Beach Trip, Take Two

We spent the last several days in Orange Beach, celebrating Memorial Day and relaxing! This trip was SO much better than the spring break trip that we took in March. For one, the weather as close to perfect as you can get. It was so warm, but there was a constant breeze blowing. Also, Grady really warmed up to the sand this time. He played and played! Pete taught him to build crab houses (and then they turned into alligator houses, frog houses, etc.) He was all about tearing down sand castles that we built for him. That's okay for now of course, because the whole point was to get him excited about playing in the sand. But the child is going to HAVE to have some "respect-the-sand-castle-creation" lectures soon! ha! He still isn't too wild about the water. I was just glad that we conquered the sand this trip, so we'll work on water when we go back in July. Susan, Jon, and Jenny...we REALLY missed you and wish you could have been with us!

Wolf Bay

We rode the ferris wheel at the Wharf

Ahhhh....the BEACH! (And please note...Grady is not sitting on a towel OR in his duck chair, but IN THE SAND!!!!!)

snack break...

Hey Pete, what kind of house are we going to build next?

Mom just thinks that I am going to learn to respect the sand castle creations... She's got another thing coming! I am the DESTRUCT-OR!

and my favorite picture of the trip:

Summer...it's almost official!

Ahhhh...the end of May. It's here! One more half-day of school and a teacher work day after that and I am officially on a break for summer! I'm so ready to get to hang out with Grady-man more. I am totally obsessed with the Children's Museum and Grady is loving it, too...so we plan to visit quite often this summer. We took him this morning for a couple of hours. He had a blast as usual. Wish they would have had a place like this when I was a kid! The last two visits, I either had a dead battery in my camera, or forgot the memory stick and was limited to my picture-taking. But I went prepared today, so I got lots of cute shots!

THE GEARS STATION

LEGOS
INTERACTIVE MAP OF JACKSON

STRONG MAN

WEIGHING CATFISH

ROCK QUARRY

BUILDING RAMPS

YEE-HAW!

We love the dancing room with all of the hats and mirrors and the big jukebox!

Zoo

A chilly trip to the Jackson Zoo... Who knew it could be so cold in mid-May??? (Obviously not us, as you notice we all wore shorts and tshirts and almost froze during our "picnic." ha!)
Grady seemed to be more interested in running around and climbing on things instead of looking at animals.

A baby giraffe was born at the zoo on May 3rd. Grady was fascinated with the giraffes. They were definitely his favorite animals of the day!

Sweet Story

In some ways, third grade has started to grow on me. There are still days that I miss kindergarten SO much and wish that I could go back, but there are things that I like about third grade that I couldn't do with younger kids. One in particular is read-alouds. I would read to my Kindergarten kids nonstop, but it was mostly silly rhyming stories and short little tales. Now I get to read stuff with so much more depth to my third graders. Especially the class I have this year...they are SUPER listeners and have grown to love reading as much as I do! We've read some great books this year. I wanted to share this one in case you haven't heard of it. If you like those classic dog-type stories like Where the Red Fern Grows (yep, read that one to my kids, too...I cried and they cried as well...) and My Dog Skip, then you will like this one, too. It's called Because of Winn Dixie. And it is SUCH a sweet book!
But if you are not a book lover like me and would rather watch a movie, then you are in luck because there IS a movie! My students watched it at school this week because we had finished the book. It is a cute, cute movie as well! Jeff Daniels is the dad and Dave Matthews also has a role in the movie. I am making Josh watch it soon! :)

All of this reminds me of being in fourth grade and having Mrs. Wilburn read aloud the best books to us! If any of my Yazoo friends are reading this, I'm sure you remember as well...she would read Willie Morris books to us and say the cuss words and we'd all freak out. Her reply was always the same... "I didn't say it, the BOOK said it!" And when she read Where the Red Fern Grows, we got such a kick out of the dogs' names (Ann and Dan...two of our classmates!).

So anyway, when I "grow up," I think I want to be a children's book author...

Random, I know... just my thoughts for the day.

But seriously, you should at least watch this sweet little movie! It's worth seeing whether you are a third grader or not!