) before they could go down the slide. She made them go one at a time and told them “No alcohol.” (I’m sure she said this because every time we went into a new park, they would check our cooler and say, no alcohol or glass bottles inside.)
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| Rilyn making the boy give her his ‘ticket’ |
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| Ella always looks so funny going down slides! |
And finally, did you know Schlitterbahn has a mascot? Apparently, Schatze the dog represents!
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| Rilyn with Schatze |
We decided at the end of the day (we stayed about 6ish hours), that we will go back in a couple of years. We want Asher to go with us next time and he needs to get older, and we want the girls to go on the slides because they want to and not because we are forcing them to!
the paquettes 