Howard County GT History Fair

Joshua works pretty hard in school and I was so proud of how hard he worked on this project! He created a website about a battle over water rights in Los Angeles. He spent hours perfecting his website. He got an interview with a famous author. He put pictures and videos on his website. He worked on it almost every single day for a few months!

Here is Joshua with his friend Duncan who won first place in Howard County and who's parents both attended Yale. For that day we felt kind of proud to be in the mix with a 'Yale' family:) Joshua won 3rd place on his project in all of Howard County.


Here is a link to his website: http://50331554.nhd.weebly.com/index.html

Winter Break 2011 Part 2

The weather outside was perfect for miniature golf!


Mike and the kids inside the lodge (they packed their own clothes, can you tell?..I especially like Cameron's all red outfit...ha ha):


Another fun thing they have right next door is this:


My kids love Sonic! Joshua usually loves to get that giant hot dog and eats the whole thing!

Winter Break 2011

Last February we started to get really tired of winter. I started getting really cold! I just wanted to escape to someplace warm, so we did just that! We drove south a few hours near Williamsburg, VA to a fun indoor water park. It was also really nice outside, so we enjoyed a bit of miniature golf and some touring around town. If I had it to do over again, I would have stayed longer:) Oh and since it was also my birthday gift, Mike surprised me with an appointment to the spa with a massage! Isn't he thoughtful?

The first thing Joshua did when we got to our room was this (I don't know what he would have done if he had forgotten his yo-yo):


Can you tell Madeline was excited? She was the first to get her swimsuit on.


This is how happy Madeline was after she went on a few water slides. She surprised me a bit, because she wasn't afraid of any of the slides. I had to hold her back, because I was getting frightened for her!


There was this really cool wave rider that the boys all had a fantastic time on. I'm just so sad because all of those pictures somehow got corrupted on our memory card and all we have is this lame, teeny tiny picture, so if you can squint enough to get the idea..here it is:


Madeline on one of the many slides she excitedly rode:


Cameron coming out of the ginormous water playground:


Madeline after swimming to the side. She has become quite the little swimmer.


Cameron running off a slide, trying to hurry to the next one:


Joshua must have been coming from and going to the next slide:


Zachary walked across some logs that wobble around in the water and he did a pretty good job!


The kids and I in the hot tub. After all that talk about going to a warm place (it was 80 degrees in there), I still longed for more warmth! The hot tub was super nice for that!

More of Christmas 2010

Two good looking shepherds, Joshua with his cousin, Jared.

My sil, Jennifer made the costumes for all the kids. Isn't she talented? The kids love acting the story of baby Jesus out and this year we even had a few babies to choose from (we went with the youngest). Oh and my brother is trying to put one of his kids in the picture, who didn't want to be in the picture. ha ha:)

Christmas with Cousins 2010

Every Christmas Eve we gather with siblings and cousins to eat dinner, act out the manger scene, and open a few gifts from each other.

The cousins have a great time together! (Madeline is wearing an angel hat.)

Isn't this just the cutest thing ever? This was almost a year ago. Now they are all three running around, so this Christmas Eve should be even more exciting!

3rd and Last 2010 Baby Blessing

Can you believe there were 3 Schoeny boys born in 2010? I think they are going to have tons of fun together when they get older! It's so fun to watch all three of my brothers with their kids.
The baby blessed in December 2010 is on the right:

I made a cake for him (well really us, since he didn't eat it):

Cake close up (it looks crooked to me..does it to you? I'm going to say it happened on the car ride over...must have been Mike's driving:)

Here's the happy couple cutting their 1st baby blessing cake! Ha ha, we had a great time:)

Band and Singing

Joshua plays the saxophone and here are a few pictures from December 2010's concert taken from the very back of the auditorium with a cheap camera, but I managed to capture him!

Joshua also plays in the jazz band, in addition to the regular band. The jazz band is so fun and is the last performance of the night. I think it's also the best performance of the night!

Zachary plays the trumpet in his band (last year it was elementary school, pictured here and this year it's middle school...pictures of middle school will come soon!). Sadly I didn't even get a picture of Zachary playing in his band. The seating was arranged in such a way that all I could get was this! Oh well, he was there, I promise:

Zach also sang in the chorus and I was VERY impressed with their performance this year!

Cameron sang in the same chorus as Zachary. They both said they didn't like it! I thought that was funny, though, because it was really really good. I guess the teacher was pretty strict with them (part of the reason for it sounding so good, I think!)