Weekend Fun

Since Brayden is in Kindergarten now we get to participate in lots of fun activities that the school puts on.  They held a Kindergarten Karnival for all the kindergartners and their families.  It was a chance to get to know the teachers a little better and meet some of Brayden's new little friends.  Here are some pictures.

Brayden's best friend Santiago. 

They had an Angry Birds game.  He played this one at least 15 times.

Fishing game and guess what he caught?

Candy!

Masyn had fun too.

Love these two!

Saturday Brayden had a soccer game.  I realized I haven't posted any pictures of this soccer season yet!  What?!  This is his 5th soccer season!  So crazy.  Of course I'm counting fall and spring separately otherwise this is his 3rd year of soccer.  He's one of the 6 original Scorpions.  

Corner Kick!  Making a wall!

Scorpions - we were missing a few.

The weekend continued with the Aubrey Peanut Festival.  We decided a few weeks back that we don't do enough random fun things so off we went we the Wetzel Family (minus Richard).

Loaded up for a day of fun!

So we made the drive out to Aubrey which seems so much further away than it used to.  Still can't believe we used to live all the way out there!  We found a lovely parking spot in some man's front yard.    Okay, not really a "yard", but there was a guy living next to the railroad tracks under the metal frame of some building.  And we thought, "Hey this looks like a great place to park!"  Nice.  I will say that Leigh did feel we needed to find a closer spot but there were lots of people parked here so we did.  Once inside we walked around the booths for a while.

Brayden NEEDS this for his lemonade stand next year!  Oh, Grandpa!

Friends.

It was pretty small, but fun to go do with the kids.  However, we didn't stay long because they were all cold and hungry and we were not paying their prices for food!  Although, I refused to leave without buying some peanuts.  Come on it was the PEANUT Festival!  I won't say how much that little bag of candied nuts was but everyone did enjoy them!  My only disappointment was that there was a giant peanut walking around that I so wanted to get my picture with, and I didn't get a chance.  Bummer.  But I did score this super cute burlap flower headband for Masyn from Apron Strings!  She wore it in her portraits yesterday (I'll post those as soon as I get them!)

Happy Girl!

Masyn's Two!

Okay, I'm a big slacker and I'm actually going to make this a catch-up post for the whole month until this point.  But the title is correct...the big news this month...Masyn turned two!  Our baby is getting sooo big!

Anyway, fall is in full swing at our house.  Kent's been back to work since the beginning of August.  Brayden's settling in to his new schedule as a kindergartner.  Masyn is also attending a Mother's Day Out one day a week.  It's the same one Brayden went to toddler class-PreK.  She has Ms. Mary this year.  So Ms. Mary has officially had all the Johnson grandkids in her class.  In fact, she's had one every year except one between McKenna and Jessa!

Here she is below on her first day.  We tried to get the cute picture under the preschool sign out front like we have of Brayden each year, but she just was not having it!

I felt like a bad mom because I didn't make her a special first day of school shirt like I did for Brayden.  Oh well.  I did make her skirt though...cute, right?   She did great her first day and she especially feels like a big girl with her very own backpack.  She also wears her backpack when we drop Brayden off at school and pick him up.

This last weekend we went to the park to celebrate her birthday.  I love that her birthday is in September and you can pretty much guarantee that we can have it outdoors.  Instead of an official birthday party we just had a play date which was perfect.  Here are some pictures from her play date.

The Brother/Sister Shot

This picture is just too cute of her and her cousin Jessa...or as Masyn would say, Jesha.

Nope, didn't make her cake either....poor second child!  

But it's yummy anyway!

Brayden, Masyn, and Jessa.

Nana with McKenna and Anna. 

Tried to get one of Katie's cute little cupcake-y face but she just wanted to say "Hi".

A pic of all the kids!  Just a note Brayden would love for more boys to come to these things....seriously outnumbered!  

All tired out.

Had to throw this one in of Jessa feeding Masyn her dinner later at our house!

