New SHOES and HAT

Monday was Carter's first day of Basketball camp and I totally forget that he didn't have any decent shoes to wear. We had an old pair that Blake wore last year and then left them outside forever, so they were really crappy but he wore them because it was to close to basketball starting to go get new ones. I promised him that we would go that afternoon and find him some new shoes.
Who knew that a boys size 6 and 6.5 were so hard to find. OMG, since that size is right in between boys and mens, either a lot of kids need that size or the shoe companies don't make near enough. We went to 4 different stores, including academy and the shoe carnival, then on one last ditch effort before going home, we stopped at Kohl's just to see what they had. They happened to have 1 pair of Nike's in that size and those are the ones we got! They look good and Carter was so happy to have them!

Blake bought a new hat with his chore allowance from last week because he needed one for tennis. He looks so cute in a hat! My baby boy is looking so grown up :( ::sigh::
They have been having a great summer so far.

Tennis Friday

Today was Tennis Friday. Blake and Carter went to a free summer tennis camp through the city of Tyler. Blake has been going with a friend every day this week but today Carter wanted to try, so we all went. Carter liked it, but got bored because he was with younger kids. I told him to go over with Blake, but by that time he was DONE! I did make him finish the day, because he is bad about wanting to quit when things don't go his way. He finished with a good attitude, but it just wasn't for him.

Blake on the other hand, loved it and he and all of his buddies moved up to the intermediate level.

Lazy Summer Day

Today was a fairly lazy day around our house. This morning Blake went to a tennis camp with a friend of his and while he was gone I took Dawson to the dentist because the tooth he chipped a few months back, that we had fixed, was hurting and very sensitive. It ended up being nothing, just another grown up tooth was pushing up beside it and was crowding the roots a little bit.
This afternoon we went to the local library, which was a little disappointing. We hadn't been in a few years and it looks like the book selection has drastically declined since then. We didn't find anything we couldn't live without, to check out, but we did find a few books, to buy for a really good price, on the way out.When we got home the boys wanted to go swimming and I finally got some good swimming pictures of them!

Carter Reading Big Nate

Carter loves Big Nate Books. I need to buy him the next couple of books. He is really embracing his reading time this summer, so much so, that I normally find him reading even when it is not designated reading time! He is really motivated by the prize chart and that makes me really happy! This is how I found him this morning!

Brothers

This is just a quick post to show you the most wonderful sight! My two oldest boys acting like they really do love each other after all! They are getting big and won't be able to share the chair for too much longer. They have been playing together nicely everyday of the summer so far! This picture just makes me heart happy!

Summer 2011

I am going to attempt to make a new blog post every few days this summer with some pictures of the sweet baby boys!

The boys got out of school at 1:00 last Thursday and we have been enjoying the summer to the fullest since then.

The first thing on my agenda was to clean out their bedrooms and get some things cleaned out to take to good will. We got all the boys' rooms done in 1 day and they were actually great helpers. You can imagine that most of the time, with an almost teenager and a moody 8 year old, the complaints I normally get. But NOT today! Yay for me!

I do this for 2 reasons. The first and most important reason is because summer chores are starting and it is so much easier for them to get their chores done if everything starts off clean and they know where I expect things to be put and the second reason is that they have grown a lot this year and Dawson still has some size 5T shirts and about 6 pairs of shoes that don't fit in his closet that desperately need to find a new home.
After we were done cleaning, we still have half the day left, so we took a trip to the lake and the boys had a blast swimming for about 2 hours. They were exhausted and slept well their first full day of summer.

Since then, our days have been filled with a lot of guitar hero and other video games. They don't get to play video games during the school week, so they always look forward to summer and any other break from school. We have also had a few boys from the neighborhood over almost everyday to play.
While they have been playing hard, I have been working equally as hard getting the pool ready to swim in. It takes some work but we have been diligent for over a week and we finally had our first swim and cookout tonight!

I will be sure to take lots of pictures while I am borrowing my brothers camera! This is the only one I got today. My camera has an error message and no longer wants to take pictures, so while it is hopefully getting fixed, my brother was nice enough to let me use his.