THE NEWTON'S

The month has flown by and I'm realizing that we will be back at school next month!  Crazy! We've been having fun playing with friends, going on a trip, and swimming a lot! The kids and I were able to go out to Tennessee for a week to visit with my sister Ann and her family.  It was an experience driving with the kids by myself, but the kids did great!  We had a fun time out there getting to know her family better and visiting some sights from my childhood. We drove up to visit Granny and Pa's graves.  It was in the high 90's and very hot, but the kids then searched around the cemetary to find different ancesters that are buried there. We then drove over and showed the kids the Ford Holler (mom and dad's farm)... you can't see much of it from the road, but there's the little bit we saw. Another day we started the day off swimming at the Rickard's pool.  The Rickard's knew mom when she joined the church, and she has stayed in touch with th...

Ashley is getting so old!  I can't believe that tomorrow she will be 10 years old!  I learn more and more from her each year as she gets older and smarter herself.  We had an unslumber party for her on Saturday night.  Four of her friends came over and they played video games, ate pizza, painted fingernails and toenails, played games, ate cake and icecream, watched a movie, and had popcorn and played more games... then their parents came and took them home for the night! :)    They had a lot of fun and it was very fun to watch them really just enjoy being together with each other and I had the easiest time with the party.  I just supplied the stuff and they did their thing.

It is so hard for me to realize that Angela is 5 years old!!!!!!!!   She is my baby, and all of a sudden I'm realizing she is not a baby anymore. :)  She had a fun birthday and loved having all the attention on her.  She got to choose what games to play and what to do and how her cake looked.  We had a little family party on Tuesday night with just our family. She was beyond thrilled that she now has a DS just like her brother and sisters... now on long car rides she can play some games of her own! Then we had a party with her friends on Thursday during the day...  They played outside in the slip and slide and sprinklers and threw water balloons.  Then came inside and played dress-up and pin the tail on the doggy.  Then they dug into the cake and icecream and opened presents and played freeze dance before heading back outside to get wet in the water some more and play with bubble wands.  It was a great fun birthday for our big 5 year old...

We've been swimming... and swimming... My formerly hesitant swimmers have really taken off and are all over the pool this year!  I can actually just sit on the side and watch them as have fun!

One day last month we sat down for family prayer and I looked at Alyssa and something looked off.  It took me a minute and then asked her if she had done something with her hair.  She told me that no she hadn't done anything to her hair...  upon closer inspection I realized that on both sides, her hair was shorter. I don't know if you can tell in this picture, but see how the longer hairs are much thinner and fuller than the hairs on the top? We had to remedy this, and it resulted in a pretty drastic transition. I need to get a really good picture of her with this haircut, but after she got over the shock of having most of her hair chopped off, she likes her new haircut and she LOVES the fact that she doesn't have to brush the tangles out of her long curly hair anymore.

The kids all loved their teachers this year.  They had great teachers that really took the extra time and effort to help the kids excell in their classrooms with whatever little things they needed.  I enjoyed the opportunity that I had this year to get into the school and into the classrooms to volunteer and help out at times.  I truly felt that our kids had the teachers that were the perfect teachers for each of them this past year.  I hope we have the same great luck with teachers next year. Alex is now graduated from Elementary School.  He will be going to middle school next year.  They had a great 5th grade party for them.  The different classes all made posters for them and posted them on the walls around the school.  They have a great tradition at the school and the 5th graders have a "clap out" where they walk through the hallways as the other kids and parents line the hallways and cheer the 5th graders on their accomplishment.  Here ...

That night we went to dinner.  Our friends had gone to Chichen Itza so we knew we would get to compare stories from our excursions that day. They surprised us and did a theme night.  Now we knew they were going to dress up and do an 80's night, but we didn't know what night they would dress up on.  I didn't get any pictures, but they definately did a great job dressing up for it.  After dinner there was a disco dance class that three of them went to.  The photo's not the greatest, but they are there on the far right, then the 3rd from the right, and the 6th from the right. The next day we were in Cozumel.  We decided to do some shopping and then spend some time at the beach.  We went to Paradise Beach and were able to go kayaking, and play on the inflatable water toys. We got a few pictures on the way back to the ship at the pier.  Our ship was the closest one... the smaller one. We had so much fun during the week.  The next day was ...