Reading Bowl

Hannah joined the Tapp Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl team this year. This was the second year for the team. James was on it last year & enjoyed it. Here's last year's post about the event. I was excited that Hannah wanted to participate this year. I even stepped up and helped out with it. 

The list of books came out in March of last year. Hannah started reading a few of the titles last spring and over the summer. The books are all from the Georgia Children's Book Awards. By the time the Reading Bowl competition had arrived in January, Hannah had read all 20 books. She "really really really" liked all but one - the one she didn't care for was a graphic novel geared toward boys. Many of the books were not ones that she would have chosen to read on her own. I read about 8 of them. One of our favorites was the Grim Legacy by Polly Shulman. I would love to see a movie version of it!

If you look at last year's post, you will notice that we had a new banner this year. Our friend Eric (Tyler's Dad) designed it and then Chris & I paid for it. We had the best looking banner at the event!

Here's the team. Not only did we have the best looking banner, but we had the nicest shirts, too. The students all brought in a black or orange polo shirt and then we took them to my embroidery contact and she put a logo on them. The polos are part of the school uniform, so they all had them already. Most of the other teams had team t-shirts, but our polos looked nicer! And they can wear them to school as part of the uniform after the event!

The team played 6 rounds with 10 questions per round. Our team did a great job! Here's Hannah taking a Coke break in between rounds.

Four out of the five team members were 6th graders. Their 6th grade science teacher came to watch them. They were so thrilled to see him out of regular school hours!

We didn't place, but the team did show improvement from last year. Here are some of the team members with the banner & participation trophy.

The new list of books should come out in March. We can't wait to start on next year's books.

James Turns 15!

I am a bit behind in my blogging. I was having technical difficulties with Blogger for a while, then right after I got that all worked out, my Eye-Fi card was having troubles so I couldn't upload pics from my camera the easy way. I refused to just take the card out & transfer the pictures the old fashioned way. Anyway....the problem with the Eye-Fi card has been fixed, so I have some catching up to do!

My baby boy celebrated his 15th birthday on January 7th. He always requests homemade cakes for his birthday. This year I made "The Best Chocolate Cake" from Kevin & Amanda 's blog.  It is an altered cake mix recipe that adds instant pudding & chocolate chips to the Devils Food cake mix.  The cake was delicious! I used the recipe for the the Butter Cream frosting that was posted with the cake recipe, but I wished I had used my own. It was a shortening based butter cream and I personally prefer butter creams made with butter. James loved the cake, even with the shortening based butter cream and that's really all that matters.

Sometime this fall, James grew taller than me. He had been waiting for that moment for a very long time. He also had to shave for the very first time. He doesn't need to shave daily yet, but he did have that "fake moustache" thing coming in. He is half way through his first year of high school and he's old enough to go get his driver's permit.Where has the time gone??? Where has my baby gone?


Here are some old pictures of James. We didn't get a digital camera until after Hannah was born, so it's hard to find really young pictures of him.


James with his new baby sister, Hannah.

 

 

Soccer boy

Playing guitar

Drama Camp at the Mable House - he was a fly.

Ninja boy

Choi Kwang Do

Bird lover

Happy Birthday (belated), James!

Snow in Indiana

It's been a while since my last post. I've had some technical difficulties with Blogger, but I finally had a chance to have Chris work on it last night, so I'm back!


On the day after Christmas, we drove 500 + miles north to visit our family in Indiana. Central Indiana was under a blizzard warning that day. The kids became excited at the prospect of real snow, not just the light dusting we get down in Georgia.

In the end, I'm not sure if it was really a blizzard, but it definitely was snow. Over the 5 days we were there, there was at least an accumulation of 12 inches or so. Had school been in session in Indy, it probably wouldn't have resulted in any school closings, maybe a 2 hour delay. Now, if this had been Georgia, the schools would have been closed a week!

Here are the kids at Grandpa Nick's house. See the little snowman they built? James even helped by shoveling the sidewalk.

Here's a closer look at the snowman.

Here's Hannah with Grandpa's kitty (named Cat).

Here's Hannah at my parents' house.

Snickers LOVED the snow! We've had such mild weather in Georgia, her hair has been shedding in clumps. She was very frisky in the cold and snowy Indiana weather.

The kids went sledding for the first time ever at Cool Creek Park in Carmel. We met up with Chris' brother, Dave and two of his three boys.

You had to be a wee bit careful because this creek was at the bottom of the hill.

James preferred belly sledding. We picked up some super thin snow boards from a discount store that worked pretty well on the packed snow.

Cousin Evan

Chris and his older brother, Dave

Hannah & Chris went down the hill together.

Here they are on their way back up.

Cousin Daniel

James had a blast!

Daniel and Dave's turn.

Now Evan has a turn with his Dad.

We weren't properly dressed for sledding. The kids lasted about an hour before we had to call it quits. Without snow pants, their jeans got pretty wet.

I'm so glad that the kids got to see some snow, but I'm glad to be back in the South!