Strep

It's been a LONG 5 days at the Blevins' house. Shelby came home sick from school Wednesday, on her birthday. Tucker went downhill that night. Both kids were diagnosed with strep throat the next morning and I stayed home from work for the rest of the week with both sick kiddos. It's been a rough few days but both kids are better, although now Shelby's developed a bronchitis sounding cough. Hopefully with the breathing treatments it'll be gone by morning. Fingers crossed for a healthy week. We have way too much on our plate this week to be sick again.

Happy Birthday Shelby!

Hard to believe our baby girl turns 8 today. It seems like it was just yesterday when I woke up to my water breaking way too early before her March due date!

Brazos Bend Park - take 2

Yesterday I took Shelby and Tucker to Brazos Bend Park since Tucker missed out 2 weeks ago when we went. This time we saw 40+ alligators on the marsh trail around Elm Lake. These gators were as close as 10 ft away from us!!! Totally creepy, yet so cool! The kids loved it and are begging to go back our next free weekend.

Acolyte

Shelby had her first Acolyte meeting last night at church. I was totally impressed with how many new kids have signed up. I wonder if she has any clue of what she's really getting in to? She knows she can't talk up there, but I don't think she's going to actually get that until she's up on the alter being shush'ed by the LEM's.

Look how proud she looks!

email

So I got this email this morning in response to another email I sent to Shelby's teachers. Talk about making MY day!!!  This was from her PE teacher. And if you know Shelby, you know the girl HATES PE (class, not teacher). LOL

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jenny Delafuente <JDelafuente@dickinsonisd.org>
Date: Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 8:59 AM
Subject: Re: shelby blevins
To: Jamie Blevins <jamielblev@gmail.com>

Love your daughter - you must be a fantastic parent!

Getting ready to par-tay!

Can you believe my baby girl is about to turn 8???

Swimming in January??

Orange Rolls

I saw on pinterest the other day how to make cinnamon rolls on the waffle maker. So I decided to give it a try this morning. Shelby loves orange rolls so I had those on hand. It was sooooo easy. You just take the rolls, close the lid, and let them cook for a couple of minutes and waaa-lah! I refrained from eating the deliciousness (you can never eat just one) but Shelby tells me they were the best ever.

Brazos Bend State Park

Yesterday we had a big family day planned for Brazos Bend State Park. Unfortunately Tucker woke up too sick to go. We were meeting Courtney, David and Skylar there. We had already loaded up the car with the picnic lunch and all before I realized Tucker was too sick to go. Shelby had her heart set on going. So we decided that I would still go with Shelby and Lonnie would stay home with Tucker. We brought Shelby's friend Rachel along too for the adventure. We had a great time going on the trails and seeing deer and other wildlife. We were able to pet baby alligators and snakes at the nature center and the girls also attended story time about raccoons where they also made raccoon puppets. Did you know that raccoons can not only open a cooler and unzip your tent, but they can physically open a tab on a soda can and drink it! We never saw any alligators along the trails, but then again, I purposely made us stay off the ones where they most likely would be. I'm too much of a chicken.

Brownies Investiture / Rededication Ceremony

So last year at the end of the school year, the girls all "bridged to brownies" from daisies. Well we have a few new girls in the troop this year so we did another ceremony last week. It was quite cute.

LEADER:  "Who comes to these woods?"
GIRLS:       "We do!"
LEADER:  "What do you want?"
GIRLS:       "We want to be Brownie Girl Scouts."

 LEADER:     

"Cross your little fingers,
Stand upon your toes
That's a bit of magic
Every Brownie Girl Scout knows.
Now we all are standing in a forest glade.
Listen very carefully
See the magic made.
Open your eyes
Here we are in the big woods
Before you is a pond
You can almost hear the Wise Old Owl
And the friends of whom you're fond."

(At this point we walked the girls individually over to the "pond" and we turned them around and then when they looked in the pond they saw the mirage image of themself.)

"Twist me and turn me and show me an elf, I looked in the water and saw.     (girl says, "Myself".)
     

LEADER: 

"Uncross your little fingers,
Down from off your toes,
Then the magic goes away,
As every Girl Scout knows."

New Years Eve Party

We hosted our annual New Year's Eve party again this year. All I can say is WOW!! We had soooo many people this year. Word is out how awesome the Blevins' are!! LOL I lost count after 40 people. We had dinner catered by Lupe Tortillas and everyone brought fabulous desserts. Most of you know we don't have a big house. So about an hour into it, I moved a bunch of chairs to the front lawn and most of the adults went out there. The kids dominated the party with their crazyness and Just Dance dancing. Around 8pm we did our countdown and the kids sprayed silly string and popped confetti poppers. It was a lot of fun. Can't wait until next year!

 (Yay! Sarah, Jeff, Luke and Lauren were in town from Canada!)