A little story about a lovely weekend of leisure. Little A went camping with our neighbors for the third weekend in a row. I had put my foot down earlier in the week, but they assured me that this was the last weekend to camp in ND and little A loves camping. We sent A out the door and took off for our Friday date. We all went to bed at 9pm and I woke up Saturday thinking about the endless possibilities that were in store for the day!

You might be wondering about that bus and those kids pictured above - we'll get to that!

I started the day by checking email and found an update on one of my teacher friends. She mentioned that she was going to the Brad Paisley concert "tonight" in Grand Forks. My heart sank a bit because Alicia is a fan of Paisley and GF is just 4 hours away. Sr. checked out the concert and come to find out Darius Rucker was the opening act. Who loves Darius? We do! He's our link to Charleston and we had just seen him in July. What should I do? What should we do? Well, you kind of see how this all turns out. We picked Alex up at Mouse River which is an hour the opposite way of GF. Concert was amazing, but our weekend wasn't nearly over.

We had about 2 weeks left to wait until we could pick up our puppy, but the breeder said that they'd meet us in Fargo since Sam had weened (they are from MN). That was a bit of a shock since we thought we had two weeks and we were not ready - didn't even have a squeaky toy! Fargo is two hours from GF (the wrong way...again) so we ended up driving in a rectangle style route on our way out of Minot to GF to Fargo to Bismarck and finally home. 4 exhausted people, 1 exhausted puppy, 2 apprehensive cats and all on a Sunday night. Crate training? Ugh. We're learning on the fly and wondering why. He's sleeping like an angel on his big pillow pad while I type this. It's like having a toddler all over again. I'm too tired to blog...so why am I blogging instead of crawling in bed? I think lack of sleep makes people crazy!

Darius's truck with our palmetto flag. Alicia is appropriately wearing her Gamecock shirt on the day that they beat Bama.

Little A isn't a fan of concerts, but he's a huge fan of Family!

Not so bad for buying tickets on the morning of the concert!

1st guy was Justin Moore - this is his signature pose.

My man - dance a little for me!!! I love when he wiggles his hips.

Big Dawg - high energy fella who may own 100 guitars. He changes his guitar for each song.

Brad said that this was a handsome looking muppet. That's Darius in the white T.

Darius and Brad in a little singalong.

Memorable Weekend!

Camper

Alex has had the pleasure of camping for the last two weekends with some neighbors of ours. There are two families that camp together and each have boys in 7th grade. He told me today that he hopes his wife will like camping. He's already given up on his mom. I think "roughing it" means staying in a hotel.

Parade

Alex's band director is screaming to me about how awesome my son is... She can scream that to me from a parade any day!
Alex apparently gave up his spot when something happened to another band member. He said it was no big deal - he just likes being part of the band. He's in the middle sign holder in the first picture.

There's Shisha's BFF "A". She's third from the left and is giving us an almost wave - even though we're screaming our heads off and calling out her name. She's very sweet and quiet.

Now she's thinking that we should stop screaming at her like wildcats since you can see we've stopped the parade and everyone is staring at us.

Homecoming

Strike a pose!

Alicia's #1 Fan

She told him that she was leaving for the evening.

He thinks that she should stay.

Well, didn't think this was a good sign when Alex and I got home from our Friday night date.

Whew, turned out that the house was still standing! (Just looking for some earplugs.)

Classroom

Made the sign with the Cricut.

My corner of the world.

I made the curtains! They are prettier when the blinds are up, but it's soooooooo hot. Remind me of this when I am freezing. No AC in the public schools.

SmartBoard - the kids drag their names to the right side of the board when they arrive in the morning. I have a morning calendar that involves interaction with this board. The students run the show and of course love getting up and interacting with the board.

This board goes with our reading series. We won't start that for another week. I just love the old fashioned school chair. It is the most comfortable chair for people under 5ft.

Fantastic group of kids!

First Day

Did you know that this cool cat can drive herself to school?

Alex and Leila (I was sneaky and took the pic from the car, but Leila's dad videoed the morning and embarrassed her to death. It's middle school!)

Lindsay's little cousin

Yes, Daddy did think that skirt was too short.