Last Football Game

Jayden had his last flag football game today.  And holy smokes it was a hot one!  I was dying sitting in my shaded chair on the sidelines,  I can't believe how much running all these kids did out in the heat.  Bru.Tal.

No dropping footballs in Royal's world.  Everybody does pushups.

 

Saying Goodbye

It has been a hard week in the Lovingfoss house.  Our neighbors have officially moved away and my kids are sad and lonely and have declared that they are moving too.  Jayden is moving to Washington to be near his cousins.  Willow is moving to Texas to be by Emery.  But we spent as much time with them as we possibly could, including another sleep over with Emery and lots of time during the day.  Now we just have to plan a trip to Texas to visit them!  We miss them so much already!  (Good thing we are leaving for Washington soon so we have our own adventures to look forward to!)

And it's just not a good goodbye without one last head collision.  :)

Willow's 2nd Tooth!

Willow's 2nd tooth came out tonight!  It took a little bit more courage on her part, she backed out 3 different times before she finally just stood her ground and let me pull it out.  I always tell them that if I can't get it in one pull then they can keep it in awhile longer, but since she's been complaining about it bothering her while she eats, I knew it was time.

And here is her new smile!

Summer of No Sleep

That's my theme for this summer...No Sleep.  It's not really how I started planning out the summer, but it seems like that is how it has evolved and I'm just rolling with it.  My plan was to have a relaxed, not too much structure, lots of impromptu play dates, staying up kinda late but not too late and sleeping in kind of summer.  Well as soon as school got out, my children who I had to drag out of bed at 7:30 for school every day, started getting up at 6am.  6!  I kept telling them to go back to bed and they kept telling me to get up and make them breakfast.  Guess who lost that battle?  My only satisfaction at not getting to sleep in was that I would be putting them to bed early to make up for their early rising.  Yeah, right.  Lose again!  They were staying up until 9:30, 10, sometimes 11:00 before they finally made it to bed, and they continued to get up before 7!  It has proven to create some slightly cranky, irritable, whiny children at times, but for the most part we've been having fun.  Here is a quick update, I thought about doing a bunch of different posts, but I'm cramming it all into one!

Lunch dates at the zoo with friends!

Both kids are trying out tennis this summer.  Jayden, who said he would go but was going to refuse to play, loves it!  Willow, who wanted to play because of tennis skirts and sparkly racquets, so far doesn't really like it at all.  :) Ha!  I'm determined to get a tennis partner out of one of them (Jordan lives too far away...or is it me who lives too far away....)!  :)

Our street seems to be having a major turnover this summer.  3 of my neighbors have or are moving, 2 of them had a house full of kids.  And 1 of those houses with kids have my kid's best friends living in it, so before they left us we had them over for a sleep over!

A few days after this sleep over, the kids and I headed up to KC to stay the night with our friends up there, who also have 2 kids who are such great friends with my kids!  All of our best friends are moving out of town....guess it's time for me to leave too! (wink wink...right Royal???)

This is what I got to listen to on the 2.5hr drive up to Kansas City.  I know, totally dangerous to video tape and drive at the same time.  But I swear I was like 1 of 2 cars on the road, this is Kansas people, the road doesn't turn, you drive straight for days, I was very, very careful, and really I was quite lucky I even got this video because I was just guessing as to wear to point the camera, since you know I was staring at the road.  :)  Enjoy my friends, enjoy.

I'm pretty sure Willow is taking a selfie here...

My friend Kerri has a house on 5 beautiful acres.  I want to be her neighbor, real bad.  If I can't live near my family, living next door to Kerri is high on my list.  They have a kid-sized Polaris RZR that Jayden and Kyle drove all over their field.  It had just poured down rain for the 3 days prior to us coming up there, so there was lots of mud to drive through and power sliding around corners.

And because this is Kansas, the next day was sunny and warm.

