Stratton Cousins 2010

Redrock

While visiting the grandparents in Vegas, we went on a short ride to Redrock Canyon. We tried to get pictures of all of the grandkids, but that wasn't as successful as we had hoped. The boys saw all of the rocks and wanted to go climb them as soon as possible. We hiked down and the boys climbed around for a few minutes.

Unfortunately, on this trip, Nate is being especially clingy to me, and so I had to carry him down (and up) the mountain.

The boys thought this was the neatest thing, where we are in Texas there are no rocks, especially not large mountains of sandstone.

We didn't get to hike for too long because it was nearing lunch time (and very hot) by the time we got to hiking.

Lana and Juliana climbed with us too!

We enjoyed ourselves so much, maybe we'll do it again, just not at high noon!

Cub Scout Day Camp

Adam had the fun experience of going to Cub Scout Day Camp this year. It was at a big boy scout camp about 20 minutes from our house and ran for 6 hours every day this week (we are taking Friday off).

He had a lot of fun doing boy things like playing kickball, archery, bebe guns, golf, an obstacle course, making up corny skits, and other such cub scout activities.
I got to go up with him one day. It was fun to see how the kids interacted and to see what they got to do.

It was also very hot- when I got into my car the thermometer read 98 degrees and the humidity was quite high. I was definitely ready to go home.

Here are the boys from his troop- Adam, Christian, Ben and Andrew.

The theme was Back to the Future and the boys were Jedis!

I am sure I will have many more years of day camp ahead of me!

Adam's new Skill

Guess what Adam just learned to do?

We are so excited! Now all Joe has to do is weed-eat.

The End of Second Grade for Adam

Adam just finished 2nd grade, he's growing up so fast. I can clearly remember many things about 3rd grade and it is hard to believe that Adam is already old enough to be there.
He did really well in 2nd grade, and I am really proud of him.
He got straight A's again the whole year. It is very important to him to get good grades, which I love, I just hope that he can handle it if it becomes difficult and he gets a lower grade at some point.

He also got all E's the whole year and a special award for reading. He reads really well and is beginning to enjoy reading books for pleasure. It's fun to see him get so excited about the books that he is reading.

This year he had Mrs Machos as a teacher. He really enjoyed her. He had a lot of friends in his class, which I really think helped him to enjoy himself.

Good Job Adam, we sure love you!

KIndergarten Graduation

Our Michael graduated from Kindergarten yesterday. His school had a very cute ceremony to celebrate. They all put on caps and gowns and came into the gym where they sang a couple of cute songs.

As they called each child up, they crossed a bridge from Kindergarten to 1st grade. It was very cute.

Here is Michael and the Principal.

Afterwards, they had a reception in their classroom. Here are some of the boys in his class, Michael, Joshua, Shane, Karsten, Logan, Evan, and Bryce

I think maybe Joe and Michael have some similarities after all.

We sure are proud of this boy. He did great all year, he had a phenomenal teacher who was able to continually challenge him. He started out kindergarten ahead of himself, but he ended up way ahead of himself. He is now reading at a third grade level! He reads something and remembers it and tells us all sorts of details about the interesting things that he reads. It usually goes like this,"Mom, did you know.."

Here he is with his good friend Logan. Shortly after he was born, I met his friends mom, who had just had twins, Shane and Logan. They have played together since that time, and we were so excited that Logan was i his class. Every day at recess he would play with the twins, and has been so lucky to have such good friends.

Here he is with his teacher, Mrs. Grabowski. She was fantastic, I am now trying to figure out how to get her when Ellie starts kindergarten.

Michael got inducted into the hall of fame each quarter this year. On the third quarter I didn't believe him (most kids get in only once) so I didn't have him wear the shirt that day. He marched around the school in his regular shirt and I felt bad. I talked to his teacher and she said he is always in it because he is so obediant. I am very thankful that he chooses to be such a great kid.

Michael, Joshua, Shane, Karston, and Logan

Fun with Cousins

We had Austin and Koni come up and spend the night with us at our "cottage" on Sunday night. It was exactly like we had hoped it would be. On Sunday, we let the older kids stay up a little late playing board games. When that ended in disagreement (like a good game of Monopoly always does) we put them to bed and stayed up late playing cards ourselves. Joe won, much to Austin's chagrin, and apparently according to Austin I suck at it, but that is okay with me.
The next morning the kids had fun catching frogs and trying to catch turtles (I don't think they found any this time).

When they all got bored with that, they convinced us to go swimming in the lake. The kids all put life jackets on so they could go deeper and Austin took them on a swim/float around goat island.

Nate stayed for a while and then decided he didn't like the squishy bottom and spent his time playing on the side.

Emma, Adam and Lily

Joe and Nate

While we were up there, we noticed that most of our trees are growing:

It was so nice to be able to have a relaxing night away with friends, it's nice that the house is finally in good enough shape to allow it. We plan to have many more in the future.

Nate is Two!

Nate turned 2 this weekend, can you believe it? We woke him up on his birthday and all watched him open presents. He got a bunch of tools and a tool bench, a carpet for playing with his cars on and some Thomas trains.
He has been really interested in trains lately, every time we drive near train tracks, he is sure to point them out. His favorite presents by far were the trains Grammie gave him. He lined them all up and drove them around. When it was time to go to church, he found a bag and put all of the trains into it and tried to take them to church.

Poor baby came home from church not feeling well. We had plans to go to our property and spend the night with Austin and Koni's family, but he was pretty miserable the whole night.

Since my kids don't really like cake, we had ice cream cones for Nate's birthday. He understood what to do with the candles and half way through the song, he blew them out.
Nate visited the Doctor the other day, he was 30 pounds and 35 1/2 inches. That is 75% for weight and 80% for height.