School's out for summer!

(It's hard to read that without singing the Alice Cooper song in your head, isn't it?)

Erin graduated from Kindergarten today! She's sad to leave her teacher behind when she starts first grade next year, though. Mrs. Jones is a great teacher!

They had a little graduation in their classroom this morning. Mrs. Jones talked about all the stuff they learned in a year, they recited a little poem for us, and they each got little graduation certificates and some other awards.

^ Here's Erin showing quiet dignity for the occasion

I was surprised that I got a little choked up in there! How sad is that. I didn't break down sobbing or anything, but I had a little catch in my throat. Guess I'm getting old. It's an eye-opener to see how much your kid has changed in such a short amount of time.

Here's one more picture of the kids before school this morning. Just because I liked it.

^ Robbie showing quiet dignity for the occasion

Erin did great in school, and she's excited to be a first grader!

Reunion

We spent the weekend in Show Low visiting my family. It was nice to get away for a couple of days and see everyone! My dad's work has a cabin they let the employees use sometimes, and my parents have it this week. So my brothers and their families went up there, and my sister lives there, so we all got together on Saturday.

Mom and Dad have 14 grandkids now, so there was a lot of activity.

The cabin is right on Show Low Lake, so we had fun skipping (or just throwing) rocks and trying to catch crawdads. The bigger kids built a pretty elaborate fort. My brother Chris and I stalked a giant lizard and finally caught it to show the kids. We were proud of our hunting abilities. Robbie absolutely loves watching the lizards in our back yard at home, but they're too fast to catch, so he was really happy to finally get to touch one!

Erin especially loves hanging around with her older girl cousins, so she had a lot of fun. I think she was happy to have kind of a break from just mom and dad all the time.

I usually only see my brothers & sister for a couple of hours here and there when one of them is in town, so it was nice to have a whole day with everyone there at once!

Anticipation

I made cupcakes today... this is what Robbie does when something is in the oven.

Deals

Okay, maybe this is a stupid thing to blog about, but I'm cheap and I love a deal! So here we go...

Today McDonald's is giving away a chicken sandwich if you buy a medium or large soda. I got one today & it's not bad. Just chicken and a biscuit. I think in the afternoon, it's on a bun with pickles. Anyway, not bad for less than $2.

And I was happy to see some dress pants for Robbie for $3. The Wal-Mart on 75th & Lower Buckeye has some light khaki ones on the clearance rack. I think they were mostly 24 mos, and maybe a 4T. The 24 mos in that brand is big on Robbie, so they'll be his fall or winter pants. :)

I've been cashing in all my pre-birthday freebies. Maybe you guys know about all these, but this is the stuff I've gotten in e-mail this week:

- Cold Stone: Free "Love-It" size ice cream

- Baskin Robbins: One free scoop

- Maggie Moo's: Free regular cone

- Red Robin: Free burger! (Used to be buy-one get-one, but now it's just free)

- The Children's Place: 20% off your purchase. I'm not sure what the kids will get for their birthdays, but that's a fun one for moms! I was surprised when I got that one.

- Texas Roadhouse: Free appetizer if you buy 2 entrees.

- Toys R Us: Birthday card & little gift, and they make some big deal about the kid if you bring them in the store on their birthday! (I haven't done this one yet, but I learned about it from Brandi's blog a while back so I signed up)

So there you have it... I'm cheap! I linked the store names to their web sites in case any of you guys want to sign up. Any others out there I don't know about?

Hillbilly Sledding

We went to Rob's softball games again on Tuesday, and some of the other kids there had a bunch of cardboard they were using to slide down the hill! They graciously let Erin play with them, and I watched as they slid forward, backward, standing up, laying down, you name it... down this little grassy hill.

Out came the camera phone, and here are the poor-quality photos for your enjoyment!

I had to laugh because I remember doing this when I was a kid, only we didn't have any grassy hills... just dirt and rocks. Whee!! Needless to say, our cardboard didn't last very long.

It was fun watching the kids, and it had been a while since we had done something completely HILLBILLY, so we were due.

OK, so I'm a little slow...

Holy cow, I just now realized I had my comments set up so I had to approve everything before it would post! Duh. Sorry guys! I fixed it.