100th Day of School

Owen and Heidi dressed up for the100th day of school today. Owen was a 100-year-old man, and Heidi designed her own shirt, with 100 pom poms.

At the Park with Friends

We met up at the park with some friends from school. Most of our friends are people we know from church. This family goes to a different Christian church here in Pflugerville, but they have very similar standards to ours. We've enjoyed getting to know them better. (They have a daughter Lizzie and Heidi's age, a son Owen's age, and another son a little older than William.) 

Science Fair

Heidi's class science fair project:

Lizzie's individual science fair project:

The project she chose was interesting. She soaked some baby teeth in 7 different liquids (water, milk, soda, diet soda, sports drink, etc.) for 6 days to see the effect of different drinks on teeth. It was interesting to see how some of the teeth became discolored and some even began to dissolve. She did the project and display with minimal help--just some coaching.

Liz chose to participate in the judging and took first place. (We're still a little unclear on what that means, because apparently 12 kids took first place.) At any rate, she is one of 12 kids from her school to advance to the district science fair in Austin next month. There were more than 200 projects--mostly by 4th and 5th graders. She was one of only two 3rd graders to win. Pretty cool.

3 Months!

I tried to get a smile out of her (she's a great smiler!), but she was confused by the camera in her face:

Random

Dancing at a friend's birthday party: (They're in dresses because we came straight from a baptism.)

William's gift from Santa was a set of magnetic tiles. It was a big hit with all the kids:

Owen and Emma:

Read the rules. They're my favorite:

Liz made these up. (kroque = croquet)

2nd Quarter Awards Assemblies

Owen's assembly. He got perfect attendance for the quarter:

Can you see his expression? Lol!

His teacher had a baby a week and a half ago, so he's going to have subs for the next 3 1/2 months.

Heidi's assembly. She got STAR student, A honor roll, and perfect attendance:

And Liz stole the show with 7 awards: Accelerated Reader medal (for earning 243 points--the highest in her grade), A honor roll, perfect attendance, BUG award (Bring Up your Grade from 1st quarter to 2nd--because she increased her already-high language arts grade by 1%), Star Eagle, Marvelous Musician, and Super Sports & PE.

Emma got the award for best baby. (Ok, not really, but she should have.) She slept through all three assemblies and didn't make a peep.

So after school we went to Menchie's to celebrate:

Isn't She a Beauty?

Guess Who Lost His First Tooth?

Christmas 2018

Christmas didn't quite go as planned, but we have a lot to be grateful for.

Reading Christmas stories with Grandpa on Christmas Eve

The kids' joyful faces on Christmas morning: (By Christmas Day, everyone except for Owen was displaying flu symptoms.)

Opening presents in our hotel room ("the Penthouse") with Grandma and Grandpa. Bonus points if you can spot a puke bucket and a kid wiping his nose with his hand. (There aren't many pictures of Owen because the dude was too excited to stand still, and Emma was asleep the whole time.)

Christmas dinner at Grandma and Grandpa's apartment. Grandma and Owen played Nerf guns while all the other kids rested:

We spent the last 6 hours of Christmas in the ER with Emma. The on-call pediatrician insisted that Emma's fever was an emergency that needed to be addressed immediately. She also insisted that we couldn't give her any Tylenol. So we reluctantly took Emma in and sat around forever, because the hospital personnel obviously didn't think it was an emergency. This is the only picture we got--of the dirty floor in our exam room. So yeah, our experience at Children's Medical Center Dallas wasn't great:

Grandma and Grandpa were nice enough to watch the other sickies while we were at the hospital, which was a huge blessing. Otherwise (sick) Emily would have had to go to the ER with the baby on her own, or else all seven of us would have had to go. That would have been miserable.

And hey, we're blessed that Emma's fever immediately went away once they *finally* gave her Tylenol. And her symptoms have been very mild otherwise. We're very blessed to live in a time when the flu is mostly just annoying and not widely fatal like it once was.

And we're lucky that we got to spend the holidays in a nice hotel room, and hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa. :)