New Cheer Season

This week Felicia has started back to cheer practice.

This is her 4th year cheering and she is now in the Junior division. Her squad this year only has 7 girls and they all know one another and have cheered before so that makes it so easy starting out. They had an all-day camp over the weekend where they learned their half-time and competition routines in one day, so they've been working on that at the practices this week. Felicia is the "flyer" this year, as she has been every year because of her size and willingness to do stunts.


The last photo shows the girls about to toss her up into a "basket toss", where they literally throw you straight up in the air and catch you as you come down.

Appointments

This week is chock full of those necessary evils, appointments. The list includes dentist, orthodondist, doctor and fee days at the middle school. We just switched dentists for insurance reasons as well as the fact it took 20-25 minutes to get to the old office--it was just too far.

The kids, of course, were leary about a new place, but they all agreed afterwards that the new place was great. (or, as great as going to a dentist can be !). The office was bright and cheerful, they had a flat screen tV with a kids movie playing, toys and books, and to Sam's delight, 2 game systems, one being an X-Box. The four kids were all able to go in at the same time (which I loved!) and they got x-rays taken, teeth cleaned, flouride treatments given. They hated the taste of that flouride, hence Felicia's painful grin in that one photo. They were all done in about 30 minutes with referrals to the ortho for Sam and Bethany. Fortunately, the orthodontist office is right next to the dentist, so I was able to walk right into there to set up the appts. It couldn't have been easier.

Watermelon Festival

Every year, Carytown in Richmond puts on a Watermelon Festival and every year, it is brutally hot. This year was no exception. We headed out early so we could beat the worst of teh heat, but it was still in the mid-90's before noon. We enjoyed ice cold watermelon and snow cones, bottled water and the free spray misters we walked under.

We also went into lots of interesting shops in Carytown, heard different live entertainment, entered free drawings and played games. Ellie got her face painted with, what else, a watermelon !

One of the best parts of a festival is, of course, the food. Bethany got some Lo Mein, Sam got cheese fries and Steve and I ate a Jersey Grinder with homemade chips. Yummmmy!

The Crab Shack

While in Florida , my parents told me about a local seafood restaurant that was in their small town, but they hadn't tried it yet. (It's been there for two years, now!) I said, "Let's Go!"

As you can see, it doesn't look like much on the outside, but the seafood was DIVINE! And the portions were extremely generous. I noticed that the photo of those crab cakes my Dad got doesn't even do them justice--they were huge!! My Mom and I had crab stuffed shrimp with rice and green beans. We all got complimentary hush puppies.

Steve's week

While we were all vacationing away from home last week, Steve was busy with various things around the house, besides working everyday, of course.

He painted a pink panel in Ellie's room all the way around and I had cleaned out and rearranged her room before I left. He had some things to hang on the walls and window treatments to put up. You can see in the picture that not everything is complete yet, but Ellie was thrilled with her new room when she returned.

He took Sam's old bed and painted it white to match the rest of her furniture and put it up in her room.

He harvested vegetables from our garden which we will be eating tonight for dinner--the tomatoes ended up in my tomato-corn orzo salad and we'll grill the squash to go with the grilled chicken breast we'll be eating.

Pretty busy , huh? Are'nt we lucky to have such a handy guy around?

starfish

The girls were walking along the beach searching for shark's teeth, which a guy had told them you could find a lot of there. They walked and collected some neat shells and then, Felicia squealed, "Mom! I found a starfish!" Still completely intact and in the water, she pulled out a beautiful starfish that is coral colored on the outer part and charcoal colored on the inside. It was really cool.

Florida Adventures

If you've missed reading my posts, we've been busy visiting family in northern Florida. Ellie and Felicia spent a little over a week at Grandma and Poppy's house while Sam and Bethany were on their Rock Gospel tour. When they finished their tour, Sam headed to the beach with family friends for the week and Bethany and I headed down to Florida to meet up with the other girls.

We spent Saturday through thursday at my parents house. While we were there, we swam in their pool, spent time hanging out, celebrated my grandfather's 80th birthday and went to the beach on Anastasia Island. Felicia even found a starfish ! Everyone had a great week, read tomorrow's post to find out what Steve was busy doing while we were all vacationing.