Faces of the First Day of School

We finally made it through the summer - and I finally got pretty much caught up on all my pictures.  I guess I will just have to start taking more pictures again!

It was the first day of school about three or so weeks ago.  We had a pretty rough year last year with some personality issues.  This year, Ryan has a male teacher and we have been hearing some really great things about him. 

Ryan did allow me to photograph him before we went to school.  My days of walking him to his classroom ended about two or three years ago.  So, I will take what I can get!  He really does not enjoy having his picture taken.  Sometimes, he will participate when I am working on a fun photo project that includes things like motion and stuff.  And he does all right with me taking his picture while he is doing stuff.  But taking pictures because it's the first day of school is not really his thing. 

Anyway he let me snap a few and I had to be quick about it, so please do not look for anything artistic at all.  This was strictly a mom taking pictures of her child while he was standing still!

Here are the many faces anticipating the first day of school:

He ended up having a really great first day (although if you ask him you may get totally different answers). He actually got in the car in a good mood. He said his teacher was pretty funny. We even went to Tilly's to celebrate the first day and bought him a new seatbelt belt. This one is green and black checked, and I can't remember which car symbol it has on it. He picked it out and loves it!

Silly Boys

We really enjoy our dogs.  They are so fun and bring so much to our daily lives.  I can't imagine life without them and the laughter they create.  As you are probably aware, our one beagle, Sam is a food crazed dog.  he obsesses over it all the time. 

One day when Doug had finished eating the tortilla chips out of the bag, he decided to see if Sam would try to lick the bottom.  Sure enough, he had no problem putting his entire head into the bag to get those last little crumbs.  And then proceed to clean the entire bag!  Crazy, silly dog!

After Sam had his head in the bag and was okay, Ranger decided he would give it a try too.

Sam through the window of the chip bag.  Loving every minute of it!

Movies and Lunch

The last of the summer movies was a Muppet movie.  We have been getting The Muppet Show on DVD through Netflix and Ryan has loved watching them.  We couldn't wait for the movie as our last of the summer movies.  Well, that morning about an hour before we needed to leave I was texting Brittany.  They had done the summer movie tickets for a different day of the week and a different theater but were unable to go to the Muppets.  I casually mentioned that they should come with us.  And they did!  It was great!  I'm so glad that they decided to join us last minute for the movies.  I had a great time watching Payton eat his Whoppers.  It was too cute for words!

After the movies, we met them for lunch at one of our favorite spots.  And that was tons of fun too.  Thanks guys for making the last Friday before school started an extra special one!

It must have been a little muggy that day.  It was monsoon season after all.  Check out the pepper shaker with half of the pepper sticking to the top of the shaker.  Pretty crazy.

Ryan playing around with the napkin ring, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the yummiest burger in town.  Or at least the on of the yummiest, In & Out Burger ranks up there too!

Doesn't that look like a scrumptious treat?  I heard it wasn't as good as it looked.  That's too bad!  Ben, Brittany and Baylee got this cupcake.

A Friend's Nerf War

One of the highlights for the three boys - Ryan, Shawn and Matt - this summer were having Nerf wars.  They had so much fun with them.  These pictures aren't the best.  I had to get in there in the middle of the war to shoot.

Maybe I've Mentioned This Before?

We love Lego's at our house.  Have I said that before?  The bins full of Lego's that we have rarely get put away.  And when they do, it only lasts for a few days before one or all of them get pulled back out again.

This summer was a pretty quiet one for us.  Between Ryan fighting ear infections - swimmers ear, and myself having one thing after another after another after another.  All little things - nothing serious (well except for the infection that I had from my toe surgery.  That one did have me worried and worn out for a bit).  So we were pretty quiet.  We kept at home for the most part.  The only thing we did on a regular basis was bowling and the Summer Movies on Fridays (and we didn't even make it to all of those this year.)

Ryan has always been really good about entertaining himself.  And he did get to spend quite a bit of time with his friends Shawn & Matt.  They were constantly going back and forth to each other's houses all summer long.  Their mom and I have joked about having joint custody of our kids.

