The Kruger Family: September 2016

Cash finally got his first day of school too. He was excited and ready, much to my surprise.

If you recall, he has cried every day of preschool to date. He always had great days and loved school (once it was over) but was never excited to go. After having so much time just the two of us the couple of weeks before school started and him acting SO attached, I was worried about how he would react to me dropping him off at school. He has never been one to like school anyway. Ok, and I was a little sad too.

I was so anxious and was certain I was going to have to pull him off of me, throw him to the teacher and run out the door fighting back tears--If I was a betting gal, I would have totally put money on it.
So, we get to school, walk in hand in hand, I sign him in, we unpack his bag, we give each other a hug tight enough to last the whole day and he said "bye Mama."

That. Was. It.

I walked out of his classroom totally in shock, holding back tears for reasons I did not expect. My baby is growing up. He seemed like such a big, brave boy. I was crying tears of joy, and pride, and just a twinge of sadness. But more than anything, I was so, so proud of him!

He had an amazing day and kept talking about how much fun he had at school!

Its that time again, to stuff a whole lot of pictures and captions into a post from this summer and be done with it! Summer is over and done with and we are well into school.
I think if I had to give this summer a theme, it would be fishing. The boys love it and would go every day if we could. A few weeks back we went down to Blaine's friends property in Driftwood and took Ethan with us to ride around in the jeep, fish and go canoeing.

My cousin Adam, who is an amazingly sweet human being, is a big fisherman and takes his kids often. We were talking one day about Eli's obsession with fishing, and he came up with the idea to go out together one morning. He found a place called Moby Dick's Private Pond. We met them out there one morning to fish with his kids. While the fishing turned out to not be that great, we all still had a great time together!

Max also gifted his two old, and amazing skateboards to the boys since he does not ride them anymore!

One night, the boys decided to go underwear crazy and were running around the house like maniacs! I did not realize my phone had gone missing until I found these selfies on it. These guys are so crazy and wild, and I love them even more for all their craziness!

Finally. Finally!!!!! Finally Eli was tall enough to ride the slide at our Community Center Pool at the end of the summer! We went the first few weeks of summer and Eli was shy of the 48 inch mark. He was so bummed and refused to go back to that pool all summer. But by August, he was finally there!

We have spent lots and lots of time at all the Circle C pools this summer.

Eli and Owen had a slumber party at their friends house, Blaine was at work, and Cash and I went on a date! Torchy's and Snow Cones!

Blaine moved back to Station 1 on A shift, and is really happy there! Here he is with his crew.

My friend Marisa and I decided we were brave enough to take the boys fishing on our own. Hooks, worms, bobbers, knots in fishing line--we somehow were confident enough in ourselves to think we could do it. Honestly, it was the worms that really got me. Eli and Owen are pretty good at taking the hooks out of the fish, so I was not as worried about that part. So, we bought some worms, and some rubber gloves (duh!) and headed out to the creek. We went out to our friends property again who was out of town and also took care of his mini donkey and horse while we were there.

I'm pretty sure I shrieked pretty loud at the first (or first 10) worm snip. Just seeing them wiggle around after I cut it in half and the way it felt just gave me the heebie jeebies.

I became the official worm hooker.

Yes, I kept the gloves on the entire time. And I got pretty confident in hooking the worms, and even with the difficult hooks in the fish. I'm not gonna lie, Marisa and I did an awesome job and I was so proud of us!

Savannah really took a liking to the worms, I think she was more brave holding them than the boys!

We managed to get in a few BFF lunches this summer, but I am ready to pick them back up now that school is back in.

We visited Blaine at the station. Always fun to stop by and see him and the guys.

My Aunt Kathy keeps her grandsons quite a bit and we try and go by there on Sundays so the boys can play. Especially after having so much time together in Port A, they get really excited about getting to see them.

Of course we celebrated Cash's birthday and had a few of his friends over for pizza and cake.

We finally were able to meet up with our friends the Dow's. The boys love Will and Rex! We met up at the Wildflower Center and stayed until we started to melt.

Ya know...lots of normal, boring stuff like going by the bank and getting lollipops and then hitting up good ole HEB.

We had a sleepover at our house with Ty and Savannah.

We met up with preschool friends...

Hung out on Sundays at my parents house...

I took the boys downtown and we checked out our city one morning...

We met some new awesome neighbors and even got to take care of their adorable puppy, Sugar for a week!

The boys discovered Lemonade Stands this summer and looooved doing them! We heard about an organization collecting new backpacks full of school supplies for kids who were in need. So we put together a lemonade stand to raise money to put together backpacks. Thanks so our super generous neighbors, they raised $72!!!

They could have raised more, but it started to rain!!!! So play in the rain we did!

We were able to put together 5 new backpacks for 5 kids! So proud of these boys!

Cash (kinda) learned how to use chopsticks.

And he learned how to build forts, and does it allllll the time now.

I signed Eli up for this one day running clinic with his friend Ty. He happened to have a handful of other friends there too! He did amazing! They had them running drills, and laps, and racing. I was really so proud of his effort and how hard he worked even though it was crazy hot. He really pushed himself even on the 1000 race they had them end with! And dang if he wasn't so fast!