Flem-Fam: June 2009

Very depressing

There has been a reason I haven't blogged anything in over two months. And it is not because we haven't had anything exciting going on. We have. Tons of stuff. However, my computer totally crashed a couple of months ago. It took awhile to get it fixed, so in the meantime, I was holding a ton of pictures on my memory card in my camera. The computer fix-it guys were luckily able to fix our computer (a few hundred dollars later) and recover most of our data, but there were several recent pictures that they weren't able to back up. While I was a little sad about it, most of the really important pictures had been saved on my blog and even though they weren't full sized, at least we had a record. When I finally got my computer back up and working, I was so excited to download my hundreds of great photos from my camera - kindergarten graduation, first t-ball game, etc. The REALLY good stuff of life, right? Well, I plugged my camera into my computer, and while downloading the photos, my battery ran out on my camera. The memory card was completely corrupted and all those pictures were lost. It's taken me awhile to get up the motivation to blog leaving such a big hole. That was always my problem with keeping a journal as well. If I missed one event, I would never want to continue without catching up my journal "readers" (who those journal readers were, I'll never know). So, without anymore ado, below is a brief summary of things that have happened in the last couple of months, with pictures from friends pieced together. I'm hoping to gather more photos from Avery's kindergarten classmates for the last day of school, graduation and other kindergarten events.

The Perfect Day

This last Tuesday, Avery, Donovan and I had what we decided was the "Perfect Day." We went down to Burke Lake park and had tons of fun.
We rode the train:

Rode the Carousel:

Ate ice cream:

And loved each other:

It really was the perfect day!

Ward Campout

Last weekend, we camped overnight at Prince William Forest for our annual Ward Campout. It was the first one I had been on. Last year, Scott was out of town and I didn't want to take two kids camping solo. Prior to that, Donovan was too young. So it was my first time ever camping with my kids. On the way down, Avery said to me "Mommy, you are going to love camping, it is super fun!" And it was! I think we'll do this more often. The kids are at great ages for it too. They sleep through the night (most of the time), they don't require any special equipment and Donovan is potty trained (a fairly new development, YAY!!!).

Around the campfire:

Ready for bed:

Avery was not happy to leave her friends by the fire and settle down for the night:

Our new tent:

Fathers and Sons Campout

Scott took Donovan on their first ever Father/Son campout last month. Both loved it. I was not there to take pictures or give a narrative, so I'll tell you what Avery and I did while they were gone.
Friday night, we went out to a very fancy dinner at a very fancy restaurant (Panera) with our friends Adrienne and Amanda. Avery slept in my bed and in the morning, we got up, went to the diner for pancakes and then got mani/pedi's. (I got the pedi, she got the mani.) I think she's hooked.

T-Ball

Avery signed up for a co-ed t-ball team this year, but for some reason, she was the only girl on the team. The other teams all had more than one girl, but I guess girls in our neighborhood weren't interested in playing.

Happy to have a base hit:

Playing third (on the base, haha):

How she spent most of the season when in the field:

2,4,6,8, who do we appreciate?

Hottest first base coach ever:

And I do have to brag a bit. Avery was the only girl on her team, but she was definitely the most consistent hitter. Many of the kids would swing and swing before they hit the ball. She would walk up to the tee, line herself up and whack that ball out of the park. Well, at least a couple of feet past second base, but in t-ball, that is like out of the park, right? Next to Tito, she hit the furthest on her team. But come on, the other kid is the size of a ten year old, and his name is Tito and if that doesn't destine you to play in the majors, what does?

Kindergarten Graduation

I can't believe Avery is done with kindergarten. She had the most amazing teacher this year. I wish we could take Ms. Evans with her along to first grade. It's amazing to see how much she grew this year, inside and out.

Graduating: