Butterflies!

Every fall beautiful Monarch butterflies make their way through San Angelo on their way to Mexico. Some years there are a lot and some years not so many. This year is a good year. John Curtis and I met our friends, Connor and Shelby (and their mommies and babies) at the lily ponds today to see if we could spot some. We weren't disappointed. They were so beautiful flying everywhere over our heads and hanging from trees by the hundreds. While the mommies were in awe, the little ones enjoyed chasing each other and sword fighting with sticks. The pictures don't do the butterflies justice and it was hard to get them with the kids as most of them were flying over our heads.

It's hard to see them, but the tree behind us is covered in butterflies.

It's Back!!!!

DWTS!!! (Dancing with the Sandlins)

Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head

Here are some more pictures from the weekend of the kids enjoying being outside.

Last weekend my Mom gave JC this raincoat and umbrella. I laughed at her and told her he really didn't need it since it never rains here. Well Mom, I was wrong. He wore it a lot last week.

He likes to balance his umbrella on his head

Gracie is officially a spoiled dog. She has made herself right at home. Right now she is stretched out on the couch. She hates it when we leave her and always runs out and tries to jump in the van. I let her ride with us to pick up Sophie and as much as I can. I hate to hear her crying when I have to put her back in the house. Her previous owners gave us the sweater she has on, but it has really come in handy. We shaved her when we got back from the lake thinking it would be hot for several more weeks. We were wrong. The cooler weather we've been having has been making her shiver. She loves her cozy sweater.

The kids really enjoyed riding through and jumping in the puddles.

A Weekend of Projects

We had glorious rain and cool weather all weekend in San Angelo. We decided to make the most of it and get some projects done that we had been wanting to do all summer. We spent much of the weekend in the garage with the door open watching the rain (and occasionally playing in it) while painting various things. Here are the fruits of our labor:

Project 1: Pegs for Sophie's purses

Sophie already has a purse problem. For months I have been wanting to get some pegs to hang all of her purses on, but there just wasn't any room. Finally she told me she was ready to get rid of her big baby doll table. We happily passed it on to a friend whose little girl has loved it and suddenly we had more room. We went to Lowes and bought a wooden rack and painted it with some of the leftover paint from her room.

Project 2: Restoring treasures from Granna's house

This project began back in May when we were in Texarkana visiting Taylor's parents. They were cleaning out his grandmother's house after moving her to the nursing home and we were supposed to go get anything we wanted from her house. To be perfectly honest, I wanted absolutely nothing. Thankfully, Taylor's mom can see the potential in things better than I can. While we were there we ended up taking a gold velvet headboard which his mom recovered to match Sophie's bedding she had made (please ignore the tacky pictures taped to the wall as Sophie likes to decorate her own room),

the flower lamp I always made fun of for Sophie's room (along with several butterflies like the one above it that we spray painted),

and the green table that sat in Granna's entry hall. Since May the table has remained green (even though our walls are green) and sat in our living room. We knew we wanted to paint it, but it was just too hot. So this weekend we finally put black paint on it and sanded it to let a little green show through. I thought it turned out pretty good.

Project 3: Pictures for the wall

We moved the silver mirror pictured above from another wall which left a blank wall in our living room. Since we had Sophie I have had the kids' pictures made each year for the wall. It was getting a little out of hand so we decided to redo our display of the kids' pictures.

Project 4: Kids' painting

To keep the kids busy while we did all these projects, we took them to Hobby Lobby and let them pick out their own projects to paint. While this didn't last as long as I hoped it would, they enjoyed it.

Project 5: Halloween costumes started

We have a long way to go so we'll save those for another post :)

John Curtis's First Day of School

John Curtis started "school" on Wednesday and he did great. He went right in without any hesitation, stayed dry all day, and had a great day overall. His buddy Connor is in his class again this year and they enjoyed playing together. He even came over to kill time before school started after taking the big kids to kindergarten. It is amazing how I used to rush around to get both kids ready by 8:45 last year. This year, after getting Sophie off to school at 7:30, we didn't know what to do with ourselves until his school started. We're looking forward to a great year.

Labor Day Weekend at the Lake

Make a Smilebox scrapbook