Am I a pain in the butt parent?!

Okay, so first those are a few pictures of Matthew's first day of Middle School since I hadn't posted them before.

Now onto my post ... sad to say, I think I am ... or now that I think of it, I'm not so sad to say that. I think the administrators at my son's school might be sad to hear it though ;-). Okay, let's call it an 'involved' parent, rather than 'pain in the butt'. This is my son's first year at Middle School (6th grade), and being that I have an education background, you know, being an educator and all (okay, so it's been 11 years since I had my own classroom), I guess I feel the 'right' to question what's being done at school. Oh, wait, I guess I do have the right - he's my son, and it's his education we're talking about. Anyway, I have now emailed the V.P. a minimum of 6 times since the day before school started. All valid questions, but I am starting to feel a little too inquisitive. Eh, what the heck ... better to be this way than completely uninvolved, right?! I really do believe that parents should be involved, and I think it's okay that my inquiring mind wants to know!

Happy Birthday Boy of Mine!

Ah, the boy is 11 years old today as of 6:44am! Even he can’t believe he’s 11! And, I just know I can’t be getting that old! We had a birthday celebration a day early so we could also celebrate Uncle Chris’ birthday. Miniature golfing, McConnell’s ice cream cones, steak and mashed potato dinner at home, and homemade cookie dough ice cream (did you catch that we had ice cream two times?!). Quite a nice day. The plan for the actual birthday is to head out for donuts in the morning, church, homemade pizza for dinner, but not sure what will happen in between (can you tell we love some good birthday food?!). If it is as hot as it was yesterday then probably laying low will be the plan. All I can say is thank goodness for AC!

Miniature golfing first ... Uncle Chris kicked our butts!

Then one Star Wars arcade game (no pic of that), and some Air Hockey! Two games with Mom, one with Uncle Chris.

Ah, and the presents ... the boy had made a Power Point Presentation - yes, you heard me right, a Power Point of his birthday wish list! He got quite a few items from his list - Nana gave his this great journal (which he really wanted!)

And, Uncle Chris gave him an Amazon gift certificate, and Uncle Jim gave him a Barnes & Noble gift card - both awesome gifts! Other gifts were mostly books (which he's thrilled with), as well as a watch and Tom & Jerry cartoon DVDs!

Happy Birthday Bestest Son of Mine!

Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Mo!

Well, since I posted about our beautiful new doggie, I figured I should give Eeny, Meeny, Miney and Mo equal time. Who are they you ask?! Our chickens of course! They are 4 beautiful Buff Orpingtons, born on April 11th. We got them in the mail (yes, I did say in the mail!) when they were just a day old (well, actually our 4H leader received them in the mail, and then we picked them up a few days later when we were finally ready to take the plunge!). Here are a few pictures of them - they haven't started laying eggs yet, but we can't wait until they do!

Here they are just a few days old ...

They lived in this box in our laundry room for quite a while ... it took a bit of time to build the 'chicken mansion'!

They sure have grown!

And, now pictures of the 'chicken mansion'! Although now it is fully enclosed and I realized as I was posting this that I don't have a picture of it completely done! Ah, something more to do another day ...

Just who is Malcolm Wilkerson?!

Malcolm Wilkerson is our very wonderful, almost new to us, Golden Retriever! We rescued him through the Southern CA Golden Retriever Rescue (http://www.scgrrescue.org/) in June and we just love him so! Here are a few pics of our beautiful baby (well, he's not exactly a baby, he's really more a hunka lunka love!).

Here he is ASLEEP with the toy in his mouth!

And, here with his paw over his face - he doesn't sleep like this all of the time, but every now and then maybe when life gets to be too much for him I guess.

Here is he looking quite regal - check out all of that skin!

And, just looking content here.

These were all pics we took when we first got him. He's even more handsome now that some of his Golden Retriever coat is coming in!

A new day, a new blog

Okay, so I'm not so great at keeping up our family website, but I'd love to figure out a way to put the happenings of our family 'out there'. I do enjoy reading blogs, I like the fact that there's a history to them, that you don't write something, then change it as I have to do with the website. So ... I'm trying the blogging thing again. We'll see how it goes ... and just for fun, here's a few pictures of what's going on with us these days.

First, let's start with the Big News for this past summer ... our first grandchild was born! Elliana Kristalyn Hammond born June 25th weighing in at 8 lbs. 2 oz. 20 inches long. She's a beauty!



Over the next few days I'll continue to post the goings-on of our summer. I have to say, it was a pretty good one! I'll also continue to work on the layout of my blog - gotta give everyone a reason to come back!