The second grade gingerbread man

Okay, here's the story. The entire second grade was sent home with a blank gingerbread man and told they had two weeks to do whatever they wanted to these guys/gals and that they had to have a story and to BE CREATIVE! They will all be hung up at the school, this is Peyton's...

Hi, my name is Noah. I started out as a piece of dough. I got cooked in the oven at my house in Germany by Peyton. Once I was out of the oven I was terrified!! That's why I had this crazy idea, I had to escape far far away from Peyton and his family so they wouldn't eat me! The furthest place I could think of going to was Hawaii. Now I live the aloha spirit. I surf, box, play beach volleyball, tennis and golf. I still have to be careful and sleep with one eye open so that Peyton and his family don't ambush me!

Okay, I have to work on this...

I know I know, it's been a while and I have SO MUCH I could've posted but life gets so busy feeling sometimes!! We had Peyton's birthday mid October, then his baptism which Nana and Papa Matteson were able to come up for YEA! It was a completely awesome experience and Peyton was SO HAPPY and EXCITED to have his very own scriptures (which by family tradition were given to him by Nana and Papa) and which we have been reading as a family together every night YEA!!!!! I'm so proud of us! We hit up Cox Farm while the Nana and Papa were here too which is good ol Northern Virginia yearly Fall tradition. Then of course Halloween SO MUCH FUN! Now November is upon us, yesterday we spent Veteran's Day at Mt. Vernon with Peyton's Cub Scout Den where they layed a wreath IN George Washington's tomb. Yes, they unlocked the tomb for them to lay the wreath inside. VERY cool experience, one I hope he never forgets! And today I spent the afternoon in .... you guessed it COOKIE TRAINING after work!!! I am the cookie mom for Emma's troop and WOO HOO I'll be talking COOKIES until April!! YIKES! What we do for the ones we love. But I really truly crazy do! I guess my next post will be all pictures of these things I have slacked in updating! For now a few of our family pictures we took while walking the trails out behind our houses with the Jensen's. Yup, you guessed it again, you'll be seeing one of these on our Christmas card! hahaha

Cub Scout World

Okay, so I've been crazy busy and haven't updated I KNOW! We had a lot of fun this past weekend, we went to Cub Scout World Day at Camp Snyder. The kids had a lot of fun and I was so happy they let Emma participate! Here are a few fun photos of our day.

Throwing fishing lines into a hula hoop


Digging for gold

Eating english muffin pizzas they made in a box oven
BB gun range

Oooooo this is FUN!

Sling shots at pie tins

As if we didn't have enough to do!

HA! So this weekend we're out and about and I say to Dwayne, I need to get some food for the gerbils, let's run into Petsmart. We walked out with a 46 gallon fish tank and the whole setup, and of course the gerbil food (we're not complete flakes!). Yeah, so we can't add the actual fish for at least two weeks the water needs to balance out so the fish we do buy don't just die. Though evidently our children won't be completely heartbroken if and when we do have a fish die because they were laughing HYSTERICALLY at the dead fish in one of the tanks at Petsmart!! Emma (in her sick little giggle that I adore!) kept saying where's the dead fish again? That dead fish is SO FUNNY! Can we get the dead fish? People around us must have thought we were freaks. So until mid October this is what we have to look at, a fishless fishtank! It is looking quite nice though. The kids picked the gravel color, Dwayne (and I, I guess) chose the large coral piece, Emma chose the bubbling treasure diver who's treasure chest goes UP and down, and Peyton chose the animal skull. He seems to think the bala shark we're going to put in the tank will like to sleep in the skull. HA.

I am a total book nerd right now!

Okay, so Jamie Jensen and I meet up and walk the kids to school and back every day. We're just shy of one mile from the school so we have almost 4 miles to chat everyday. She started talking about this Twilight book series, and I had been starting to hear rumblings recently so I had to hear what it was all about, because Jamie had read them all of course. I was really interested and Jamie said I'll let you borrow it (Twilight, there are 4 books total at the moment in the series) of course Jamie being the good friend she is, is too much like me and couldn't find the book anywhere in the house ha ha ha ha. No big deal, I went to Target and picked up the first two in the series, Twilight and New Moon on Sunday afternoon. Today is Thursday and I have five chapters to go in New Moon. Emma was home sick with a double ear infection (yeah, fun!) yesterday which of course meant we had to go to Target to get her prescription filled, which of course means I got the other two books in the series. I am hooked, I have turned off the TV and the house is quiet at night. Dwayne is laughing at me telling me I need to go to bed and sleep. And Jamie....well Jamie is funny and says I can now be a member of her Edward Cullen fan club! HA HA HA (He's one of the main characters). But I am very grateful to Jamie, it had been a long time since I made time for myself and picked up a book and it really does feel GOOD! Me time, ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

First Day of School 2008!!

