What 18 Years of Wedded Bliss Looks Like

Brent and I celebrated 18 years of marriage yesterday! Every year seems impressive as we close in on 20! {grin} I love, however, how the days look different these days compared to those first few anniversaries.

Our first anniversary with the top tier of our cake!

This year, our kids were on fall break, so we coordinated grandparent camp for the week and felt bad asking them to keep the kids AGAIN on Sunday, our actual anniversary, so we went out to eat on Thursday night, when they were with my parents. We went to a new steakhouse in our town, that is in the remodeled former post office, so it's called City Post.

I still think we look pretty cute after alllllll these years. {grin}

Dinner was SO GOOD!

We have this ridiculous game of trying to catch each other on our phones.

He was texting his friends but I couldn't get a picture, he was too fast!

Our anniversary also happens to be my BFF's bday, and she was turning 40 this year, so we had a girls dinner on Friday night to celebrate her. So thanks honey for taking care of the kids on our anniversary weekend! [Said a little bit with sarcasm because they're his kids too ha]

We got her a 40 crown and sash!

Besties for 16+ years!

This picture just melted me - 8:00 AM soccer for Ms. Paige!

The highlight of our actual anniversary was...clothes shopping with the kids! We have a family wedding coming up this weekend and none of the kids had anything to wear. So I took the kiddos to the outlet mall near us where we shopped for over 3 hours. BUT everyone found something to wear!

It's a miracle finding pants that fit Trent!

Sassy sisters

She wanted this picture to send to her friends, ha

I took zero pictures with Brent on our actual anniversary, but we got some cookies to celebrate. I love the life we've created together and that every day we're doing life together.

Here's to another year!

First Days of School 2022-23 School Year

I realized I forgot to post about the start of our school year! Here we are 8 weeks into the year and we are on Fall Break, so it's definitely time for an update.

School started Tuesday, August 16. Trent and Paige returned to their same classes - Adolescent Community {7th-8th grade} for 8th grade, which is the LAST YEAR at our school, and Paige returned to her Primary Community {Pk3-K} for Kindergarten. Drew moved up to Upper El {4th-6th grade} for 4th grade.

Paige Noelle

Nido ~ PK4

Paige is happy as a clam returning to her beloved Sassafras community with Ms. Liliana and Ms. Maria, two of her favorite humans on the planet. She is loving being the big kid in class. I get comments on a regular basis about her helping the little kids {from her and her guides}. She loves going to PE, which is new for her this year! The kindergarteners took their first benchmark test this year, and she scored 98% {math} and 99% {reading}, so I'd say she's doing just fine academically! {grin}

Little Ms. Kindergarten

Drew Kathleen

Casita ~ 3rd Grade

Drew is having the hardest start to the year. Everything is different for her this year - she's now the youngest grade in a new level, new teachers, different side of the building, doesn't have her besties in class... She is still exceling in class - she has already been given extra responsibility because she is responsible, respectful, a rule-follower, all the things...but she's not very happy in class which makes me VERY sad. It's getting better over time, so I'm confident we'll get there! We got her STAAR test scores over the summer {the standardized test for Texas public schools}, and she did great! She also did good in her beginning of year benchmarking test. I'm just looking forward to her feeling good soon.

4th Grade

Trent Kinder ~ 7th Grade

It's been an interesting start to the year for Trent. He's happy to be back with his friend group, doesn't complain at all about going...yet he is getting in trouble consistently. His STAAR scores were the highest he's had {Mastering both parts}, he is 1 of 2 8th graders doing 2 Math curriculums, his benchmarking scores increased a lot from last year...so academically things are going great! We just need his behavior to settle down!

Too cool to smile 8th grader

I can't believe this is our last year with all 3 kids at the same school and that Trent will go to high school next year. I am going to miss the convenience of 1 drop-off and 1 pickup and knowing the school and administration so well. We have a tentative plan in place for next year that I'm excited about, but we'll see how the rest of this year shakes out.