 |
||||||
|
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 |
|
| Events |
| 6/1/2017 |
| Last Day of School |
| 4/3/2017 |
| Addison's 9th Birthday |
| 3/8/2017 |
| Ruidoso |
| 3/3/2017 |
| Jellystone |
| 12/25/2016 |
| The Wancios arrive |
| 12/19/2016 |
| The Palmers arrive |
| The Wancio Blog | |||
| |||
| Alas, this is the bittersweet moment where this blog comes to an end. Austin is getting older now and his friends are starting to look him up on the internet. He's embarrassed of the pictures of him that I post, and I’m sure everything else as well. Instead of fighting it or filtering it, I have decided to stop posting all together. I'll be honest, it's a little bit of a relief as well. It is quite time consuming to go through all the pictures and write the posts. But, it was a little bit of fun, too. Thanks for following along and being a part of our lives. Keep in touch. Love, The Wancios | |||
| |||
| It’s been FOREVER since I have posted. The sad thing is, my excuse is that I really have had nothing to do lately. Oddly enough, the less busy I am, the less I get done. If that makes any sense. I did have one blip of craziness with book fair week. But, other than that, nothing much. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bored, nor am I complaining. I mean I still have to cook, do dishes, do laundry, grocery shop, volunteer, chauffer kids around, etc. But, I feel like napping, I nap. If I feel like watching TV, I watch some TV. It is a little weird but something I could definitely get used to. Addison turned 9 (it seemed like she was 8 forever). She had a party at the house with lots of activities. Charlie set up an obstacle course, they did a water balloon fight, the did pie-in-the-face, they went swimming, jumped on the trampoline, watched a movie, spent the night. All in all, a VERY busy party. Everyone seemed to really enjoy themselves so I would call it a success. School is just about over. I have been busy getting the kids signed up for summer camps. Addison, of course, will be going to gymnastics every weekday still. Austin is going to try this bowling league. Not exactly sure how that works, yet. Austin will also be doing crossfit over the summer. Addison will be able to drop in and join him whenever she wants as well. We are going to be doing Disney this summer, 3 parks and then both Universal Parks. I’ve been busy buying coordinating shirts. ?? And, of course, the kids will go to church camp while we head to Vegas, Baby! This is Austin’s last year so I’m not exactly sure what we are going to do next year. And, my sister and her family will be visiting us. As for school, Addison was Cheetah Champion for this last nine weeks, YAY! Austin has his Battle of the Books competition tomorrow. Field Day is next week. Then the following week is the awards ceremony and class parties and we are done. One of the first things I want to do this summer is purge. Have the kids go through their rooms and the play rooms and get rid of stuff they no longer play with. I can’t wait! I always have grand plans for the summer, to have the kids do math and writing and cook and stuff. It turns out better in my head than it does in reality, but we’ll give it the good ‘ol college try. My biggest goal is to keep them busy and off the electronics as much as possible. That means that I must entertain which, unfortunately, means that I cannot get things done that I want/need to do. So, I am not going to set too many personal goals for myself this summer. Just have fun with the kids and try to keep their brains from turning to mush. I have posted several pictures. 1 under Austin, 7 under Addison, 1 under Relatives, and 3 under Events. I still have not received the Jellystone nor Ruidoso pictures, so those have not been posted yet. | |||
| |||
| With spring break completed, we are in the home stretch of this school year. 2 months ago, if you would have asked me what we were doing for spring break, I would have said nothing. Then, I decided we could do a little something that first weekend. Be back in time so Addison does not have to miss any gym. We decided to go to Jellystone Park (I kept hearing advertisements on the radio so it had to be a sign, RIGHT?!?!). We invited another couple to go with us. Literally, the day after we got that booked, a different couple asked us to go skiing. We could not back out of Jellystone (because we had asked the other couple), so we decided to do both. YIKES! We left for Jellystone on Friday after gym (1.5 hour drive) returned home on Monday afternoon. Addison went to gym on Monday and Tuesday. Then, we left for Ruidoso on Wednesday morning and returned Sunday night. Just in time for school on Monday morning. It was a whirlwind spring break. I don’t have pictures of those trips posted yet because I am waiting on pictures from friends’ cameras so that I can put them all together. I’ll talk more about the details of those trips when I post the pictures. We had our DI competition at the end of February. If you remember, the top 2 teams qualify for state. Well, we got 3rd. THIRD!! So, SO disappointing. I hate to complain about third but, really, our play was SO good. We did get 1st and 2nd on the two aspects regarding the play but then 3rd in the instant challenge, which put us in third. It is very unusual that the top three teams are that close (each team placed 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in each of the three categories). I do blame some of it on our bad draw (2nd of the entire day). Y’all just don’t understand how good it was. I truly believe that if we could have made it out of districts, we could have placed in Globals (we are in one of the toughest districts). One positive note is that we did receive a special award, The DaVinci award. That award is given for ‘exceptional creativity, a unique approach to the problem, and/or risk taking’. It was for Addison doing gymnastics positions within a 1x1 square