Family Night - Welcome to School.

Jackson started kindergarten this year, and he was pretty nervous. He told us, "I'm not excited, I'm anxious." So to try to help him get over his fears about school and kindergarten we did a Welcome to School family night this past weekend...just before school started. Since Lou had just about finished getting his classroom in order, we got to have our family night there (perk to having a teacher husband).

We had hot lunch (dinner) at our desks. We had an after school snack (dessert)...with a napkin note. We had our very own pencil hunt. Jackson is counting them out. I bought him a few workbooks for kindergartners that he has been working in and LOVES.
After a few games and some talk about kindergarten we decided to drive over to Jackson's school and find his classroom. He's going to the same school Lou went to, so Lou gave him a tour of the school. Peeking into Jackson's classroom. He's in K2...Miss Kelps class.
We played a little hopscotch and a few other made up games.
Overall...it was a pretty simple night. We all had fun!

To see more Family Nights...check out Whittaker Woman...she's got awesome ideas.

Family Night #3 - Doggy Birthday Party

Okay...So I know what you're thinking...this crazy lady takes pictures of her dogs, blogs about her dogs and now she's having a birthday party for her dog. I know...Crazy. I never thought I'd do any of these things, but i can't help it...they are part of our family and Jackson get's a huge kick out of celebrating them too. Benji's birthday is on August 1st so we decided to have a party for her. Jackson and I went shopping for party supplies and we even bought her a new collar tag (since we just moved), and a few new toys...for presents of course.
Here's the birthday girl...looking so thrilled.
She's a typical girl...Doesn't want anyone to know her real age.
We even decorated like a party. We put up streamers and balloons.
We made cupcakes...but none for the dogs...they got an even better treat (or at least
they thought so). Here is Simon...loving every minute of Benji's party...including her new toys. What a bully. We played Pin the Tail on Benji. It's not a good picture since the light was shining through. But I put a picture of Benji on the door and we made her a body with no tail. It was so funny because when I put it up Simon barked at it for about 10 minutes. We were cracking up. Jackson helped Benji open her presents.
And then we sang happy birthday and both dogs got there very own birthday HOTDOG. They had a race to see who could eat their's fastest...Benji won.
We had a lot of fun. What an evening.

Family Night #1 & #2

Well, we started doing a Family Night. Thanks to some inspiration from a fellow blogger (I don't know how to get you to her link, but she's great) we started dedicating one evening a week to spend some quality time together. Not that we aren't normally together, but for a couple of hours we aren't doing homework, watching tv, playing video games...we're playing together.

Our first Family Night was actually last week, but I didn't take pictures...it was harder than I thought to get everything going. Honestly, Heather's blogs make it look so easy. Anyway,we had a good time and decided we'd try it on a weekly basis. Last week was "Under the Sea" Night. We dressed in our bathing suits (partially why I didn't take any pictures) and ate shell macaroni and cheese, hot dogs cut like an octopus and watermellon in the shape of a star fish. We played Let's Go Fishing together too. We made fish out of construction paper and hung them all around. For our first Family Night it was fun.

This week we decided to do "Cowboy Night." We found some cowboy hats and I bought material to make bandanas. We made Jackson a vest out of a paper bag. Jackson helped plan it and said that cowboys eat beans and biscuits so we had baked beans, rolls, corn on the cob, and tri-tip. I don't have a stove or an oven right now so we got take-out help from the Meat Market.


Jackson was very excited and thoguht it was so silly that I made our dogs wear bandanas too.

After dinner we set up a shooting gallery with cans and a bail of hay. We used a squirt gun to shoot down all the cans.

Lou did wear a cowboy hat for a little bit. He actually liked it more than I thought he would. We had a lot of fun and will hopefully continue with Family Nights.

We didn't pick a theme for next week, but I've got a few ideas. I think I'll surprise them next week.