Jim to NY, 1st Day of School, City of Rocks

In April Jim celebrated 15 years of service at his job.  His plaque just came in the mail.  April was my 10 year anniversary at my job, but they don't really make a big deal about years of service.

 The week before school started Jim took a work trip to NY.  It started out with me taking him to the airport at 3:45am Monday morning.  Because of delays and needing to catch 2 more connecting flights that day, he called at 5am to say that they would be rescheduling the flight to the next day so I went and picked him up.  So he stayed at home with the kids on Monday while I worked.  The kids were surprised to see him when they woke up.  Tuesday's flight was a little later in the morning and he got to NY just fine that day.  He and a couple co-workers spent 2 days at their company's facility there and did some site-seeing in the evenings.  They went to the NY state capitol building and saw a lock of the Erie Canal on the Mohawk River.  We were glad to get him back Friday evening. 

 All three boys are playing soccer and it is busy!  Elliott is especially excited to be playing for the first time.  His first game was fun for our family to watch and he was excited to win and get Oreos and Gatorade afterwards.  Ezra hasn't played in a few seasons.  His team is inexperienced and will probably have a tough time winning a game.  Ezra is looking pretty good and hopefully he will have fun.  Emmett is playing with the same team that he has been on for the past year and they are playing well together.

The last week of August was our first week of school.  Ezra started 3rd grade and Emmett started 5th grade.  Elliott has one more year of pre-school and that starts next week.  Emmett and Ezra had good things to say about their first week and didn't seem as exhausted at the end of the week as I was expecting.  

 On Saturday we went to City of Rocks National Reserve and Castle Rock State Park.  It was hot and the boys didn't enjoy hiking very much.  I was nervous about snakes, as there are rattle snakes in the area.  There were also signs about bees in the ground.  It was a really interesting place with lots of rock climbing opportunities and I would guess that the Spring would be the nicest time there as all the creek beds were dry this time of year.  The boys did have a good time scrambling on the rocks and seeing names written in axle grease on rocks along the California Trail.