to code a word. OK, enough talking about that. Austin finally played in his first chess tournament a few weeks ago. He got his booty kicked! Those kids are serious, as we expected them to be. It kind of put him off from the acitivity since he did so bad, but we are trying to tell him that the only way he can get better is to play. I’m hoping to keep his interest in it. On to his other activity that is starting up, band. He met with a band director this past weekend to officially choose an instrument. And, it did end up being the trombone. He did not know how to blow into any of the mouthpieces. The instructor was trying to teach him and it was quite comical. Eventually he was able to get it though and he’s excited. As are we. Addison finished out the season strong. She won bars, which I thought she would be thrilled about (only the 2nd time she’s finished 1st on any event). However, that was overshadowed by her 2nd place All-Around. She was SO excited. As were we. Something finally clicked a few months back so it’s nice to see her finally on the podium more often. As I mentioned before, the pictures from spring break (Jellystone and skiing in Ruidoso) are not ready to be posted. But, I did post a ton of others. There are 4 under Addison, 1 under Austin, and 3 under Family. Enjoy! | |||
| |||
| Things are still pretty slow around here. I’ve had a lot of free time, not that I am complaining. It’s just weird. And, it makes me think, what was I doing all those prior years that did not allow me this much down time? I do know that it is the calm before the storm, though. Book fair is coming up in April, so I will need to start prepping for that soon. Volleyball is about to start up again, for both Charlie and I. Work is about to pick up. So, I am going to enjoy this time while I can. I did get my scrapbook stuff back out and am actually working on it. 2010, I WILL finish you!!! As for the kids, Addison made the talent show. That will be on Thursday. She has her last meet as a Level 4 in 2 weeks (the same weekend as the DI tournament, but on Sunday). She has been uptraining a lot and is LOVING it. It makes my heart happy. Austin still has not competed in a chess tournament. There are a variety of factors that have contributed to that. But soon, SOON! He chose his instrument for next year, the trombone. I’m really excited about it. I do hope that band is his thing. He is still in TaeKwonDo, but just hanging on by a thread. I’m thinking it’s going to end soon. Especially if he really enjoys the band thing once that gets started. As for DI, T minus 2 weeks and counting. The skit is right at 8 minutes long. Makes me a little nervous. I am going to call an extra practice for this weekend. Hopefully we’ll get it polished a little under 8 minutes. I’m excited, it is good and funny and exceeds all the requirements, but we got a bad draw. We go 2nd. 2nd out of 16 teams and only the top 2 make it to state. We’ll see. If we don’t end up making it and DI is over for us this year, I’ll have even more free time on my hands. WHAT am I going to do with myself? ;) | |||
| |||
| The Christmas break FLEW by as we were busy having so much fun. Like I said, my sister’s family was here for all but the starting weekend and ending weekend. We went to iFly. All four kids plus Charlie and I tried it out. We went to Top Golf, saw Sing, ice skated, and ate at some of our favorite places. The boys went to a Bowl game while the girls got their nails done and volunteered at church. We also stayed home some and introduced the Palmers to Gaga ball, the board game Life, and cup stacking. With the Wancios here there is always lots of game playing, but we also went to the casino and did an escape room. Before we knew it, it was time to go back to school. I was able to squeeze in some DI practices the first weekend and last weekend of the break. We got 90% of the props built. My children are finishing up the rest today, and then we should be ready to start rehearsing. The competition isn’t until the middle of February so we are well on schedule. I’m curious to see how long the play actually is, that’s always the tricky part. We’ve got to stay under 8 minutes, including our set up time. We’ll start with our first read through on Wednesday and go from there. Very exciting stuff. So much easier and stress free than last year. Not sure if it’s because of the challenge, the kids, or my attitude. Maybe a combination of all three. Austin just competed in Art Memorization for UIL. It’s a team competition. They had to learn 40 paintings (artist, title, period – spelling and all) plus some facts about the them. Then, they were quizzed on their knowledge. It was a team competition so his score was averaged with the other 3 people on the team. They competed against all the elementary schools in Allen (18 total, I believe) and his team WON! We were very excited. I was so impressed with how much and how well he had memorized everything because it was A LOT. And then to go out there and recall it all and for everyone on his team to do the same, WOW. Kudos to the kids. We are going to enter Austin in a chess tournament this coming weekend. I’m curious how the whole thing works. It will be a learning experience for us all. The first of Addison’s 2 spring meets is in about 3 weeks, so they are getting ready for that at the gym. The same time they are doing some up-training for Level 5. Talent show tryouts are around the corner. I have choreographed Addison’s routine and she has learned it, now just to polish it up. School volunteering is slow, at the moment, but will be picking up in a couple of weeks. So, right now I’m just trying to get back in the habit of working out, scheduling all my doctor’s appointments, and getting things done around the house. I will, WILL, start working on my scrapbooking stuff again. I have posted a ton of pictures. 4 in Addison, 2 in Austin, 1 in Events, 4 in Relatives, and 2 in Family. | |||