A surprise for CeCe

CeCe is one week away from being a big 4 year old!  Wow!!  She's never expressed interest in owning a bike and has loved her little pink tricycle my Aunt Sandra got her when she was 18 months old.  I had decided to get her a bike for her 4th birthday anyway.  I thought she would sit on it and maybe ride it around a little but not love it.  I looked online one night and found one I fell in love with, but it was pricey and shipping was crazy.  I had a free moment to myself last weekend and decided to birthday shop for her and remembered to look at the bikes while I was at Toys R Us.  They had the bike I had fallen in love with online and for $40 cheaper!  I knew it was meant to be so I snatched it up!  We decided to give it to her early because we are headed to Callaway Gardens with the big Borden family this weekend and we've all decided to bring the kids' bikes.  I wanted her to practice with it before going.  

It was storming the night we wanted to give it to her so we just brought it inside.  Here she is enjoying her golden oreo while she waited for her big surprise! 

Close your eyes!  

Ya'll, I cannot tell you how SHOCKED I am!  My little bird is a bike riding, speed loving machine!  She has logged miles and miles on this bike already.  I was jogging along beside her but I've started riding my bike next to her because she wants to go so fast and far!  

Notice the baby seat on the back, see why I said it was perfect for my little mommy?  And there is always at least one baby in the front basket too.  So sweet! 

Bryce has spent a lot of time like this lately.  Mississippi State is playing in the college world series finals this week.  We breezed through the other rounds, but UCLA is proving to be a challenge for our bulldogs.  If they don't pull out a win tonight, it's over and UCLA will be the champs.  

Saturday morning we spent two hours at Tybee in the rain!  It was cool and sprinkling the whole time we were there, but we still had fun!  

Last night Bryce swam in his first 'real' meet of the season.  The last one he swam in was a mock meet with just his team.  He swam AWESOME!  He came in 4th overall (out of 23, 7-8 year old boys) in 25 meter Freestyle,  2nd overall (out of 23, 7-8 year old boys) in 25 meter Backstroke, was DQ'd in 25 meter breaststroke for not touching the wall with two hands at the end, and had a come from behind finish in the 4x100 medley relay to get 1st place for his team!  He swam freestyle in the medley.  

They ask you to put your swimmer's name on their back in sharpie for each meet along with all their races on their arms.  Last night CeCe asked me to put her name on her back too.  She is the best little sister!  Last night we were at the meet for 3 hours and tonight at baseball practice for 1.5 hours and she never complains.  In our prayers tonight she even said "thank you that Bryce is such a good baseball player and swimmer".  

We have found a potential baseball team (pretty much a year round team) for Bryce!  We went to practice with them tonight and he loved it.  I hope it works out!  

Great Friends, Great Families, Great Weekend

We just got home from a super fun weekend in Asheville, NC with some of my favorite people.  These 3 ladies are great friends of mine from our playgroup in Pensacola.  For now we all live in GA, NC and SC so we decided to all try and get together again (spent a mom's weekend in SC in Oct.) with our families this time before Melanie moves to AL.  

Brooke, Melanie, Lisa and Robin

 Robin found us a wonderful house in the mountains near Asheville where we could all stay together.  8 adults/10 kids, 7 and under!  It was so great seeing all of our kids playing together again.  Lisa posted some great pictures on facebook of the kids 'then and now'.  I'll try to copy them and put them on here.  

The first afternoon we spent exploring and playing outside.  

 Lisa's 2 older girls enjoying the hot tub on the back deck

 CeCe was so excited to see her best friend Sam again.  

 The Barger girls made the hot tub look so fun, more kids had to try it out! 

 We were all so excited about the fire pit, but it was impossible to get a fire started.  It had been raining all week before we got there and ended up raining for a lot of the weekend while we were there.  

CeCe's first friend sleepover.  She asked to sleep in Sam's room instead of ours!  

 Sunday we all headed to Chimney Rock state park.  GREAT place for everyone.  

 There was a great kids trail that everyone except baby Julie could walk (she rode on her Daddy's back in a backpack)

 CeCe and Luci chatting on the trail

 9 of the 10 kids (baby Julie was still in the backpack!) 

 Chimney Rock.  This was high up, but nothing like after riding on the elevator (yes, we rode instead of climbing the steps up but we did climb the steps back down!)

Here is the top!  It was a gorgeous view.  We watched the rain clouds roll in, pretty neat from so far up!  

 Lisa's husband Taz had to work Monday morning so they headed out Sunday evening.  We were sad to see them go but before they left we had to get an adults only picture.  Jaelyn did a much better job than Bryce with this picture!  Bryce cut out 4 people in all of the pictures he took!  

Monday morning cartoons with friends

After checking out of the house we drove to downtown Asheville to explore and eat lunch.  We played in park and had a delicious lunch at a super cool Mellow Mushroom.  

CeCe and the red heads! 

 Bryce and Liam riding the bronze turkeys

Here are the pictures Lisa posted!  

Awards Ceremony

The First Grade awards ceremony was today at May Howard.  Bryce was awarded a medal for high honor roll (all A's) and a ribbon for the Principal's award, which is for excellent conduct all year.  We are very proud of him!!  

As I was plugging up the camera to upload those two pictures I noticed a cute photo op that I couldn't pass up!  

Barracudas!

Bryce is swimming on our neighborhood swim team this summer and it's been so fun already!  We ride our bikes to practice, CeCe can swim while Bryce is practicing, and he has a few friends from school on his team.  Today there was a mock meet for the kids to practice what a real meet will feel like.  It was only his team today and was pretty hectic so I know the meets with other teams will be even worse, but along with the hectic was fun.  Bryce swam in 3 races today--25 meter freestyle, 25 meter backstroke and 4x25 freestyle relay.  His said his favorite was the relay!  I actually caught his part on video....

Could you tell which one he was?  His team won the relay!!  

These black beads are for first place finishes in each heat.  He came away with one in 25 Free and the relay.  He's afraid of hitting the wall in backstroke or he would have won that one too, he was ahead until the last little bit when he quit doing the stroke and stuck his hand out to find the wall too early.  He had a hard head hit a few months ago and he's been pretty cautious ever since.  He had so much fun today and CeCe and I did too (Anthony was at work and had to miss it).