The summer is over....

....and since I've been absent from blogging, here is a photo recap of what we did!

Pool fun in the backyard..

Brendan sliding away! 

Daddy-Daughter dance that was put on by Bryan's unit.

Visiting the turtle at Rory and Brendan's school library which was open for the month of June.

A Mommy-Rory day to go and see "Brave".

This pretty much sums up the month of July in Texas..

Brendan was in the hospital overnight for dehydration..

Thankfully the next morning he was back to his smiling self!

Jack was amazed that Rice Krispies "talked" to him.

Rory passed Level 2 swimming, twice!

Watching 4th of July Fireworks with Bryan's boss' family on Fort Hood.

Pretty!

Rory had a sleepover at "the cousins house" and we met them for lunch at a place on Belton Lake.

Jack got a clean bill of teeth health at the dentist. 

Brendan worked really hard with his speech therapist!

Jack learned to dress himself, yeah we still have work to do.

Rory got her first "eye check up" and her first pair of glasses.

Rory beat me at air hockey...this is her game face.

Brendan finished his summer school session, and Rory helped him off the bus on the last day!

Brendan got a "Cavity free" dentist visit!

Rory did too!

We geared up for the Olympics with lots of crafts and some hidden learning..

We hit the books..

..and then we hit the cupcakes.

To really get into the spirit we had the kids participate in some  Olympic weightlifting!

Now, to run with the torch!

Brendan wasn't really about running with it...guess he likes to play with fire!

Look at that Olympic pride!

Rory laid out in front of the TV watching the Opening Ceremonies.

We had a visit from Uncle Michael and his guitar..

..and Auntie Madelynn and her sketch book of the designs she has made.

We had a late summer getaway to a resort just North of Houston with a watermark..

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3 cuties by the lake!

See, I was there too!

May 13, 2012 - The little lady turns 7!

I still cannot believe that our first born is 7!  Where did all that time go??

We celebrated, of course, the way that she wanted!  We made the hour long trip up to the Mayborn Museum in Waco, TX which is a really great Children's museum, hence the reason why she wanted to spend her birthday there!  There is so much to do and see..

A TV studio....

Cool cars to drive...

Cattle that needed to be wrangled..

Milk that had to transported...

..music to be created..

..and of course a tea party!

Cheers!

The day wrapped up with a celebration at home...

Complete with grandparents singing happy birthday...

Barbie gifts galore....

She was kind enough to let Jack try out his reporting skills...(she said he needed some work)

Of course there was cake...

...a Barbie cake of course!

Since her birthday was on a Sunday, she was able to draw it out yet another day for a celebration at school on Monday!

Standing in front of the class while they sung to her!

With that, we bring the 7th Birthday Celebration to a close!!

Fashion Forward???

This gem of an outfit is what Rory proudly wore to school yesterday...

It's hard to pick just ONE thing to love about this ensemble...

1.  The daring-ness to put together such different patterns and colors..

or

2.  The winter "fashion" boots in 90 degree weather....

I'll let you ponder and then cast your vote!

Earning my Spurs!

Since we are back in a Calvary unit, the military spouses have an opportunity to earn our Spurs, just like the guys do, well not really because if that was true then I would still be out in the middle of field somewhere!

Soldiers can earn their spurs one of two ways: They can be awarded combat spurs meaning that you served with a Calvary unit in combat, or they can participate in a Spur Ride which is a series of events testing knowledge and physical fitness in several areas.

Our Spouse Spur Ride was merely for fun, and to give us a hands on experience for some of the things that our spouse does at work.

We participated in 4 different events, and no, Bryan didn't do a good job of preparing me for it.

We started off in simulators, you know a life size video game.  The first group went into the simulators and we were able to stay in the "Command Center" and watch all the action on the big screen..

We had a good time cracking up at this crazy Humvee that wasn't so much shooting at people as it was just driving over them.

Then we got our turn in the Humvee, and let me just say, they are not comfortable and the guns are heavy and very awkward...

This is just the view looking out my window onto the big simulation screens, which you can sort of see the "bad guys". Lucky for us they couldn't attack us because my weapon kept jamming..uh oh!

Next we moved on to Turkey shooting!  This was pretty funny, and no Turkey shooting is not something that the Army trains for...

I think these were M-16's or something.  You had to learn how to drop the ammunition clip and reload it pretty quickly....another fail for me, but I tried Wicked hard!

At this point in the day we were outside and heading up to the obstacle course.  I would also like to note that this was the point in the day when the skies opened up and started raining on us.  Apparently there is an Infantry saying "If it ain't raining, you ain't training."  I'll leave the grammatical errors alone, and just let you know that we could have done without the rain, but we made of the best of it!

We were in teams of 5, and we all had to carry our "weapons" with us, not necessarily carrying them correctly, just getting them from start to finish..

My team is on the right side behind the ladies in the white shirts...I would be in the gray ARMY shirt.  We started out my running through the tires that you see there on the ground, then we came up to a "grenade" station, AKA water balloons that we had to throw at a target.  After that we had to low crawl under some very dangerous barbed wire...

That would be my legs..I was moving wicked fast...

After that we came upon another "grenade" station, then followed on to a water jug carrying station. That sounds easy, but you also have to carry your weapon and these things were pretty filled.  After successfully transporting the water, we had to flip a HUGE truck tire 5 times, then move on to a "medic" station where one of team members had to be loaded onto a stretcher and carried to the drop off point where she was miraculously cured and able to join us for the final run to the finish...

Is it obvious that they girl that got carried on the stretcher is the one in front with a smile on her face?  I would also like to say that when Bryan saw this picture the first thing out of his mouth was, "Wow, you don't look happy."  I actually was happy and cracking jokes the whole way, I guess I'm just not photogenic..oh well.

After we all finished the course, we moved on to the last station, which was the Land Navigation course.  It was still raining, we were still outside and we had to learn how to read a compass.  Now I'm sure it's pretty easy, but when you now have a team of 12 and one compass is there really a need for me to learn how to do that??  I'll tell you, no.  This fact was confirmed when one of the soldiers that was with us pulled out his iPhone and used his compass app.

Our team successfully found our 4 targets out in the field, and we were done!

All that was left was to collect our spurs at the cookout.  There are some pictures of this somewhere, but I'm not holding my breath on seeing them.  In the meantime, here are the spurs I earned with t-shirt to go along with it!