Michael excels at many things. Waiting for the action to come to him is not one of them.
(I missed catching the part where he was sitting in the grass, inspecting the blades.)
"My ball!"
Getting ready to board a plane to see our Georgia family!
Knit Bear needed to be on top "so he could breathe okay."
Joshua let Ella help him run up and down the stones a few times which made her afternoon.
Arts and snacks time.
If bread is involved, Ella is IN for helping with dinner prep.
Thankfully Gramps didn't have to break up too many fights over the drive-way baseball game.
Saturday, we headed to the homeland.
14 years ago, Wes asked me to marry him by this fountain.
The best part of this story is how Ella makes gagging sounds and tries to run from the room every time we start to tell it. Pure entertainment.
Joshua (and the rest of us) had an amazing time at the G-Day game!
Uncle J was clearly ready to do whatever it took to get B Duck-Duck-Goosing with the rest of the crowd.
#93K(and then some)Day
Grandmother Martz was kind enough to put up with the boys running around her apartment, throwing paper airplanes and treating her rocking recliner like an amusement park ride while we visited. God bless her.
With bad weather in Texas, we learned while driving to the airport that we would be delayed so we made a quick detour to have lunch near where we bought our first house in Atlanta. We lucked out spending some more time with Uncle J and B, and then let the kids stretch their legs exploring Oakland Cemetery, complete with a stop to pay our respects to Mr. Bobby Jones.
"Bob- Hit 'em straight. GAH"
The history lesson I gave the big kids on the Civil War probably wasn't the highlight of their weekend, but it made the mommy-teacher in me feel like, well, at least they are building stories to moan about together when they get older.
"Remember when mom droned on about the history of the states? And then she quizzed us? Ugh."
After clearing security, we were hit with a few more hours of delays. Enter: TGI Friday's and our fully-charged iPads (thank the Lord.)
While sitting at Friday's, Ella took an interest in my camera and we held an impromptu lesson about the exposure triangle and manual operation. All of these photos are SOOC (straight out of camera) and I'm especially proud of how she did on the series of three at the bottom. At her request, I asked her to expose for the plane outside, the seat inside and then her brother's cheek. She only took these three shots -- no practice shots were deleted.
In an hour, she seemed to grasp what took me more than a year to figure out on my own.
Stinker.
Following the end of the regular season, Ella's team competed in their first travel tournament. Several of the team members wore double French braids the first day which was a great idea until it came time to cheer them on from across the field -- and we couldn't tell who was who!
Exhibit A: The teams they were playing were somewhat more...well, not all in fourth grade.
Saturday night, El and I took a quick break from the team to pick up some take-out from Cracker Barrel. Naturally we had to test out the oversized Checkers board and rocking chairs while we waited.
