Reunion time

Tis the season for the family reunion. The kids and I drove up to north Mississippi for the annual Hodges reunion. I have been going just about my entire life. My Mammaw (my mother's mother) comes from a family of nine kids. Every year all nine of them would come and bring their families. Over the years, three of them have passed away. The reunions seem to get smaller and smaller. This year, Mammaw's kids, grandkids and great grandkids made up the majority. Despite the heat and extreme humidity, we had a blast riding on the boat and chatting with the relatives.

My 90 year old Mammaw--I just love her!


Riding the boat





Tubing


Playing at the beach


Wakeboarding (Oh yes I did!)

Look at my handsome, show-off brother!


Is my dad awesome or what--how many 63 year olds do you know that can do that?


The cutest boy fixing the lawn mower.


My Harvard bound neice

Kindergarten Graduation

It's official, I have a first grader now. It is hard to believe how fast the school year went by. Avery rode the bus everyday to and from school. She learned how to read and always came home with fun facts about bugs, dinosaurs and the solar system. Her report cards were always great with the exception of a few behavior problems. For some reason, whenever the teacher assigned her to sit by boys, she wasn't able to control the bad behavior. One things we quickly found out is that she hates to write. Some of her assignments would be to describe a picture or tell a story. These were her least favorite. Oh well, here's to a fun summer.

Mosquito Bite!

Believe it or not Spencer's eye nearly swelled shut when a mosquito stung him right below his eye. Weird Huh?

Withdrawals

Since school ended in May, I have been experiencing withdrawals. In all my free time the last few moneths, I was studying or fulfilling assignments. Now, I don't know what to do with my free time these day. What's that? Clean, cook, care for my children.... Those are all good suggestions buuuuuut I think I'll take up reading until classes start again. Does anyone have any good book suggestions?

FINAL-ly

We finished up with finals this week! I am really happy about that but I feel overwhelmed by how much more I have to go. I just found out that in addition to Sociology, Microbiology, and Anatomy & Physiology 2, I have to take Chemistry before I can apply to the nursing program. There is a good reason I avoided all of these classes in college.

Anyway, I am posting a few fun pictures from the past week. Avery had her field day and Spencer and I went to cheer her on. The cutest was when she sat on the water balloon and had to run all the way to the finish line with wet pants.



Sarah finished preschool last night. It wasn't really sad for me because she'll go to the same preschool next year but both of her "buddies" were graduating from high school and it was sad to say goodbye to them.

Wowza!

I finally did it! I started cooking Monday afternoon and finished my last two meals this morning. (This is because I forgot a few ingredients and couldn't make it to the store until this morning). I ended up with:
2 Chicken Tetrazinnis
2 Lasagnas
2 Lemon Chickens
2 Spaghetti pies
3 Pancake mixes (Breakfast for dinner is our favorite)
2 Taco meats
2 Baked zitis
2 Meatloafs
1 Herb chicken
Cookie dough
It was a lot of cooking (yes) but I am super excited to not have to think about what to make for dinner for the next 3 weeks. It's a good thing you can't see a little farther to the right of the picuture sits the sink full of dishes.


It ACTUALLY DID fit in my little freezer.

Something new

So, Mark and I have been trying really hard to live within our budget. On a side note, I HATE budgets. They make me want to rebel and all I can think about is how nice it would be to have access to unlimited funds. Anyway, we both decided we have to try to make this work. Last year, I took up couponing to save money and found I save ALOT that way. Still I couldn't help exceeding our measly monthly grocery budget. So I came across an idea that may work for me--once a month freezer cooking day. For a thorough explanation go here. I took an inventory of what I had in my cupboards and made a list of freezable recipes I could make. I made a giant grocery list of all the things I would need and went shopping for it today. I used coupons on all the products I could. Let's just say, I spent well under $100 for at least 17 meals. I was pretty impressed.

Now comes the fun part--cooking and freezing all those meals. I'll let you know how it goes.