Great Strides 2009

This past Saturday, we participated in our 13th Great Strides walk, a fundraiser for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The event raised $75,000! Last year it raised $63,000 and the goal for this year was $68,000. We have such wonderful, supportive friends that join our team and/or donate to Team Mackenzie. Next year, I have a lot of ideas to raise more money leading up to the walk and I am definitely going to do Team Mackenzie t-shirts! Above: Alyssa, Mackenzie, Mason, Emily & Amelia.

Above: Elise, Logan, Meghan, Jenna L., Dejha, Mackenzie, Morgan, Amelia, Alyssa, Jenna K., Emily, and Mason.

Above: Strike, Jenna L., Jenna R., Mackenzie, Morgan, Emily, Meghan, Logan, Peyton, Mason, Amelia, Elise.

Mackenzie & Peyton

Alyssa is on the WJHS yearbook committee and they are looking for pictures of WJHSers doing things in the community.

Ashley & Peyton enjoying some yummy barbeque provided by Red Oak - it was delicious!

After the walk Mackenzie went to Emily's and joined her at her church for their SummerZover celebration - here they are after a long day!

Finger: Set, Wrapped, & Sent to School

I took Mackenzie to the Doctor first thing this morning for her broken finger. For the record - she LAUGHS when she breaks her finger, but when it comes to a shot in her hand, she gets pretty nervous. Thinking about the shot was worse than when she actually got it. No PE, swimming, etc. for a couple of weeks and we go back on September 10th.

Caution: Stuff Great Strides Participant Bags At Your Own Risk

Today we stuffed the participant bags for Saturday's Great Strides walk (and they are GREAT bags!). Here is a picture of the hard workers standing with their finished product:
Here they are a little closer up (Charlotte did a great job of hiding while she was holding Caroline, don't you think?)!

I didn't get to take a lot of time with my photo composition because right before the above pictures were taken, Mackenzie BROKE HER FINGER! Crazy accident, the kids were having a great time playing in the big open space and somehow she broke her little finger. We didn't know what she had done - it looked very crooked but she didn't seem to be in any pain and was laughing!

This angle doesn't show how crooked it looks but I took it right before we went for our x-ray confirmation:

1st Day of School

The girls had a GREAT first day of school yesterday! Peyton loved everything and Mackenzie really enjoyed Jr. High - she said she did feel a little overwhelmed, but she was still so happy about the day.
Mackenzie said we could go in with her but no camera - so here is a picture in the car with Emily. I can't wait to hear how Day 2 went. Mackenzie will meet more teachers today since they are on an A Day/B Day schedule.

New (School) Year's Resolution

The girls are tucked in bed - wide awake, excited about the first day of school tomorrow. They both are starting at new schools, Peyton in 3rd grade and Mackenzie in 7th grade - Junior High! Mackenzie will be in a school with about 1000 students (7th & 8th grade) and I am so nervous (I went to a very small school). I know it's going to be a great year!

So, here is my New (School) Year's Resolution: Every Sunday I will bag up a weeks worth of food for lunches. We did this tonight for the next few days (no, we won't win any sustainability awards but we'll turn off extra lights and recycle and reuse as much as we can in other ways - the convenience will keep me sane). We've done this in the past but never consistently.

I had to take a picture in case it doesn't happen again! Ha. Look at all those colors (that's good, right?). Their lunches for tomorrow are already packed and then they'll replenish their bags afterschool for the next day from these containers. Fruit dip, veggie dip, grapes, cheese, chicken, tomatoes, crackers for Peyton, Doritos for Mackenzie, and Oreos. Juice added in the mornings.

In the past they ate at school quite a bit but we've been told the lunch line for Mackenzie is pretty long and with it being so important for her to eat, she's going to take hers and eat then if she wants to go through the line towards the end and get even more food she can. If you pack one it's easy to pack another so Peyton will take hers this week too.

I'm going to go get a little laundry done and then go to bed (where I'm sure I won't be able to sleep either). I'll post 1st day of school pictures tomorrow.

Back to Everything Week

Last night Peyton had Open House at her new school. She met her teacher Mrs. Phelps and we walked around CPE. We loved Mrs. Phelps and we all have a great feeling and think this is going to be a fantastic year!
After Open House, the girls had their first night of dance. Peyton had ballet:

Mackenzie had Jazz and Hip Hop (here she is with Samantha):

Tomorrow is the first day of school. Today we are going to go walk every aisle of Walmart to figure out something for lunches. I hope the day goes by very slowly - I'm sad to see the girls go back. I'm going to miss them. They on the other hand, seem to be very excited to start and I guess it will be nice to get back into a routine.

NEW POSTS!

Can you believe it!? My friend Kendra had the first line of the July 20th post memorized it was up for so long. We've just been trying to get back into the groove of things. We had company for a couple of weeks and as soon as they left we started getting ready for school. I knew I had to post today because we'll have a lot of back to school posts this week. So, I'm going to cheat a little bit - in addition to the 4 posts below, Sheila posted about their visit with us here. The girls start school on Wednesday and hopefully we'll be back in a routine...I've missed catching up with all of my fellow bloggers too!

3rd Time's the Charm

Monday I took Mackenzie to get her locker for JUNIOR HIGH. Ugh. The first locker she got was a top locker - great for most people but she was going to have a hard time with the combination lock being above her head! They let us trade for this one:
We took a little self guided tour of the school and found that there was a group of 7th grade lockers near the back entrance to the nurses office and thought that would be a good place for her to be, so she changed to this one:

Red Carpet Party

Peyton helped her friend Ashlyn celebrate her 8th birthday on August 7 and had such a fun time! First a limo picked them up from school (I had to take Peyton to meet them since she isn't going to that school anymore) and took them around town, then it delivered them to walk the red carpet at a hotel where they went swimming.
I love this picture of them in the limo - can you see the joy on Peyton's face?!

New Neighbors

These are our new neighbors. A family of 5 racoons (but you can only see four in this picture). They've grown a lot since this picture was taken a couple of weeks ago!

Child Labor

Jason has been working so hard on getting the yard cleaned up and ready for grass and plants. While our guests from Ohio were here, he had a little extra help. Rachel and Peyton decided to help and they worked almost all day, very hard - picking up rocks, rocks, and more rocks.

They only took a little break and were very cute trying to figure up their day's wages. I think Jason gave them a tip because they got more than the going rate per bucket of rocks!