Remembering 9-11

I found myself spending more time today remembering where I was when the Twin Towers were hit. I was preparing to drive to San Antonio to see some physicians and have dinner. I didn't go. I spent a good part of the morning in disbelief and then in anger. I still hold that anger today. We were fortunate enough not to have lost any family during the attack. I have had the good fortune to meet a lot of people through my job and travel quite a bit. I had the opportunity to go to ground zero 4 months after the attack. The mess was unbelievable. The area had been fenced off to begin clearing and sorting. There was a viewing platform set up with well-wishes from all over the country that had been posted to the sides of the platform. One of the guys I work with is from upstate New York. His best friend was a FDNY firefighter. He died that day helping others. He left behind a wife and 2 young daughters. I remember talking to him on the platform by the little church. In one of the trees by the church, there were window blinds. I remember looking at the blinds and hearing about this guys family and tears came to my eyes. They still do.
I guess the one thing I got most out of all of this is to appreciate your friends and family even more than I do. Never want to think I didn't appreciate what I had when I had it. God Bless to all and don't forget....

September 2008

We are back in the swing of school. The routine is finally coming back to us. Here is the latest...Erin has read 6 Junie B. Jones books and is leading her class in AR points. We are signing her up for dance this week. I believe she decided on hip-hop again. Em is enjoying Academy so far. We all went to an Academy football game this past Friday. Far cry from the Temple games we've attended. The stadium was about the size of our middle school. Academy won, but it was a different world. Em is in the middle of a social studies project on South Dakota. Em's team won their first soccer game. E is cheering at her first game this week. We are very excited to get this thing going. E is doing well in Spanish and enjoying it. We do have some exciting news....E made the volleyball team this year! Yea! She is on the B team & should get to play quite a bit.
Mel is keeping up with the crazy involvement she into this year. Everyone is a little tired from the week but we're hanging in there.

School starts

We started school this week with a lot of excitement. Em is going to a new school (Academy). She started back a day before E and Erin. Erin was very excited about school...she wants to have the most AR points in her class and she has her buddy Kenna with her. Erin and Dad are still reading Junie B. Jones (Erin's favorite). Em has had some great first days. They have 5th grade in middle school at Academy. Em has 7 different classes. She is ready to start P.E. Em has to have 100 AR points each semester. Right now, Em is loving the Nancy Drew series. Elizabeth had a good first day, but is a little worried about her Spanish class. She has trouble rolling her Rs. Kind of funny...she has all advanced classes, finished in the top 10 students in her grade last year & she is worried about Spanish. She worried the same way about the clarinet & ended up 1st chair for 2 years in a row. If you call the house and someone speaks Spanish, it may be Elizabeth so beware.
Mel has a lot of energy going into the first week...don't know where she gets the energy from. She has a student teacher to start the year with her, and a couple of new teachers she is mentoring. She is still involved with the curriculum writing. She still has too much on her plate. Seems Thornton Elementary was abuzz at open house when everyone found out Em wasn't returning. Parents started questioning if they should leave too. Check out Melinda and Em starting trends. I'm hoping they will help bring back 80's music and parachute pants (funny to see those at high schools again!).
Dad took off the first week of school to help ease back into the routine. Kind of nice havin' some time off. If I could win the lottery, I might be able to get used to this. Of course, I might have to start playing for that to happen.

Ready for school?

We are within a week of school starting back up and we are looking at each other trying to figure out what happened to the summer. Melinda went back to work this week. She was working on and off all summer. We had Emily's open house tonight at Academy (yes, we decided to try Academy this year with Em). Em's science teacher used to teach with Melinda, so we know her (Donna Beach). She is Molly Beach's mother...Elizabeth's buddy from preschool at Immanuel. Em has a couple of her soccer teammates in some classes. Em is excited and ready to start school. Em starts on Monday and Elizabeth & Erin start Tuesday. Erin and Dad started reading the Junie B. Jones series tonight. It was so much fun listening to Erin laugh when she was reading. She was laughing so hard, Dad had to help her finish reading a couple of chapters. Elizabeth is ready to rule the school in 8th grade. She is considering not staying in band because she wants to tryout for Kittens in 9th grade. In previous years, the high school wouldn't let kids in 8th grade band tryout for kittens (makes no sense to me).

