Beautiful bride!

Scott and I had the pleasure of attending the wedding of my long-time friend, Robin, this past weekend. My goodness, Robin was a beautiful bride! Robin and I have been friends since we were in the seventh grade. Yes, the SEVENTH grade. And since Robin and I are both closer to age 40 than age 30, this is a long time folks. Especially considering that we both have children in the age range around the ages of how old we were when we first met. In essence, I have known Robin forever and I am so thankful for her friendship throughout the last 20 years.

I met Robin's husband, Bryan "Skippy" Sellars, when I went to visit them in Greenville, South Carolina last fall. Skippy is a great guy and the perfect compliment for Robin. They are an adorable couple and they were both positively beaming on their wedding day.

Can I just say that I loved their wedding cake? It tasted just as divine as it looked. Swear to that.

Below is a photo of Robin and I after the ceremony but before the reception. Robin looks gorgeous. I look stunned because Scott was taking a photo of us with my camera. I was so happy in this moment after witnessing Robin and Skippy's very nice and completely heartfelt ceremony.After an amazing ceremony, reception, dinner, and lots of fun dancing, the guests sent the happy couple off with a sparkler reception. So fun!

And then the younger folks walked three blocks to the wedding hotel to enjoy a few night-cap drinks with the happy couple on the patio outside of the hotel bar. I love the photo below because of the joy on Robin's face and her flip-flopped feet propped up on the cooler on the patio.

Cheers to Robin and Skippy! We love you and are so excited we were in North Carolina with you to celebrate your wedding day!

Field Day

This year I got to enjoy watching both kids compete in their field day at school. This is a super fun elementary school and community event held towards the end of the year. Hundreds of parents come out to cheer on their children, so it's part school event, part parent social hour. The only thing missing to make it more fun is the iced margarita machine to make it more of a party (just kidding).

As you can imagine, John was quite competitive when it came to participating in the games and events at field day this year (his first). John THRIVED in this atmosphere, always wanting to be one of the first to compete in each event and then cheering on his teammates until the end of each game. John's class was assigned the color purple, so it's a good thing we already had those lovely purple monkey shorts for the competition.

The game below consisted of two kids from competing teams racing each other to see who could roll the gigantic inflatable ball across the length of the field first. This was a challenging task for all kids (even Amelia's age group) because the balls were heavy and bulky.

One thing that surprised me was how much all the kids loved dancing to the DJ, particularly the kindergarteners. John loves to dance and, honestly, the kid has rhythm. Unfortunately he also likes to lift his shirt up and smack his booty while dancing, but that's another story.

John's kindergarten class below, eating popsicles at the conclusion of field day and making silly faces. The kindergarteners looked so small (compared to the third graders) when they competed, but two days from now all of these little guys will be first graders!

Amelia's class was assigned the color orange. The shot below depicts how crowded the field is and the energy of the atmosphere. Amelia is at the far left wearing an orange t-shirt and black shorts.

Amelia was a good sport and seemed to have fun with her class. Below she is competing in a relay race where she had to carry the tennis ball on the racket to a goal point.

I love this cute shot of Amelia and her good friend Elle. They are about to compete together in the sack (three-legged) race.

The third graders got to compete in tug of war as their last event. I am glad the kindergarteners weren't allowed to play this game as this got rough with kids pulling and falling down on top of each other, some getting rope burns and incurring other injuries.

Amelia's third grade class is pictured below. Amelia really got lucky with a great class this year. The kids seem genuinely nice and I was impressed by the way they cheeered their own class, but also other teams, during field day. Amelia is on the bottom row, third from the right.

What a fun day! I can't believe the kids are out of school in TWO days, and then I will have a first grader and a fourth grader! Wow.

More spring sports

Several of the children's spring sports have wrapped up in recent weeks. John played in his last flag football game the first weekend in May. Though the Scots lost that game, John played well and scored a touchdown. Below John is pictured at right next to his good friend Reid. Amelia's volleyball team played their last game tonight. The girls were undefeated in all their regular season games this year, both last fall and this spring for an overall regular season record of 15-0. Then the girls entered tournament play this week. The girls were seeded #1 so they got a bye the first round. Their team won their match the second round, and then (sadly) lost their game in the third round. Tonight's match went to three games as the team lost the first match, then won the second, but lost the third. The girls had a great team with many talented girls, but they didn't play their best against a very strong team tonight so that ended the season. This season's volleyball experience was especially good for Amelia as this was her first team sport and it was fun to watch her enjoy the dynamics of working as part of a team. Below is a shot of the girls playing their last game. Amelia is towards the back wearing #11 looking back at her friend Ramey (#10) who is serving.

