Max's Soccer Season

Max's soccer season finished up a couple of weeks ago. He had a blast playing with his team and loved his coaches. We have a couple of months off until the new season begins. I'm sure we'll miss our soccer Saturdays!

Back to Blogging

 Before I get any further behind, I thought I'd do a little catch-up post on what's been going on with the Hillens the last couple months.

      

 We took the cousin pictures a couple of months back and they turned out pretty well...maybe someday all of the kids will look at the camera at the same time.

I love all of these kids so much and am so blessed to be their aunt! (and mommy)

We also celebrated Max's 6th birthday on August 28th. We kept the celebrations to two small family parties. While my budget and party planning stress were minimal, I think we'll go back to family and friends party next year. We love a good celebration and love to include all those we love.

Emma started playing the recorder and also joined chorus. She is loving third grade.

The birthday boy on his special day!!

We've spent our weekends with family and friends and have loved every minute of it!

My gator fans

Damian and I had a date night to celebrate his 36th birthday on September 14th. We love a good dinner at Texas de Brazil.

Max is having another awesome soccer season.He scored a goal!!

One day we were walking to my classroom and I realized they picked out matching outfits!

Emma and I have had a couple shopping Saturdays together lately. She's so fun to shop with these days!

I'm pretty sure we have the cutest Cub Scout around. He has his first camp out in a couple of weeks and he can hardly wait!

Emma is back to ballet and she's loving Monday nights. (Oops the picture is missing--just imagine her in her leotard!)

Last weekend our sweet nephew Matthew was baptized. It was a beautiful celebration.

We celebrated my Mamaw Jennie's 84th birthday this past week.

Look who was the first Student of the Week in her class!!

We had the best time on Sunday at Disney's Hollywood Studios. 

Love these two so much!

We are in that time in our lives where we are on the go...to ballet, soccer, cub scouts, faith formation, doing homework, and trying to keep up with everything else. We are in a great routine and still manage to sit down together at the dinner table every night.

I'm going to try to post more of our fun because goodness knows I can hardly remember what happened last year!

Back to School 2013

Since getting ready for back to school has been such a hectic time, I haven't had a spare second to do a summer recap. We had such a wonderful summer, so hopefully I'll get a chance to go through our hundreds of pictures soon. Instead I'm going to just get right back on the blogging bandwagon and start with back to school. After all, my year starts in August, not January anyway! 

I am more than ready for a new school year to begin. It seems unreal to me that I have a third grader and a first grader. They were so excited and a little nervous about the first day of school today. I felt the exact same way.  Luckily, it all came back to me when my little first graders walked in the door. Also, the exhaustion came back to me--not sitting down all day, repeating myself 445 times, eating lunch in five minutes flat, and retraining myself to only go to the bathroom during my lunch and planning time. Fun, fun times! Also, I am sooo glad I planned our meals and did all of our grocery shopping for the next two weeks. It's going to make my life so much easier with back to school, karate, soccer(just for Max this year), ballet(soon for Emma), faith formation, homework, and Max's birthday next week. 

 Damian went to work at his usual 4:30 a.m. but wanted to come back home to send us all off to school. The kids were happy we were both there! 

 Emma is thrilled with her teacher, classroom, and the fact that some of her very best friends are in her class.

 Max was also a happy camper today. He told me I was right and first grade is awesome.

Here's to a fabulous 2013-2014 school year!

2nd grade Memories

Before a new school year starts,I thought I should post the collages I made from Emma's 2nd grade year. She had a fantastic year and maintained straight A's with above level instruction. Of course, she continues to make us proud every day. She is anxiously anticipating many new, exciting adventures in 3rd grade.

My brother fixed my computer last weekend, so I plan on getting back into blogging by doing a summer recap and keeping up with our many activities and day to day life during the school year.

Kindergarten Memories

It's hard to believe another school year has come to an end. I haven't shared any pictures or stories on here in quite some time. Hopefully, that changes this summer.

We've been making memories and having fun with family and friends.

We are enjoying every second of our summer break.

 I'm laying low today due to a kidney stone, but I don't plan on letting it ruin our fun!

I thought it would be a nice memory to make collages of this past school year for each of the kids.

