First Day of School

Wow! The summer went by so fast. Probably because we had so many things going on. I can't believe have a Kindergartner AND a first grader. CRAZY I tell you.

Conal and I were so entertained listening to their conversations this past weekend. Hailey said "Hey Garrison can you do me one little favor? Will you tell me when the bus is here?" She kept asking him a bunch of questions about school. Another time Garrison said "Hailey, let me give a little advice. NEVER go to school on Saturday!" I think that is some pretty sound advice.

Here is our traditional picture in front of the Texas sage:

Leaving for the bus stop:

See ya! Too bad you can't see them sitting next to each other, waving and blowing kisses........its enough to bring a tear to their mother's eye ..........or maybe a lot more than one ;)

Good luck!

Goodbye and good luck to the McPherson family! We will miss you and hope that you love your new home. We are glad that you are going where you want to be!

Conal and Jon met 4 years ago when they were at the academy in Quantico, VA. They both received their orders to El Paso and they spent a couple of years on the same squad. I think we are all in shock that the time has actually come to move on to the next place.

You may remember this picture, which is now the "before" picture.

And now we have the after picture. Morgann and Macy were born only 4 days apart (and nearly shared the same birthday!) We are both leaving El Paso with 2 more kids than we came with!

Corbin and Garrison:

I hate goodbyes..........so see you soon McPhersons!

What's on your mind?

Do you ever wonder what your kids are thinking? I don't mean like when you ask "WHAT were you thinking????" after your kid paints the neighbor's dog (my cousin actually did that!). I just mean throughout the course of the day, I sometimes wonder what my kids are thinking about.

This question has crossed my mind a lot these last few days of summer vacation particularly because of some random comments that Garrison has been making throughout the day. After a couple of days I started writing them down. I wish I would have done it sooner since I have forgotten a bunch of them and they were funny! The lesson we can learn from this is serious lack of sleep = serious lack of memory. ha ha.

The thing that cracked me up about these comments is that they all started the same. They were phrased as a question but I don't think he wanted an answer from me. I guess he was just giving me information or something. Also, they were completely random. He wasn't reading about them, he wasn't watching T.V. at the time and we hadn't been talking about them before. Here are a couple I wrote down:

......So bugs don't have eyelids?

......So TMNT stand for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?

.......So did you know if a fisherman is fishing near a geyser, he can just boil the fish he caught right there?

........So in golf the lower number is better?

........ok. so lets review. Fishes don't have eyelids and praying(is it praying or preying?) mantises look scary.

After a while Garrison said
"Mom, are you writing down what I say?" (Um, BUSTED!!!)

and I said "yeah".

Garrison: "Why are you doing that?........Are you going to put this on your BLOG?"

Me: "Um yeah probably"

Spoiled kids......Spoiled Mom

Aunt Mandi came to visit this weekend. It was WAY too short but so much fun. The kids loved playing with Aunt Mandi and being spoiled with yummy treats. I was spoiled because she helped me with the kiddos. I don't know how I'll get to church on time by myself.

We took a drive through the pecan orchards in New Mexico.

We also went to Old Mesilla and then later to the outlet mall for some serious kid clothes shopping.

SO FUN! I only regret two things. 1. She wasn't here longer. 2. I forgot to take very many pictures because Mandi was snapping away. I'll have to get some pictures from Mandi!

Nasty Nature

Ok, I admit it. I'm not a nature girl. All of the rain has brought a bunch of the creatures that I could definitely do without. Like this ginormous moth.

I know it doesn't look that big in the picture (my dad told me to put something next to it so you could compare but NO WAY was I getting that close to it. What if it flew at me or something?) but it is seriously the biggest moth I have ever seen..........and it was SO gross. I seriously almost fell over when I walked past it and saw it out of the corner of my eye. Let's just say if anyone saw me----they got a good laugh.

I guess the rain isn't all bad though. My grass is nice and green and all of my plants and bushes are flowering. Plus, you get pictures like these:

It's Hard Being a Grown-up!

So who really wants to be a grown-up anyway? We spend our first 21 years of our life wanting to grow up as fast as we can and then we spend the rest of our lives wishing we could go back to the carefree days of our youth...........but really that isn't what this post is about.

This morning as I was getting Macy dressed, Garrison asked if he could get Jackson dressed for me. Well, heck yeah! One less kid for me to dress. Jackson was as cooperative as a 21 month old can be (which isn't that cooperative). It was quite entertaining. Garrison about took him down (not on purpose) trying to get his shirt off. Jackson had his arms up in the air and was saying "reach for the sky". Then Garrison was chasing him around trying to get the buttons done up on Jackson's shirt. That isn't an easy task even for me. I told him that getting one done was good enough. After Garrison had gotten him dressed as best that he could he said "Man, I guess it IS hard being a grown-up!!" to which Hailey responded "YEAH it is!".

Holy Tarantula Batman!

I knew sooner or later I was going to see one of these since its been raining a lot. I've only seen them during monsoon season. I just didn't expect to see one this BIG.
The first one we saw was during the infamous storms of 2006. Conal and the kids found it on the front porch. Conal decided to return that one to its home in the desert so he let it crawl on the end of the broom and WALKED IT THROUGH THE HOUSE out to the backyard and put it over the rock wall. It was dark outside and he wanted to be able to see if it crawled up the broom. I was at Walmart at the time and the kids busted him the minute I walked through the door. Conal said that while he was walking through the house with it he kept thinking "if this thing falls off my wife is going to be SO mad." Um yeah. I would've been mad. It was still raining so it ended up crawling back over the rock wall.

When I got home from Walmart, Conal said that I better go look at the rock wall in the back. It was dark and it was in the middle of a huge lightening storm. So as in a horror movie, lightening flashed and there it was.....and I screamed.......just like in a horror movie. ha ha!

Luckily, it was daytime this time. However, when my camera flashed the thing twitched. It was all I could do not to scream.

Hopefully this year we will skip the yearly Vinagroon sighting. We can always hope!