Emily had her first soccer tournament this past weekend in College Station. Her select team tied 3 games and lost 1. Considering they have only practiced 4 times before the tournament, they did pretty well. Em is playing center midfield. Em really had fun having almost all of the girls from her team in our hotel room to mess around. She has a fun group of girls on her team.

Elizabeth's Birthday

We went back-to-back on the birthdays. We had a lot of fun with Elizabeth's day. We went shopping in Austin for clothes and then dinner at Nami (Hibachi). We were tired by the end of the day, but everyone had a good time. E had some good news with cheerleading...she is one of the fliers now. She was a little anxious about being thrown in the air, but settled into it and did great! She is pretty excited about cheer starting.
Emily started practicing with her select soccer team this past week. She had a great time. They scrimmaged with some 12 year old girls. Em stayed with them pretty well. She threw the ball in further than any of the 12 year olds. Had a coach ask me what we were doing to get her to throw the ball in that far...didn't tell him it was the gymnastics she has taken for a couple of years. We have a preseason tournament August 16 & 17th.
Erin has decided she is sticking with dance. She is taking hip-hop for sure and may take tap/ballet as well.
We have only 3 weeks left until school starts for the girls. Melinda has about 3 days off until she starts back. She has meetings & curriculum going on for the next 2 weeks until she is scheduled to return. Not sure where the time went...none of us are ready to go back. Get the feeling it will come whether we are ready or not.

Happy belated birthday to Tia Jill. Her birthday is the day between Erin and Elizabeth's. Hope your day was great, Tia!

Erin's Birthday party

This summer has flown by so far. We just had Erin's birthday party...it was a blast. Everyone has stayed busy, but not crazy...thank God! Erin had her party to celebrate the big number 7. We went to Build-a-Bear at the Lakeline mall. We had 5 girls go with us and a couple of younger brothers and sisters. The girls had so much fun. Everyone got to pick their favorite animal and clothes to go with it. I wasn't aware of the difficult decisions 7-year olds have to face..this purse or these shoes. This may be practice for later in life. Everyone decided and Erin loved her purple bear. After Build-a-Bear, we ate dinner at Macaroni Grill. All of the kids had a great time eating together. After that, we came home for cake and presents. Erin loved all of her gifts.
Once everyone had settled down after cake and presents, they decided a pillow fight was in order. We have a couple of videos of the girls getting into the fight...you've never heard so much giggling in your life. We finally got everyone settled in around 11:00pm for a movie. The last 2 awake were still going at 1:15am. We all got up around 7:30am...there will be some little girls crashing early tonight! We spent today at Hank's Town playing games. We are now in the middle of the 3-D Hannah Montana concert...jealous??? I believe I know the words to almost every Hannah Montana song now. Where did the 80's go??? Emily loves her bear as well. Emily did want it known that she beat Melinda once at Dance Revolution. The crown may have to be passed on...we'll have to wait and see. Elizabeth is really good at Dance Revolution as well. Don't think she competed against Mel. Next week is Elizabeth's turn. We will see what she decides to do for her birthday...stay tuned

Double Celebration

Hope everyone enjoyed their July 4th...we had a great time. We had Nana & Papa over and had ribs. Erin finally tried ribs and she loved them. Melinda took Emily and Elizabeth out to watch the fireworks. They had a lot of fun. The finale was their favorite part. Dad and Erin stayed home and watched the Boston Pops play and watched the firework display on TV. Erin thought it was great but wanted to watch Bratz Rock Angelz instead.
The fireworks were a prelude to the big birthday we celebrated the next day. Melinda turned 40! She had breakfast in bed (the girls got doughnuts and coffee for her). We took Melinda to a movie (Wall-e) and then out to dinner. After dinner, Melinda decided she wanted TCBY. So, we headed over for some frozen yogurt for dessert. It had been so long since we had TCBY, the girls didn't remember what it was. Everyone enjoyed their dessert, especially Melinda. Today, we are going over to Nana & Papa's for breakfast. The party continues...