The next day we went back to the same park for Family Fun Day for our church. Not a huge turn out because it was pouring down rain.  But we didn't let that stop us!  We donned our umbrellas and rainboots and headed out.  Plus the park has a building with a large porch and rocking chairs for the adults to hang out...dry.

Apparently ready for hunting season.  What can I say?  He dresses himself.  I'm also working on a post about that.  Been collecting pictures so be on the lookout for that with pen and paper hand to take some notes!

Rain didn't matter since they were going to get wet anyway!

Love this.

Yep, he pretty much did this the whole time.

This one of McKenna is probably my favorite from the day.

Soaked and loving every minute of it.

And they left little butt prints.

 So that was the weekend.  It was a nice little break.  Like I said, fall is in full swing.  Kent's back to work so we rarely see him.  Brayden has school and soccer.  Masyn has her class one day a week.  And as for me I am managing it all while trying to balance their schedules, the house (which seems to fall consistently into last place), my contract work (it's football season, baby!), and sewing my little fingers off (can't complain about that...my orders doubled last month what I had sold for an entire year! Crazy but blessed!)

With keeping such a busy schedule it's easy to get caught up in it and sometimes I need a little reminder to slow down and enjoy these special times we have together and enjoy the little things.  We were coming out of Kirk and Suzie's Sunday night and was hit with one such reminder.  I looked up to see the most beautiful rainbow I've ever seen.  You could literally see the entire rainbow.  I had never seen that before and it completely stopped me in my tracks.  We tried and tried to get it in a picture in it's entirety but it just wouldn't fit.  Anyway, I just had to share these pictures of it.

It even has the little clouds at the bottom!

Brayden's in Kindergarten!

Where does the time go?  It seems like only yesterday we were bringing him home from the hospital and now here he is starting kindergarten!  He's been extremely excited about starting kindergarten.  He was accepted into the dual language kindergarten class so he has two classrooms and two teachers.  He will rotate every other day between each class. There are two kindergarten classes like this.  They have half English speaking children and half Spanish speaking in each class.  The idea is to immerse one another into each language so they might do better learning from each other.  Then on one day he goes to his first class and it's all taught in English and then he goes to the second class the next day and it's completely done in Spanish.  He's very excited about this.  I'm excited because he's very smart (not just saying that because I'm his mom) and was worried about him being bored.  We even considered starting him in first grade.  However, this seemed like the perfect solution.  He really had been wanting to learn Spanish and it's a way to challenge him while keeping him in his appropriate grade.

Anyway, here's his first day.  I stole some ideas got inspiration from some other blogs and things I had seen online to make his day super special so here it goes:

Started with a special breakfast of pancakes and sausage.  "K" for Kindergarten!

 

After breakfast I had him write his name on a piece of paper so we could remember exactly how he wrote his name on his first day of kindergarten.  We'll see how it changes!

The special 1st Day lunch I made him in his new super awesome bento lunch box.  Ham and cheese "pencil" sandwich, pretzel "crayons", "marker" cheese stick, apple slices, carrots and ranch, and a rolo (from Daddy).

Walking to school.

Brayden and Daddy outside his class.  I took a picture with him too but my eyes were closed and it just looked terrible.

His new teacher, Mrs. Peterson.  She is his "homeroom" teacher that will be his English speaking class.  

When he got home he had a giant chocolate chip cookie waiting for him!  

Summer Wrap Up

Well, as it does every year summer vacation flew by way too quickly.  Usually it ends for us the very first week in August when Kent has to return to work, but this year we officially have  a kindergartener in the house!  More on that in another post.  Since Kent is so busy with athletics during the school year we cram as much as we can into the two short months of summer vacation.  Here's what we did:

First up is a trip to Oklahoma (one of two). Every year we make sure we are up at Kent's parents on June 15th to visit Nash's gravesite on his birthday.  We visit every time we go but make a point to be there on this particular day.   We always stop at Grandpa and Grandma's house and stay a night to break up the trip.

Sharing a popsicle with Grandpa.

