Pinewood Derby 2015

Josh waiting for his car to be released. 

 Yay! Pinewood Derby time again. Josh was the only official racer from our family this year. We opened the races to anyone after it was done. Josh did win 2nd place. He did really well. It was such a neck to neck race between him and the winner. He was thrilled. Besides Danny doing the cutting out he did most of it on his own. And he chose none other than camouflage to paint it.

He won this race

All the kids like to be up front and center

His face tells it all, he was having fun

Audrey can give some awesome faces too. 

By the time open races began the kids wanted to be up even closer

Audrey with her very girly car. She loved that she got one too. 

Colton wanted green and one lego sticker. He went simple

Nate wanted a super cool real race car look

Mr Josh with his ribbons and award. He was so happy he got second

         

Nathan's 5th grade activities

SUPER SAGE

Nathan is part of the SAGE program at school. It's students in academically  gifted education. He's been there since kindergarten. We were really hesitant when his teacher presented the idea to us. We held off for s short time. But after talking to the SAGE teacher we felt that we could give it a try. One day a week he is bussed to another school and attends class with other students in the program. It is a class that requires a lot of self learning and research projects. It has been great for him. It's always been his favorite day of the week. 

This year in SAGE his teacher had them participate in the First Lego league competition. They had to create and program Lego's to accomplish certain tasks. They had to also do a skit and presentation and posters. Alot of work went into this competition. And she only had these kids one day a week to accomplish the task. So from Sept to Jan this was their focus. Their first competition they scored well enough to advance. They went to Union Station in downtown Kansas City for the final competition. They did well but did not place. They went up against teams that meet much more frequently and not to mention they had kids that were much older then them, high school kids, that they competed against. I know they were bummed they didn't win but what they did accomplish at their age was fantastic. It kind of seemed unfair to have elementary kids competing with middle school and high school kids.

In front of his displays. 

His team was called Super Sage and they all had matching shirts.

His whole team waiting to begin the programming table.

supporting the guys doing the actual programming

Waiting for results. 

DARE GRADUATION

Not a whole lot needs to be explained for this event. Nate participated in the dare program and this was his graduation. Didn't get many pictures. It was a very short and sweet program. So these are just a few of the pictures that I got. 

Best smile that I'm gonna get from Nate. And I believe that the dare program began in 1983

Arianna, Gage, Nate, Alexis, Brittany being goofy

Ashton and Nate

Before Listing the house

 So, I am going to post some before pictures of our home before we listed it. And let me just say that I should be way to embarrassed to even post these of my home and I am little embarrassed but not enough to not share them. Now, that being said, they are way dirty and cluttered. We just had so much going on at the time, we honestly had not had the chance to pick up and organize anything. We REALLY, REALLY, REALLY DID NOT  live like this. These pictures are showcasing something that is totally out of the normal. I couldn't have chosen a worse day to take pictures of the whole house. But I had hurry and get them taken because Danny was getting ready to take things off the walls and sale stuff. The point is, this is what our house looked like, if you can look past all the clutter. Seriously, I can't believe how bad we let it get!!

These are pretty much all the before shots:

The front door leading straight into the dining room. Loved our red door!

Dining room is open to our kitchen with a breakfast bar. You can get a brief glimpse of what our cupboards looked like after the rustoluem cabinet transformation kit.

BEFORE

AFTER

Not the best lighting of our family room. But we loved our large family room

The main bath had just been updated and redecorated. I added a bath picture of each of the kids. The turquoise is Audrey and the yellow one is Colton

Our colorful accessories. The orange one is Nate and Josh is in the green.

This was Dan's trophy wall. There was a rifle above the picture but it had already come down

The "toy" room or rather the cluttered room.

This was once the salon, but now Josh and Colton's room. They had lots of space, it was bigger than the master bedroom

Dan and I's bedroom. He had just recently painted the room 6 months ago from a dark brown to this bright turquoise color. I liked the color. 

Our bright colorful master bath. 

Nate, Nate, Nate! He's kind of a hoarder. His room was a really neat room when it was clean and organized. 

Audrey had just gotten new pain. We did a gray glitter way and the other 3 walls in a light lilac color. It was very girly.

 
Now, that I've shared some really embarrassing, cluttery pictures of my house I can share a few pictures of some after shots. I didn't end up getting very many of them because the realtor took them. But here are a few. We think it cleans up really nicely!


AFTER

Fresh, neutral paint. I loved the dark beam in my kitchen. 

Nate's room we turned into a small media room

A Very basic bathroom

Our view of the backyard from the deck. 

Looking at the back of the house. 

The front of the house

We have loved this house for the 7 years that we had it. It was perfect for our growing family. It was really hard having to neutralize everything and erase all our personal touches to it. It just made it a house and not a home. I wish I had some more after pictures to show you but I just didn't get many taken. It really did clean up well. And that being said, sometimes you have to make a bigger mess before you can get a mess cleaned up. Does that make sense? 

Branson Vacay!!

 The last weekend of the year, we took a much needed vacation to Branson, MO. We bought another vacation package with Grand Country Inn. We stayed a couple of nights and it included passes to their indoor water park, tokens to the arcade, miniature golfing passes, vouchers to see to family shows and 2 free pizzas. We didn't do the shows this visit because we wanted to spend more time swimming and relaxing. If you haven't been to Branson, I suggest going and this place is pretty cool if you are going with a family.

Josh is hanging around to get splashed by the big bucket of water.

This is the most that I can get this boy to smile. 

Audrey is enjoying the warm water with Daddy. She just shivers in the cold water because she has no fat on those bones. 

He barely can fill out that tube in length but he manages to get himself comfortable

Colton really is in this picture, he just kind of blends in by the pole

He was hard to get a picture of because he never would hold still long enough for me. 

Just relaxin and chillin

Hanging outside of our room.

Indoor miniature golfing.

All 4 of my crazy monkeys

Josh is prepping to hit the ball.

Colton is up next. And look, Danny is smiling.

Audrey had a lot of fun, and looked cute too

Nate is old enough now to get the hang of golf but not sure why he is golfing left handed. 

Along with wanting to get away, we also had arranged to have our entire top floor painted. We really had custom colors in each of our rooms and needed to tone it down to something neutral. We felt if much easier to leave and let them get the work done without us being underfoot. It was so weird to come home to a house with walls all the same color-kind of boring to us.