And my last series of photos is not from games that the kids played but rather a game that we went to as spectators! We were lucky to enjoy grandma and grandpop's company the first weekend in May when they travelled through Dallas on their way out west to Wyoming. Grandma and grandpop parked their RV in Mesquite (a suburb of Dallas) and stayed with us for the weekend. After a Saturday and Sunday of being dragged along to the kids' various events - John's baseball and flag football games, Amelia's TAG project playdate - we decided to attend a minor league baseball game on Sunday afternoon. The Frisco Rough Riders play in a suburb of Dallas that is about a 30-minute drive from our house.

This was our second visit to the ballpark, the first being two years ago with grandma and grandpop as they drove back from Wyoming on their way home to Florida. The ballpark is very nice and family-friendly.

The difference between this time and our last visit was that the kids are much older and more interested in baseball, particularly John given his new experience playing the game.

We all enjoyed the fun afternoon at the ballpark, probably Scott, grandpop and John (pictured together below) the most.

Lucky mom

I am one lucky mom! Amelia and John both made personalized gift books for me for Mother's Day. These books are really sweet and both of them cracked me up, for different reasons.

Amelia's book:

Amelia and John's books both noted that I like to read (which I do). I always enjoy hearing their interpretations of the things I like to do. I can't remember saying that my favorite color is yellow, but I am pretty confident that Amelia has a better memory than me so I'll take her word for it.

This photo is a little blurry, so I'll transcribe Amelia's report of my favorite sayings: "You know what I mean, jellybean?", "Cool", "Good job on your report card", "Amazing", "Perfect!", "Nice", Awesome", and my two favorites: "Hold on just a sec" and "I'll be right with you". Now those last two I know I say a lot, just didn't realize how much she picked up on it.

I love this last page. Adorable.

The kindergarten class at the kids' elementary school puts on a special Mother's Day singing program followed by a classroom tea, where the moms are pampered with homemade gifts, cookies, fruit, and tea. The singing program is very sweet. Just imagine 120 kindergarteners up on the stage in the big auditorium, each of them trying to peer into the dark rows of seats to find their moms, with half of the moms standing up waving frantically and shouting their child's name. After this initial chaos the kids sing three songs, all of them about how much they love their moms, which is genuinely moving. And it was during the classroom tea after the performance that John gave me his special gifts, including the book pictured below.

According to John I am giving, nice, sweet, I love to read, I am a runner, and I love to cook. Pretty nice words coming from John, so I'll take it.

The correct spelling translation of the words above are: "She laughs when I come back from school and she asks me how was your day and I say yes in a lazy voice."

And above is "I love my mom because she is really really really nice. And because she gives."

In addition to this nice book I also received this decorated plate. This is a lot of carefully constructed artwork for John and I love the way he printed the message and his name so neatly.

And another notable act on John's part? After much prodding and maybe a fight or two, John agreed to forgo his beloved Under Armour gear and lacrosse shorts to wear a collared polo shirt and khacki shorts to school on the day of the tea. I love my photo above of my handsome (and handsomely dressed!) little man.

Amelia and John both made me feel very special on Mother's Day and I am very blessed.

More scenes from Mexico

I uploaded a bunch of photos from our trip to Mexico the week after we returned, which was in mid-April. But then the end of semester craziness that comes with completing classes, holding endless office hours, grading 140 student exams, counseling students about good/bad grades, and completing end of year assessments hit. My life felt like a crazy whirlwind for several weeks.
But I am all done with that now! The grades have been submitted and the emails have (finally) subsided. And while I usually have to work most weeknights when I am teaching, I am thrilled to have amy one hour of downtime (once kids are in bed and before I retire) back to myself each evening. So let's return to paradise for a few more memories.

We found a whole lot of tackiness the evening we went into the town of Puerto Vallarta.
But the beachside bar was fun to hang out in to watch the sunset.I tried to eat guacamole every day when we were in Mexico. I just couldn't get enough. So. good.

Notice the merchants selling jewelry and various items on the sidewalks next to the beach in town. Most of the items were legitimate souveniers, but we were approached once by a man asking if we wanted to purchase drugs. He went from selling jewelry to asking if we wanted heroin? Cocaine? Marijuana? No, gracias. If all the travels I have experienced around the world, I believe this was the first time I was ever asked if I wanted to purchase drugs.

Great architecture on the church in the middle of town.

On our last full day in PV we went on an ATV tour of the hills outside of town. Scott drove most of the way, but I got to drive a bit after he relinquished the keys after his tequila tasting. Does anyone else find it odd that they gave the tasters a couple of shots of tequila (Scott only, I don't drink tequila) when we were many miles outside of town, then letting the solo drivers back on the expensive and dangerous ATVs?

This was my view for most of the ride.Getting out of town and seeing the dusty hillsides was really interesting.Back to paradise, poolside at our resort.

We were blessed to enjoy gorgeous sunsets and spectacular weather the whole time we were in Mexico. The people were lovely, the food was devine, and we enjoyed very fun adventures on this spectacular trip.