One day when it was just Shawn over, Ryan finally convinced Shawn to build a maze out of Lego's.  His original idea was to build this maze for another toy - Hexbugs to race through. 

The maze started out pretty small.  There were many days I would hear the neighborhood kids down there laughing and having a great time racing their bugs through the maze.  Well, somewhere along the way, the maze grew - even including a bridge.  And it changed from racing Hexbugs into a game.  There were teams of different Lego minifigures.  You could be knights, skeletons, rebels from Star Wars, Army, Empire from Star Wars and so on and so on.  In this game you rolled a 20 sided dice to move your person.  Once you were within range of another person's player you could try to shoot them or strike them with a lightsaber by rolling a 6 sided die.  Each team had a leader.  If the leader was killed then the Hexbugs were released onto the board.  The player whose leader had been killed had to roll frantically to get all the rest of their players to home base before getting hit by a Hexbug.  This game got played for at least a month with all sorts of kids coming over to play.  It has since changed to a zombie type game and I don't believe the Hexbugs are involved anymore.  I'm not sure.  I've only kinda played the zombie version for about 10 minutes one night and we didn't get very far into the game.

I've told Ryan for years he should get a job making up games.  He certainly has the imagination for it and can come up with rules that really make sense.  What do you think?

Of course I would not be writing without including some pictures.  So here you go, enjoy:

Ryan setting up the board.  He is the Army team.

The board.

Me, all setup and ready to play.

My team.  I was the Rebels from Star Wars.

One of the Hexbugs going through the maze looking for players to strike.

Ryan's got a new job

This summer, Ryan picked up a new chore.  One that he can earn some extra money doing.  He doesn't seem to mind this one at all.  I can't figure out why.

4th of July 2010

Our 4th of July was pretty quiet this year.  Much like the rest of our summer was.  We hung out at home, at some good food and then went to the fireworks with my Ben, Brittany, Baylee and Payton.  It was nice to see them.  We went and watched the fireworks at a local baseball field.  We didn't pay to get in, since we were only going for the fireworks.  And instead found ourselves a nice parking spot on the side of the street up against a farm field.  We had a great view of the field ahead of us.  That is until this very rude man decided to squeeze his SUV in between our car and the car behind us.  It was pretty funny.  It was a pretty small space.  Lots of cars driving down the street slowed down to check out the spot and decided it was too small and would drive on to look for another one.  Well, not this guy.  He had to park at such an angle that he ended up blocking our view from half of our car.  So, we repositioned ourselves and were all huddled together in one spot to see the show.  We did end up having a great spot.  The couple that got out of the car did everything that they could to avoid looking at us.  We got a pretty good chuckle out of it.

Ryan and Baylee hanging out in the car before the fireworks started.

Baylee and myself in the back of the car.

Doug, Melissa and Ryan

Payton, Brittany, Ben and Baylee

Introducing...

The Pinheads! 

Summer bowling league began in June.  This year Ryan was on a team with a friend from school and his older brother, Shawn and Matt.  The three boys had a great time bowling.  And they did pretty good too! 

After they finished bowling their three games, the rest of the day was spent at either their house or our house.  We tried to alternate, but sometimes the boys had different plans as to which house they would prefer to go to.  And sometimes they started at one and ended up at the other.  It's a good thing we live pretty close together. 

The team

Love the shirts!  One week, as a surprise, Matt and Shawn's grandma (thanks so much!) brought in shirts she had made for the boys to wear.  After that, they wore their shirts every week.

Ryan

Matt

Ryan and Shawn from the back.

Ryan and Shawn from the front.

Matt

But the best part of bowling, at least in Ryan's opinion is the French fries at the bowling alley!  He looked forward to them every week.

A Long Friendship

This summer has been a bit of a challenge for the Harper house.  Well, now that I think about it, the past year has had it's share of ups and downs.  I will be glad to put this summer behind us.  With school starting tomorrow, I'm hoping that that will be the beginning of better things for us.  I don't believe that Ryan will agree with me - he is not looking forward to school at all.