It was hard to narrow down pictures of all that has happened.

 I enjoyed remembering all of our happy memories and milestones. I'm so glad I have so many pictures to look back on.  

To say Max loved Kindergarten would be a major understatement. He thrived this year and learned so much. He is reading a year ahead of his grade level and his comprehension is top notch. He also loved Math, telling me it was his favorite subject. We were blessed to have the same teachers for both Emma and Max and they are truly the best of the best!  He loved his teachers, made so many new friends, and everyone fell in love with my little  sweetheart! He also played basketball and soccer this year. He is such an athlete and makes all of us proud! He is a team player and not only is competitive but cheers for his teammates, too. He learned to ride a bike without training wheels and went camping in a tent for the first time. He was able to go on field trips to Green Meadows Farm(he's not a big fan of animals, like his mom) and Legoland-his absolute favorite place!! He was the cutest ring bearer for the first time in his cousin's wedding. He loves to play swords and use his imagination, build legos, play games, draw pictures, color, and spend time with his big sister!

 

We are so proud of our sweet, funny, smart boy!

 

 

 

Emma's First Holy Communion

I haven't shared on here in awhile, mostly because my laptop is in need of some updating and its kind of a pain to use my phone. We are gearing up for the end of the school year and have been on the go and nonstop busy. I have tons of pics I've taken over the last few weeks that I should share, but first I wanted to share these. Today was a very special day for our little girl Emma Alyse. She received her First Holy Communion and we celebrated at our church and had a reception at our local Knights of Columbus hall with friends and family.

It was a beautiful day!

Here are just a few pictures from the church, I have many more from the party too.

Happy Easter

(Oops...i thought this posted Sunday night, but just saw that it didn't!)

Today we celebrated Resurrection Sunday and what a beautiful day it has been!


Here are a couple of pictures of my sweet family after mass this morning. We had a weekend filled with family and fun!

Spring Break

It is so nice to have a week off from school. I love Spring Break, it's like a preview to our summer and what's to come.

This weekend we had an adults only weekend with our friends at a local winery. It was a fabulous time away! We had the best time!

I made Max a dentist appointment for 8:30 a.m today. I have no idea what I was thinking...my kids sleep in during our breaks! It was a rough start to our day. To say my little guy was apprehensive would be an understatement. We have to go see another dentist on Friday. It should be lots of fun. I was a little worried to hear that after the one and only X-ray they were able to get that he has an extra tooth with his front teeth. There are only a small percentage of people this happens to...like 2%. He will have to see an oral surgeon when he is around 9 to have it removed. That was a little scary for this mommy to hear(and I was already traumatized from his kicking and screaming--I don't know where he gets it from-I Love going to the dentist!!!)
Fortunately, our day turned around when we went shopping. I found adorable Easter outfits and a few other good deals at the outlets. We also went to lunch at Chick-fi1-a, and had some more fun shopping at JoAnn's and Target.

The kids played their little hearts out this afternoon and pulled out toys they haven't had time to play with in a long time. They also cleaned out toy bins and threw things away. I guess they felt like spring cleaning,too!

They also did an Easter craft. I have one planned each day this week. Today we made a jelly bean prayer poster and of course they ate jelly beans while reading and coloring the prayer, tomorrow we're making resurrection eggs. They are loving the crafts.

We have a few fun things planned this week. I'm looking forward to sleeping in, relaxing, and being caught up on my laundry! I'm most excited to celebrate holy week and Easter with my sweet family!

Practice Time

March has turned out to be a very busy month for our family. The kids started soccer a few weeks ago and we haven't sat down since! We have been spending half of our week nights at the soccer fields for practice or clinics.

The kids are loving it! I am loving that it's keeping our family active and the kids haven't really watched tv during the week in over three weeks(or really missed it for that matter). We've also made it a priority to sit down at the dinner table even though we're on the go. I have been consistently meal planning since January and it's been working out so well! Now if only I could get caught up on my laundry!! Instead we've just added more grass stains and stinky soccer socks to the mix!

They had their first game this past weekend and it was a blast to watch them. I was one proud mommy! I had no idea they would play as well as they did since they only had a couple of practices.