Well it's official the kids are back in school!! Today was a cute day, I can't believe I have a first and second grader it's SO WEIRD! We started off on our walk to school and soon caught up to our friends the Jensen's from church who live around the corner. Grace and Emma are both first graders, different teachers but their classrooms are next door to each other. This is Grace's first year at Cedar Point, she went to Bristow Run last year because they were living in a different house and she was a bit nervous to be at a new school. Emma, being the good caring friend she is ran up to Grace on the path and next thing you know they were holding hands and never let go until it was time to part ways and go to class. Emma gave me a big kiss and hug then barely waved to me she was so excited to be back at school and in her classroom (which coincidentally was Peyton's first grade classroom just a different teacher) she's like a fish to water at school. Peyton wanted to hold hands with who else but me his Momma! hee hee So we held hands on our walk, but man once we were at school forget it! He's a big ol second grader, classroom in the second and third grade hallway! No more bathrooms in the classroom for him, his bathrooms are community and in the hallway, they have two in their hallway in fact! So nope...no need to walk me to class Mom (still got a big hug and kiss), I got it, I go right, then left, then right, classroom's on the corner! There went my big boy! WOW! After I knew Emma was settled I had to run take a peak at Peyton, he saw me and waved with a very BIG SMILE and yelled, "Hey Mom guess what Rahmann is in my class!!!" They were in first grade together, I said, "NO WAY!!!!" He said, "yup LOOK!" and ran over next to him and pointed ha ha ha! I said, "very cool Peyton, have a great first day!" to which he simply said, "I love you!" I hope he never stops saying that! I said I love you too! And that was it, I had my day all to myself! To do laundry, go grocery shopping, get dinner made, etc. etc. etc. but I got to do it....all by myself until it was time to pick them up of course! ha ha ha ha It was a goo first day of school!

National Zoo D.C.

Ahhhhhh......so we went to the National Zoo yesterday. Had good weather (it was hot but no rain) can't complain. So we went to the zoo because Emma has been pretty bent since one of Peyton's three first grade field trips was the National Zoo (the other two were Mount Vernon and the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum) and she didn't get to go. She'll get to go this year but of course that's not good enough AND the Zoo is their last field trip of the year so it will be a while. It's great though and we were all excited to go. You can't beat DC, most everything is free and the National Zoo is one of those, it's part of the Smithsonian. I have to say yesterday was great compared to the field trip day because it was no where near as crowded and we weren't rushed for time so we saw EVERYTHING and got to stop and really do some fun stuff! My favorite was watching my two goofballs at the Cheethas. There was a bold yellow line painted on the ground followed by two staggered white squares, a big jump further two more with staggered squares and way way down the pathway another bold yellow line. This was to demonstrate a cheetah's stride and distance at top speed. From the one yellow line to the other would take a cheetah one second and the white squares it's stride. The kids tried the run several times and it of course took them longer than saying one! A very cool fun experiment I'm sure they will share at school since their mascot is....you guessed it the cheetah! These were their highlight photos...

This hippo is HUGE! They're looking for a new home for it though because of the new Elephant house and trails they're building.
Two of the many elephants
Peyton and Emma on the eagle
The flamingos...ahhh the memories of waking up in the morning to having our front lawn flamingo'd

One of our favorite birds in the birdhouse
Awesome iguana
Cute bird

Owl
We all liked the toucan
Posing with the panda

The best view we got of the panda unfortunately
These river otters were cute and frisky
Posing with the otters

Posing with the bear
The bear
One of the several cheethas

These are tamarin and they're endangered they have many of them at the National Zoo and they are very cool! This was a new baby they had this summer with it's Mom.
Lounging lemur
Lemur dining on watermelon

Another tamarin
Gorilla dining on the leftover bag that had popcorn in it earlier
Not interested in you at all!

This gator was cool and looked fake!
Komodo dragon
Komodo dragon close up

Crazy cool spiders and there is no barrier between you and them
LUNCH!
Octopus

Emma's thinking she's having stone crab this night.
Stone crab close up
Being groomed by the chimp

Another grooming
Who's smarter????

Baboons

Tiger
Lion

Prairie dog