The drive back to Wichita was much more quiet.  Ha! I wrote more quiet.  I'm totally leaving it.  More quiet, not quieter.  hahaha :)

Then, just this past Saturday we get a call from our neighbor and they asked if we wanted to go to the drive-in with them.  I had just thrown Willow in the shower, it was after 8, and my initial response was, 'No', but then Royal reminded me of my theme for the summer, and well, we must keep with the theme of no sleep, right?!?  So, I grabbed Willow out of the shower, we grabbed pillows, blankets, and camp chairs and 5 minutes later we were out the door heading to the movies.  Royal had never been to a drive-in before.  What the????  So it was a special treat for him too!

All the kids made it through the first movie, but then everybody but Jayden crashed during the 2nd movie.  Jayden, that kid, can make himself stay awake for ever.  It was 1am when the 2nd movie was over.  1! and he was asking if we could stay for the 3rd movie.  Uh, no.




Our summer of No Sleep is off to a great start.  Papa shows up in a few days and then a soon after that we will be on the road heading to Washington for more sleepless nights with our cousins!  I keep telling the kids we have at least 5 days in the car, they can sleep then!  :)

Willow's Dance Recital

Willow's dance show for WSPA was this last weekend.  She has been very excited about being up on a stage all year, especially so since her costume arrived a couple months ago. 

And getting to wear makeup, that was pretty much the most exciting thing of all.

And then she crashed out on the way to her dress rehearsal.

Sadly, very, very, sadly, I was not allowed to take any pictures during her actual performance.  And even more sad (for me) is that the company they had there taking action shots during her performance, you know to make up for the fact you aren't allowed to take pictures of your kids during the show, only managed to get 2 of Willow and both of them were not good.  So, I'm a little bummed about that, but I can tell you that she did great!  She had no stage fright, she smiled, and did her dances, and stared at her sparkly costume in the lights.  She was super cute up there.

And now she's super excited she can wear her costume around the house anytime she wants.

Willow Lost a Tooth

Willow has lost her first tooth!  Jayden lost his first one right when he turned five, so Willow at 5.5 years wasn't that far behind him.  She is beyond excited.  I just discovered her bottom 2 wiggly teeth a couple weeks ago, and she wiggled and wiggled and had that thing out less than a week after I found it.  She was so excited, she just kept saying, "Guess what?  I have a wiggly tooth.  And that means I have a grown up tooth coming in.  Jayden, my brother, he's lost 8 teeth, but I'm going to lose one and then another and another and I will have a lot of grown up teeth.  Do you see the grown up tooth yet?  Look how wiggly it is.  I'm going to have a grown up tooth.  Hey, guess what?  I have a loose tooth....."

And now that her tooth is actually out, she goes around saying to everybody, and I mean everybody, me, Royal, Jayden, strangers at the grocery store, people at church, any kid she comes in contact with, her new tennis coach, the tennis coach's daughter, basically anybody who will look at her, "Hey guess what, I've lost a tooth"  I need a stronger word than excited for how she is feeling....

But, here's her new smile!  She has another very wiggly tooth and 2 more loose ones on their way.  I predict she will have them all out by the end of summer....

School's Out for Summer!

Yay!  We made it!!!  School is out!  And Jayden is moving onto 3rd grade and Willow into Kindergarten.  Kindergarten....crazy!  But before that happens we have so much fun stuff to pack into summer first!

We got our annual "pool" for the backyard and both kids had their besties from 2 doors down over to break it in.  Their besties that are sadly moving to TX next month.  We. Are. So. Sad.  Willow keeps telling people we are moving and when they ask where, she says, "Oh, to Texas.  Right next door to Emery"  The only good thing about the timing for their move is once they leave, we leave for WA within the next week to spend a month there, so hopefully the excitement of Washington will help curb the sadness of our friends moving away.

The girls splashed around and behaved normally.

The boys took all their energy from being released from school just 90 minutes earlier and put it into dare-devil stunts of flinging themselves off the swings and into the pool.