another one down

well, we danced and played our way through 2nd grade, and today it came to an end!

 wes and addy

addy, brooks, gryder, wes, jax, lewis, and whit

wes finished up with awards day this morning.  he left the church with awards for diligence, the computer award, the eagle award for outstanding sportsmanship, reading counts award, mastering all the AM objectives, all As, and the fruit of the spirit award for his class.  he must get it from his mama, too!!  :)

 jax, whit, brooks, and wes

one more day to go for the biggest henson and we can officially call it summer!! 

crossing the finish line

what is it about the last few weeks of school?  oh my word.  we are hanging on by a thread.  reed finished up today, and i may have heard a hallelujah chorus a time or two!!  but we had fun getting here!!

i made my 438th trip to the buffalo park a few weeks ago with reed's class.  i'm pretty sure i can recite the whole story of the buffalo park as told by the tractor driver, i know all the animals' names and where each is located, and i really don't have to ever go back again!!  but this kid loves it!!

then we finished up the third and final creation board for learning fair!!!

we celebrated mrs. vaughn's retirement with an awesome party at church!  it's sad to think that she won't be at school anymore, but i know her grandkids are going to benefit greatly!!

(this might possibly be the best group of moms to work with ever...minus two who didn't make the pic!)

and today mrs. vaughn conducted her very last awards day!  reed walked away with the awards for reliability, self control, the art award, most pages read in the reading contest, most bible verses read, and all As.  i think he gets it from his mama!!  :)

and this guy got to begin his first day of summer doing one of his very favorite things!!!

piano recital

william finished another year of piano, and he capped it off with a recital a few weeks ago.  i posted the video of his piece online, but i wanted to add a few pics to remember it as well.  he played an armed forces medley (i told you he was all into military stuff right now), and he nailed it.  i do love a good patriotic song, and he did this one some serious justice! 

with mrs. rish

vicksburg military park

the 4th grade learning fair has come and gone.  hallelujah.  this time of year is just nuts, so it's good to knock one thing off of the list!  william chose vicksburg national military park as his project.  i went in 6th grade on a field trip.  chase biked through it in college.  however, we weren't much help in providing much info.  therefore, we took a family field trip!! 


william is all into military anything right now, so he was in heaven.  they all loved it, though.  i'm pretty sure they ran up and down every hill there shooting at each other and re-enacting the entire battle. 

illinois memorial

mississippi memorial

if you look closely, you can see the zigzag trenches that they dug to get up the hill during fighting.  

 the horses were dying of dehydration during the siege, so one regiment used a domesticated camel named douglas.  i thought this was pretty interesting, but chase was ready to kill me as we searched and searched the cemetery for douglas' grave.  then william tells me that it's not a grave.  it's only a marker because he got shot, and then he was eaten by his own men because they were starving.  alrighty then. 

we all learned a lot.  i haven't seen a grade, but his finished product should have gotten him a pretty good one! 

one more learning fair to go....

a little tennis

reed played in his first tournament a few weeks ago.  it wasn't quite the experience that this little person had in mind!  he's never had a lesson in his life, but for some reason he had decided in his little brain that he was going to win the whole thing.  well, he didn't win it!  he came in 3rd, and that's not nearly as good as 1st!  i see now that whenever he does take lessons, we are going to have to have a little mental coaching as well!!  :)

parker and reed after warm-ups

3rd and 4th place cousins!

the other two have played a few times this year, and they seem to smile a tad bit more than the youngest sibling while out on the court!

hunter and william

charlie and wes

wes and andrew

william and hunter (again)

the last tournament that my kids played in, william played one of those kids.  you know the type.  every sport has the crazy parents/crazy kids.  this sport is not immune.  he endured the mind games and the snottiness (from his opponent and his opponent's parents) and pulled out a particularly tough mental match.  his cousin was about to play, and i was sitting on the other side of the courts.  after about 20 minutes, i sent chase to find him because he hadn't shown up.  chase found him by himself.  he said he was "just sitting.  i just needed to sit after that."

and then i went to find them both because nobody came back!!

i guess we all just "need to sit" sometimes!!



but for all the meanies, there are 4 times as many nice people! the absolute best part of tennis tournaments is the new friends and the time spent off of the court!  they may not win every match, but they know how to have fun over lunch.  and, they play a mean game of hide and go seek between matches!!

the memphis zoo

let's just go on and get it out there that i'm not a huge fan of zoos.  however, i accompanied wes on his field trip this week to the memphis zoo.  i have to give the zoo some props.  there was one part that you could tell was built somewhere around 1970 (the poor penguins need a serious upgrade), but the rest of it was really nice and disney-ish!  we had perfect weather, and the kids loved it!


watching the bears...

some sort of monkey...

it's not every day that you get to ride a camel.  it's also not every day that the camel poses for a picture!! 

this is what happens when the mamas are too cheap to pay $5 for a photo booth.  children cram in the photo booth, and then mama sticks her phone in and snaps a picture!  perfection!

now i just have to wait two more years to go back with reed!  i'm already counting down the days!  maybe those penguins will have gotten an upgrade by then!