Miscellaneous Lilly pictures

Watching for Daddy to cross the finish line at the NCSU Habitat for Humanity 5K race!

Decorating cupcakes at Grace's 3rd birthday party

Meeting Baby Jonas (who is almost as big as she is!)  He was 11lb at birth!

Mother/Daughter Mission Tea at church

Ready to go to Grammy and Paw's house for a week!

My girl marching to the beat of her own drummer!  This is a typical days outfit for her!

Miscellaneous Brayden pictures

Matt did the NCSU Habitat for Humanity House your Neighbor 5K back this past May.  This race is dear to my heart since I helped get this race started 14ish years ago!  The race had been taken over by a few area churches in years past but this year, the NCSU Habitat for Humanity group took it back over!  Matt knew I had been involved with Habitat back in college and when he told me about this race, I knew it was one he needed to do!  They did a great job with the race (having been on our church's 5K committee the past 3 years I know how much work goes into organizing a 5K in Raleigh these days!) 

Brayden may be ready to run with Matt next year!

So excited for Kindergarten Orientation Day!

This is how he sleeps all the time!

Dress like a cow = Free Chick-fil-A!  Brayden made our costumes!

This was just last night after he told me that I needed to take the rail down!  I think I will leave the rail up a bit longer!

Preschool Graduation

Somehow I blinked and Brayden graduated from Preschool in June.  I am not sure how that happened so fast.  Seems like just yesterday, we were taking him to daycare for the very first time as a tiny 4 month old!

We have been blessed to be at a wonderful daycare in our neighborhood the past 4 years and Brayden made some really good friends while at daycare.  Most of the kids at the daycare live either in our neighborhood or within a 5-10 minute drive from our neighborhood so now that many of the kids have been split up into many different elementary schools, it is still easy to get them together!  As an added bonus, many of the parents have become friends as well and we also enjoy hanging out together!

The daycare had a graduation ceremony for the kids and they all performed 5 songs for the families then they got a certificate from the director.  One of my very favorite parts was the slideshow that Brayden teacher and husband had put together of the kids over the years.  Many of the pictures were taken at school so the parents had not seen them.  We saw a totally different (but good) side of Brayden through those pictures!  When he is with us, he is often shy and reserved (not always but definitly not the most wild, out going child either).  At school, we saw a kid that was having SO MUCH FUN goofing off, playing, learning, and just being a kid! 

Marching in

Classic Brayden face!

After graduation, they had a party in the clasroom for all of the kids and families. 

Brayden and his sweet teacher Ms Shaye

 

 

 

Brayden, Zach, and Trey - best buds

That night, one of the families hosted a huge cook out to celebrate.  The teachers and director were there as well as most of Brayden's friends.  It was a lot of fun to hang out with everyone a final time. 

A little basketball after a nasty thunderstorm ran us all into the garage!

Spring school pictures

Spring 2014 Soccer Season

Brayden played soccer again this spring and his team won every game they played!  His good friend Brady's dad was the head coach and Matt was the assistant coach.  All of the kids except for one came from his daycare and they have been playing together for a few years now plus taking an extra soccer "class" at daycare.   They loved playing together and most of them are playing again this fall but with NCSU football, we just couldn't commit to the Saturday schedule. 

Because these boys were so good last year as well (when they were 4), the league director allowed them to play up a level so they were playing rising 1st graders instead of rising Kindergarteners.  They were smaller than most of the other teams but that didn't stop them at all!

It was interesting watching the boys play this spring.  Last year, they played "bee hive ball" where they just basically chased the ball all over the field.  This year though, even though the coach didn't encourage (or discourage) specific positions, these boys just naturally fell into certain positions.  Brayden and his friend Trey are natural defenders.  They would both be excellent goalies if the league played goalies at this age.  Their friend Zach is a natural offensive player and scored the majority of the goals for the team, although Zach was an excellent team player and passed the ball to his team mates when possible to give them a chance to score.  A few of the others fell into the mid-field and played great soccer as well! 

There is talk about moving the core group of boys from rec league next spring to a bit more competitive league where they can get some more intense teaching as well as more competition.  As long as Brayden is having fun, we will continue to let him keep playing! 

After the last game, one of the families hosted a cook out for the boys and their families.  Coach David had put together a little mini-ceremony for the boys and each boy not only got a trophy (all kids in the league got a trophy) but they had also created a certificate for each boy specific for them (i.e. Most Improved, Best Team Player, etc).  Brayden got the Sportsmanship award! 

Happy Easter - 2014

We spent Easter this year at my parents house.  The kids had lots of funny dying eggs and hiding them...they are both really good about finding them!  All of my pictures of the kids hiding/hunting eggs came out really dark.  It didn't help that it was rainy and cool so we didn't get to spend much time outside hiding eggs!

Grammy & Paw's house - winter 2014

The kids and I went to my parents house for a few days in January.  It was relatively warm outside (50s), so my dad and I took Brayden down to my dad's hunting land.  He had recently had the lumber cut off of it due to sever storm damage last summer and I wanted to see what it looked like now plus Brayden had never been to my dad's land.  The land has huge rocks/boulders to climb over and lots of critters so I knew Brayden would enjoy walking around.

Brayden did really well walking all around...we probably walked 2-3 miles over fairly rough terrain and up hill a bit.

My dad also has his skid steer stored down on the land and Brayden got to drive it around a little bit.