Mother's Day 2013

 My Mother's Day banner made by the girls

 

 

 

Mary Varner made and illustrated a book about me at school.  I plan to scan the pages of the book to the blog so that I will have in my yearly blog book.  I had tears in my eyes when I read it! So Sweet!!

 

 

Jim also got me some beautiful yellow mums, and some crocs to wear when we go camping, bike rides, or just playing around in the yard.  I feel like they may have spoiled me a little bit this year!

This week...

We started the week off with Mary Varner's field trip to the beach.  We planted the sea oats that all  the kindergartners have been growing in their classrooms. The Emerald Coast Conservation Association teamed up with the school for the kindergarten and 1st grade to grow, and plant sea oats in the dunes. They learned all about how the oats are a protected plant, and how the dunes protect our beach. 

 

 

Mary Varner with her sweet friends Leah and Haley

 

 

 Sarah Vannoy and Mary Varner listening carefully to the instructions on how to plant the sea oats.

 

 

They had different sharks (dead of coarse) for the kids to touch, and investigate.  Mary Varner was very interested, and a little nervous at the same time.

 

 

Mary Varner touching one of the sharks

 

 

 A little nervous laugh after checking out the hammer head shark

 

 

 Planting her sea oat

 

 

 

 

Wednesday night, we had our water games night at church for Awana.  The girls had a blast playing with water balloons, water guns, and trying to dunk one of our Elders in the dunking booth.  Next week is our awards ceremony for Awana, and then we are off for the summer break.

Janey looks very happy to get to play with the bubbles!

Janey and Cora having fun

 

Mary Varner with her buddies!!

 

 

Mary Varner has really been into practicing her cartwheels, flips, and hand stands.  I took this short video the other afternoon of her doing multiple cartwheels in a row.  She is very excited about taking a tumbling class this summer. 

Fun at the beach

Last Saturday, we packed lunches and spent most of the day at the beach.  Although the temp was close to 80 degrees, the water was very cold.  The Fann family met up with us, and we all had a great day playing!  Jim and Mary Varner got in the water in spite of the coldness.  After trying it out once, Janey decided to hang out and play in the sand with Caroline. 

 

 

 

 

 

Janey sticking her toes in, and telling Jim that it is too cold

Jim and MV playing Frisbee


 

The kids took turns burying each other in the sand...Mary Varner is was very still while she got buried.

 

Janey's turn.... she stayed buried way longer than I expected!

Strawberry Pickin

Janey and I went with a group of friends to pick strawberries at a strawberry farm last week.  Janey picked about half a basket, but soon lost interest.  I continued picking to fill up our box because I had big plans to use these strawberries in many different ways( we all love strawberries in our family).  After we filled our box, we joined the rest of the group inside the snack shop for some yummy strawberry frozen yogurt.

 

 

Janey ate about as many as she put in her basket

 

Janey and Caroline lost interest and started chasing each other through the field

 

 

Sweet friends...We are going to miss Caroline when she moves this summer!!

 

 

YUMMY!!

 

 

Our full box of  juicy strawberries

 

 

After washing and cutting the strawberries,  we had two  gallon size ziplocs full of strawberries.  One bag was gone within a few days from just eating them by themselves or making smoothies.  The majority of the other bag went into a strawberry pie the girls made.  Delicious!!

Cats

Drawing is a daily activity(sometimes multiple times a day) for both our girls.  I can not possibly keep all their artwork, but I want to keep a good selection to look back on.  These are the drawings they did last night after supper.  Mary Varner started out wanting to draw Cat in the Hat, and then Janey followed with her drawing of a plain cat (as she described it).  I have been saying for a long time that I think Mary Varner has a talent when it comes to drawing (comes from Jim), but Janey is really starting to draw some "real" pictures of different things now too.  I love to watch their creativity come out in their drawings!

 

Mary Varner's Cat in the Hat. She drew this without looking at any type of picture or stuffed animal!  Not bad!!

 



Janey's cat drawing.  I thought she did a great face and whiskers!

Springfest

 The girls performed at the annual Springfest (a.k.a. Kidsfest) at Harborwalk in Destin.  We have enjoyed going to this event every year. Thankfully, the weather was beautiful (last year it poured) and the girls did a great performance.  After the girls' dances, they wanted to get their faces painted. We waited in the line to get some amazing face paintings done.   We wrapped up the day with our good friends the Fann family coming over to cookout hamburgers. 

 

Harlem Shake

While we were in Mississippi, lots of family were in town for a couple of days to attend Doris' funeral.  We always try to have a family cookout when we are all together.  Well, Elizabeth and Hayden started talking phone app talk when Hayden told her that he had the Harlem Shake app on his phone.  He told us that it was an app to aide you in making your very own Harlem Shake dance video.  She immediately started planning for all of the family to make one of these videos( I was clueless about what this was but went along). I found out after making the little video how popular these Harlem Shake videos are in the cyber world.  Anyway, I crack up every time I  watch it because I love watching my 88 year old grandmother in the front center, and especially my Aunt Susan on the far left side (she is going nuts).  My family can be  crazy at times, but we have fun when we are together.

  

   

 

Build-a-Bear

Janey asked to go to Build-a-Bear for her birthday this year.  We go many Fridays to Destin Commons to meet up with some friends for a play date.  Build-a-Bear is right across from the playground so she has been asking for awhile to go.  Jim and I took the girls as our present to Janey for her birthday.  Since her birthday landed on Easter Sunday this year, we decided that Saturday would work better.  We finished the morning off with lunch and milkshakes at another favorite, Johnny Rockets.

The first station was the big "stuffing" machine.  You step on the peddle, and the animal gets stuffed full of the soft cotton filling.  You also put a little red heart that you kiss inside the animal before they close them up.

 

 

 

 

 

Giving our new friends their first baths at the Bath Station



After picking out an outfit, each girl came to the dressing table to get their animal dressed

 

Janey pushing "Rabbitina" to the checkout

 

 

 Mary Varner loves "Snowball" the Cat

 

 

 

 

 

This was on Easter Sunday.  Janey blew out her 4 candle on the birthday cake for our dessert.  This was the final birthday celebration for her this year.  Whew!!

Mississippi cont....

These are some more pictures from our trip to Mississippi over Spring Break.  Janey had a birthday celebration at each grandparent's house.  Her birthday was a week long celebration!

 

We went to the circus with Nana:

 

MV dancing with the clown in the pre-show

This was one of our favorite acts- three motorcycles going around in the metal ball.  They turned out the lights and all you could see was their jackets.

 

Always fun to see the elephants do their tricks

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course Mr. Power too

 

 

 

 

Rena, Ben, and Mollie came up to spend the night one night at Grandaddy and Nana's house.  Nana planned all sorts of fun activities for the kids.  One was dying, and  hunting Easter eggs.

 

 

 

The group is ready to hunt their eggs.  It was way too cold to hunt them outside, so we had numerous indoor hunts. 

 

B'B' had planned to take the girls to the Children's museum while we where in town, but when we got their we saw seven school buses in the parking lot.  Apparently, this is a popular time for school field trips to the museum.  We decided to go to Chuck-E-Cheese for plan B.  It turned out to be a great choice because we practically had the place to ourselves!

 

 

 

 



I guess you can tell by all my pictures that our time in Mississippi was a ton of fun.