Thursday, August 14, 2014

Anna Is Three and a Half!

We celebrated Anna's half birthday on August 9.  We now have a half birthday tradition of going to get frozen yogurt.  She chose TCBY and enjoyed every bite!  We love you Anna!


2nd Annual Summer Lemonade Stand

We had another lemonade stand this summer!  Katelyn's charity of choice this year was Compassion International.  The children we sponsor through this organization all have August birthdays (like Katelyn!) so she wanted to raise money to donate for their birthday gifts.  We raised plenty of money for the birthday gifts and even had extra donations come in after the lemonade stand (thank you Mamaw and Peepaw) that she used to buy school supplies for kids through Communities in Schools, a local organization with which our church partners.   When all was said and done, we raised $100.44!  I think this is one of my favorite parts of the summer....I love being a part of something bigger than me.

 Katelyn signing her receipts






 A business lesson from Daddy.  Calculating Expenses, Revenue, and Profit!

Kindergarten Reunion

So when you go from seeing the same kids every day at school to not really seeing them at all, you kind of start to miss them during the summer.  Rather than planning 17 different playdates for Katelyn this summer, we decided to work smarter, not harder (as my sister Brittany always reminds me).  We sent out an evite to her class for a kindergarten reunion party at the community pool!  We had everyone bring a snack, and made a super fun morning of it!  About half of the class came, and the kids seemed to really enjoy seeing one another (and the parents enjoyed catching up too!). 

 Katelyn is on the far right of the bottom left picture

Since her teacher couldn't make the party (I totally didn't even think about checking her schedule when planning it...I was more focused on the kids seeing each other!), we planned an afternoon smoothie date with her later in the summer!  Another boy in Katelyn's class joined us, and it was a fun and special time for them!


Our First Pet!

We also had a very exciting addition to our family this summer!  A fish.  For those of you who know me...I love animals, just not in my home. :)  I think Dave and the girls have different feelings, but up until a few months ago, we have not had any pets in the McCurdy home.  That is, until our sweet neighbors across the street found out they were moving to New York and their fish, Sparkle, was not going to be able to make the trip with them.  So sad, I know.  So here's how it all went down.  

I'm cooking dinner one evening and have eggs on the stove (it was breakfast-for-dinner night), pancakes on the griddle, and bacon in the oven, and I hear a knock on the door.  Katelyn runs to the door and sees that its the little girl from across the street.  Katelyn says, "Mom, Valeria has a question for you!"  I'm really hoping its a quick, easy, yes or no question because, at my age, it's hard for me to keep up with lots of stuff going on at the same time, and I'm confident that my pancakes are going to burn if I turn my attention elsewhere, even for a second.  So she says, in the sweetest voice ever, "I was wondering if you would like to take care of my fish when we move because we can't take her with us.  Her name is Sparkle."  I took a deep breath and said, "I think we could do that, but can I come over after dinner and talk to you a little more about it?"  She agreed, and then I asked an even more important question, "how often do you have to feed her?"  She told me how she only has to eat once a day (six super tiny fish food pellets=cheap to feed), and she also has these special pellets that you can put in her tank when you go out of town which allow her to eat on her own and not have to be dependent on someone else feeding her. SOLD.  We went over to her house after dinner and got some general instructions, and I'm happy to report that Sparkle is still living (and thriving!) in our home today.  But I would be amiss if I didn't tell you the absolute sweetest part of this story....when we went to get Sparkle and bring her to our house, Valeria's mom told us that her daughter thought very carefully through her list of friends who she could ask to take care of Sparkle.  She said that when she thought about Katelyn, she told her mom that she knew she could trust Katelyn to take good care of Sparkle, more so, than any of her other friends.  Thank you, Jesus, I thought. This is just a small picture of a greater characteristic that I pray the Lord develops in Katelyn.  May she be a trustworthy friend who walks in Jesus' example of trustworthiness.

Meet Sparkle.  She's cute, I know.

Schlitterbaun Bound!

So my last post was about Katelyn's graduation from Kindergarten, and now we're just over one week away from her starting First Grade!  We had such a fun summer!  

We started off the summer with a family vacation to New Braunfels!  The focus of our trip was two fold: 1) Have fun 2) Conquer Schlitterbaun.   We went with another family from our church, and they have two daughters about the same ages as Katelyn and Anna.  Their family is a lot of fun!  We laughed, we tubed, we ate, we swam, we laughed, and we laughed.  Did I mentioned that their family is a lot of fun?

Our little vacation home