Wish this one wasn't so blurry.  She thought that was so much fun.

Hangin' out in the pool.

Then it was off to Nana and Granddad's house.  

Of course the first order of business was to explore the backyard.

  

                                                               And no summer day is complete without an ice cream cone of course!

Smelling flowers with Nana.

Nana and Granddad got the kid's a blow up pool to play in and at first all Masyn could do was drink the water!

On his belly he goes!

And of course sister see, sister do.

After conquering the belly she had to try going down on her back.  It didn't go exactly as planned!

Then there's just plain old running through the sprinkler fun!

After that we came back to Texas for a week.  We could have stayed up in OK but we needed to check on our garden since we had spent so much time getting it ready.

What was ripe lasted about 2.2 seconds until Brayden and Masyn discovered them!

Tomatoes!

This is from a plant that was supposed to have been cucumbers.  That ain't no cucumber!  Turns out cantaloupe.  Probably the last time I buy plants on CraigsList!

Then it was back to OK just for a day so we could pick up Uncle Jake and head off to Idaho to visit Grammy, Opa, Uncle Kyle, and Aunt Rachel.  

 We walked along the Boise River one morning (Brayden had to show off his hair!)

Masyn was less than impressed.

Had to include it because it makes me laugh.  We gave the kids hot dogs (I think) but Masyn crawled over to the table, stole a rib off the plate, took a big bite, and she loved it!  My little carnivore!

Pool fun with Uncle Kyle and Aunt Rachel.

Jake, Kent, and I also went whitewater rafting but I don't have pictures yet since I couldn't take any.  Waiting on my disc from the rafting company.  I'll post those when I get them.  After Idaho it was back to OK for a day to drop off Jake, spend a night, then load up in the MV (mini van people!) to head to the NATA annual meeting in St. Louis.  We ended up needing to bring Mojo so we had to find somewhere that would accept pets so we ended up camping.  We got a cabin in at a KOA in Illinois just 15 minutes from downtown St. Louis.  Worked out great.  It was my first time ever to stay at a KOA and I will say it was so much nicer than I thought it would be.  We'll definitely do it again.  Warning:  I forgot my camera in OK so pictures aren't that great.

Our cabin.

Brayden's favorite part was the jumping pillow!

And what camping trip would be complete without S'mores!  

I took the kids to the St. Louis Zoo while Kent went to the convention.  Best part?  Admission is free!  You do have to pay for a few attractions but it's very reasonable and you can buy a wristband to get into everything which is what we did.  Here are some faves from the zoo.

He got to touch a stingray...so cool!  They also had people stationed in different parts of the zoo share some cool stuff which he loved!                                                                  

But his favorite part was the animal tracks throughout the zoo.  He is his father's son!

Masyn loved the train.

And of course it was the hottest day of the year, record breaking, for St. Louis the day we went, but they found a sprinkler to play in for a little bit.

Finally we ended up back in Oklahoma.  This time to stay at Grandpa and Grandma's house for a week.  Not just to crash for a night between our other adventures.  

Brayden opened a lemonade stand for the 4th of July.  My dad's house is right across from the park that they have all the festivities and along the parade route so it was perfect!  The kid made over $100....at a lemonade stand!!  He was so proud.  He's going to take half of the money he made and buy toys for Toys for Tots when Christmas comes around.

Lacy and Jeremy came over with their kiddos to play.  Masyn and Reagan fought over the water, but made up later.

Then everyone got popsicles before going to find a spot to watch the fireworks.

I had to include these because my dad put up this goal and it entertained the guys for quite some time.  I won't disclose the height at which it was set though!

So there you have it.  Our jam packed summer.  We also went bowling, pool parties with friends, the park, and we finally took Brayden to Hawaiian Falls (I forgot my camera though!).  It's my favorite time of the year because we get Kent for two solid months.  The end is always the worst part though because we lose him when he goes back to work.  It's a hard adjustment having Daddy all day everyday then him returning to work some days not seeing him at all.  Oh well, how many days until Thanksgiving?