Catherine really does adore her Pre-KB class at St. Rose

Picture Day (love the potty in the back ground!!)

I am feeling very blessed as Catherine is a month and a half into school and she adores it.  SHE ABSOLUTELY LOVES IT.  Every day when she comes home the first thing she does is play school.  She plays it for hours at a time.  She reads to me (fake pretend) and she reads all kinds of books to her stuffed animals.  She has converted our guest room into her schoolroom and office.  She takes attendance daily and sometimes, though not often, will put croc or flamingo in time out.  She loves playing the teacher.

She also has a cash register that she uses to sell lunch cards to her students.  She will take random receipts from my wallet and say they are lunch cards.  She also has real money from my wallet because the other day I was cleaning her room and the cash registrar door popped open and wow: lots of 1s,5s, and 20s.  I guess she is saving that for college!

Friday 8/14 when they get to meet the teacher for the first time

Sweet Frogs yogurt same night (I felt bad bc she had an ear infection)

Adores any and all animals

Even bronzed Apes

For over a month she has told me that we must have a witch at HW so that our witch will protect us from the goblins.

And we love soccer! I am not sure if it is the actual game or the gatorade and goldfish after the game!

Johnson Space Center

Brian took the kids to Johnson Space Center last weekend while I was out of town with some college friends.  They loved it.  Logan always wants to go there but since it can be a hike with traffic, we only make it a few times a year.  Their favorites are still the Saturn V display rocket and mission control.  

Last weekend we watched Apollo 13 and Logan was obsessed.  He loved the fact that it was based on a true story and could not believe that all of the astronauts returned to earth unharmed.  Apollo 13 launched in April 1970 and was intended to be the third landing on the moon for NASA. After an oxygen tank exploded two days into their mission, the crew abandoned the moon landing and focused on returning to earth.   For the return trip, the crew had to troubleshoot problems with ground control that included power limitations, loss of cabin heat, water shortages, and re-working a carbon dioxide filter.  After the movie ended, Logan was all about re-creating space scenes.  It is truly awesome to see his imagination at work.  Of course, his rocket recreations had bombs on them and his astronauts had guns. Still not sure why they needed ammunition.  His carbon dioxide filter was a whole lot of tape and paper plates and napkins.  He confiscated all of our flashlights and batteries to work on the "power problem" in our house.  

I think Catherine missed the main plot of the movie because throughout the whole thing she only asked one question.   Where are all the bad guys? It was nice to watch a movie that did not have any bad guys.

Surfside Beach, TX

We rented a 3 br beach house with the Caldwell family for the last week of summer.  It was in Surfside Beach, TX, which is west of Galveston and south of Lake Jackson.  Brian and I have a love/hate relationship with Galveston beaches.  We love the fact that it is an 1 - 1 1/2 hour from our house to the Gulf of Mexico.  It is close, but just far enough away that you actually feel like you are leaving the city.  We love that our kids think they are in Tahiti every time we arrive.  They can't distinguish between beaches yet so all beaches are truly awesome in their eyes.

We are not so fond of the sand in this part of Texas.  It is brownish in color and sometimes muddy.  The water is often brown and muddy as well, although I will say this trip was the clearest I have ever seen in Texas.  On the drive down from Houston you pass miles and miles of refineries and you have to wonder where and how all the chemicals drain.   Our house had a water restriction in that we could not use the water for cooking or drinking as it had tested high for arsenic levels. That was a pain.  The notice has been in effect since 2011, according to the letter on the refrigerator.

Catherine developed an outer ear infection on the second day, so she and I ended up driving back to Houston to see her ENT vs. an urgent care in Surfside. After I told the doc we were spending the week down on the Gulf, he pretty much cut me off and said that local Gulf water (and sand) can have the same level of bacteria that exists in a toilet bowl.  I was like ok, nice.

We had a fun week surfing, building sand castles, burying the kids in the sand, flying kites, playing trivia, and eating all sorts of fun things.  Beth made a slow cooker Ropa Vieja meal that was scrumptious.  We brought shrimp étouffée that we cooked a week earlier and froze.