We had been hearing the rumors for a few months, but didn't know when or if they would actually come true.  And then one evening in June, we got the phone call.   Ryan's oldest and closest friend was moving away - out of state.  He would be leaving in two days.  After making some last minute changes to activities, we were able to have him come to our house for one last sleepover and spending the next day at our house.  It was very bittersweet.

The two boys have been friends since kindergarten.  Adrian moved away about two weeks into second grade into a different school.  They stayed in touch and got together as much as they could.  When Adrian would come over to our house, the two boys would just play and play and play.  I have only seen them fight once, and rarely did you hear "we're bored" from them.  They constantly used their imaginations.  Lots of great memories and great fun was had.

Here are some highlights of the two boys together over the years.

One of the first times that Adrian came over.   I think maybe this was first or second grade.

Whatever they played, they went all out.  They would setup elaborate games and then their imaginations took over.  It was really fun to watch - and to listen to!

A fort they built out of every single blanket in the house.  They had so much fun with this - trying to get the dogs to go in there with them.  I just heard lots of laughing in there.

Bowling.  Ryan has done a bowling league for several years with some other friends.  This day, the rest of the team was not there, so Adrian filled in.

Playing with the Star Wars figures.  They would setup battles and stuff.  It took them as long to set everything up as it did to play with them.  Either way, they had fun doing it.

Setting up another Star Wars battle waiting for dinner at one of my favorite places to eat.

3D movie

Adrian went to so many of Ryan's activites.  He came along to friend day at karate, attended every piano recital and went to a couple of his flag football games, just to mention a few.

We went to the drive-ins several times.  We would get there early to get a good spot.  The boys would bring along different acitivities to do in the car while waiting for movie time.  On this particular day, they were playing Yugi-Oh.

Legos was another favorite activity.  This day, they decided to build a long "rope" of Legos.  They measured it to be 25 feet if I remember right.

Another time bowling with some of my family members.

Their last day together swimming.

Adrian & Ryan

End of School Swim Party

Well . . . here we are one week away from the new school year starting and I am just now posting the End of School Year Swim Party pictures.  Slowly, but surely I am making progress in my backlog.  I have toyed with the idea of just starting from now, but really do want to share all the fun adventures.  So, hopefully those of you that are hanging in there with me don't mind.

Every year since second grade, we have hosted an End of School Swim Party.  We invite the entire class.  We have yet to have the entire class come, which is okay, because I'm not sure where we would put them all.  We had a pretty good turnout this year, in spite of a couple last minute cancellations.  The kids had a great time.  I didn't melt too bad and had two moms that stayed with me during the heat.  It was fun to sit & visit with those moms.  My brother gave up an afternoon to man the door for us so that we could be outside with the kids.  And Doug made sure all the pool toys, snacks and drinks were taken care of.  All in all a great day.

The kids have a great time with the water guns.

Posing for me.  Unfortunately because I could not see the LCD screen because it was so bright outside one of the girls got cut off in this picture.

Goofy shot!

Sammers absolutely loves these parties.  Inevitably some food gets dropped and makes his day!  He pretty much hung out under the food table for two reasons.  1.  The Food (duh!)  2.  It protects him from all the splashing water.  He is not a fan.  And if there was no food, he would have been nowhere near that pool that day.

Football Game #7 - The Final Game of the Spring Season

I would like to say the season ended before it got too hot.  But it was already getting plenty hot sitting out there.  I loved watching the games.  They were tons of fun & really not tons of pressure on the kids.  It would have been nice to have had a few more wins.  But, it got Ryan out running around and learning a little bit more about football.

Waiting for the ball to be snapped

Heading over to get those flags

Reaching for the flags

After the game, the entire team went to Peter Piper Pizza for some pizza, playtime and to get their trophies.

After enjoying our pizza and waiting for the trophies to be handed out.  My parents and Kelly came to the game and the pizza party with us.

The team ready to get their trophies.  Ryan is somewhere in that mix.

Ryan with the coaches of the Vikings.

Goofy shot!
One of my favorites to take.  I love to see what people do on the spur of the moment.