Arielle's Activities

Arielle & Teddy

Arielle's Activity Day Crafts

Activity Day Baby Shower

Arielle bathing Beauty after riding

Arielle and her new instructor Michelle

Arielle cantering

Getting Beauty ready to ride ("tacking up")

Arielle's Activities

Arielle has jumped into some fun activities here in Winston-Salem. There is a great Activity Days group of at least 10 girls. They have real quality activities 2x a month. The first activity she went to they made baby gifts (pictured above) for a mom in the ward. Then they threw her a baby shower. At her last activity they reviewed the Articles of Faith. She always has a great time and learns a lot. I'm thankful for great volunteer leaders who take time out of their busy lives to bless my children!!

Every Friday Arielle and I spend the afternoon at Hidden K Stables where she is taking lessons. Beauty is her favorite horse there and she tries to ride her every week.

Toby gets the Priesthood

Can you believe my kid is old enough to pass the sacrament?! Wild stuff. Toby happened to turn 12 on a Wednesday which is Young Men's activity day here. We took him and he had to walk in a couple minutes late to opening exercises with a room full of teenage guys & girls. He was so brave! His leaders so are on top of it. Somehow they knew it was his birthday and all the kids broke out in song to wish him a happy birthday. He had a great time at the combined activity that night and has had a month full of fun Wed. nights since then. Toby was ordained by Jim on Aug. 16th- Jim did a wonderful job. It took me awhile to get a pic of Toby in his suit to get this posted! Its custom for the boys in this ward to wear jackets every Sunday. An expensive, but good looking and reverent practice.

Go Mustangs!

Toby- going for it
This cracks me up...Toby's soccer coach also coaches the 8th grade girls' soccer. He has a couple of the better girl players help asst. coach and aid the boys in practice and games. Toby has commented on the flirting that goes on. Check out this girl and guy flirting and the look on the Coach's face. Priceless.


One of the "cool" parts of being on the team is being bussed to the games after school. Toby called me from the bus and he was SO excited.

Toby and the Meadowlark Mustangs

Warning! *Bragging mom spoiler alert* Toby had his first soccer game with his new team yesterday which they won 5-0! We are so proud of Toby for being brave and trying out against a bunch of experienced 8th graders. As most of you know, Toby has an Aug. BD and is one of the youngest 7th graders. When Toby was 5 I really debated whether I should hold him back a month and let him be an older kid in school - or should I just send him. He had already gone to two years of preschool and academically he was ready. Besides...Jim & I never were into team sports, Toby probably wouldn't be either. Yay- right!! Toby has a jock streak in him. In St. George Toby had some good sports opportunities. But now in Winston-Salem he wanted to try out against 8th graders in a school of 1200 kids. I didn't want to discourage him, but I was not optimistic! Toby came home from try-outs the first day and looked glum..."Mom, I'm trying out against kids with moustaches that are as big as Dad". Thankfully he made it and actually got to play half of the first game. He brought his A game and was really aggressive. Go Mustangs!

Asheville with the "Cuzins"

"Bonky" and Joyce :)

Yep- Winston is in his skivvies (heh heh)

blueberries!

Done wore ourselves out pickin' all those blueberries

This kids is SO photogenic!

Joyce, Negy & Bahnson (at midnight!)

Negy seems to really like buckets! :)

Looks like Julie is entertaining the gang again

Tobes & Lincoln (Lincoln rarely left Toby's side)

Conner & Tobes

After Bahnson slaved over the grill and cooked us a wonderful meal, we rewarded him with a relaxing dip in the hot tub (with all the kids! LOL)

Bike jousting at the LAAFF Festival...crazy? YES

These pics taken a Roserrita's (sp?) yummy vegan restaurant

girls making their clay creations

Steve's booth- to see pics of his cute bags go to http://www.organictribethredz.blogspot.com/

kids at the festival

LABOR DAY WEEKEND IN ASHEVILLE

Over Labor Day Toby, Arielle & I ventured a couple hrs. west to visit the Sloans in the mountains of Asheville. Unfortunately Jim couldn't join us, he was too busy cramming his head full of life saving knowledge. We got to experience Asheville at its wildest at the LAAFF Festival (basically an artsy hippie fest). Steve & his friend had one of the best booths set up there selling homemade tie-dye clothing and Steve's sweet bags (http://www.organictribethredz.blogspot.com/) . The kids enjoyed being creative with clay in the kids' area. Later that night we had a fun BBQ at Bahnson & Joyce's house and got to visit with Nancy & play with cute Negy. I hadn't seen these guys in a couple years and it was so fun to hang out. Good times :) Monday was a great hike- Graveyard Fields- along the Blue Ridge Parkway. We picked blueberries and the kids swam in a stream. The weather held out beautifully for us.

Exploring Winston-Salem

Arielle finds a caterpillar
Turtles at Salem Lake

Goofy

Even more goofy

Biking around Salem Lake

perfect day for a ride around the lake!

Hoot Hoot

Air propelled chair at SciWorks

Learning "stuff"

Arielle, DDS

EXPLORING WINSTON-SALEM

We have a couple new fav places in WS. My personal fav is Salem Lake. Beautiful little lake with a 7 mile trail around it. Perfect for running & biking. Took Arielle out there and she biked the whole way around! We spied lots of wildlife- birds, turtles, nests, caterpillars, butterflies, etc. The kids really love Sci Works, a great science museum. Has different sections- body, physics, wildlife, etc. They could spend hrs. there and beg to go back the next day!

"Mom" Cut

Finally chopped the hair. I was trying to hold onto the long hair as long as I could, but spending 30 minutes to style it was getting really old! Jim said I should just let it air dry.... with THIS HUMIDITY -LOL!!! Have any of you seen the "Friends" episode where Monica goes to the islands and her hair is totally out of control..yah..that's how its been. So i finally took the plunge into a shorter, more manageable cut. Not sure how I feel about it yet!