Cute pics of the kids

The kids absolutely LOVE having Craig and Lauren so close. They think their "Kozy Kabin" is the best place on Earth especially because they get to hang out with lots of dogs while they are there. A couple of days ago, Lauren watched the kids for me and took some really cute pics of the kids with some of the dogs they were pet sitting.... those vets always have cute dogs around! Lauren shared them with me and I wanted to share them with you. I told her seeing them almost made me want to get a dog for the kids...I did say almost:)

Workbook time

Lyle has started the routine of doing a couple pages of the kids workbooks every night. They are just books that go over things like letters and numbers for Luke and spelling and math for Ella. He has been doing this for awhile but the other night I happened to peak in (I'm usually in the kitchen making school lunches during this time and I try to stay out of sight so I don't distract them) to see them very busy. I snapped a quick picture to share. I think all "3" of them enjoy it quite a bit!
(Sorry the pic is so dark....I've have got to fix the flash on my camera:)

Whatever happened to the garden??

Today, we picked our last prize from the garden Lyle and the kids planted back in May. Although it was a terrible gardening season around here...40 days of 110 temps=poor produce production... I thought I would share with you our spoils.

The tomato plants were the first to shoot up so we got stakes to tie them to so they wouldn't fall to the ground. So far so good...cucumbers and watermelons were growing nicely. Strawberries never sprouted...not sure what happened to those.

 Then one day there was a tiny tomato!!! It was the talk of the day around the Burdine house!

It was growing nicely until Ella brought it in the house one day....Luke picked it a bit too early but we put it on the window sill and it turned red and juicy! Yummy!! 

I was so looking forward to many many more but soon after this picture the tomatoes got blythe and had to be pulled. Bummer! We tried to plant more and they were growing nicely but then a big green monster stripped them clean of all their leaves and they just never bloomed again.

With one down and the hot weather setting in, we started to get a bit nervous that nothing else would  grow. Then the cucumbers took off! We were very proud of our first picking!

 We got about 8 cucumbers in all but must have missed this guy because by the time we found him he was huge!!

During the cucumber excitement, we discovered our watermelons were starting to develop. We had lots at first but with the hot weather they just never grew too big. But finally as it started to cool off we had one that hung in there and got pretty big. We started to worry though after it didn't change in size for about two weeks so we decided today to go ahead and pick it.

We were very excited so we quickly cracked that baby open to see.....

 nothing:( No sweet melon tonight kids!

That wraps up our gardening season. Hopefully we will have better luck next year!

A visit from Mims and Pa

Last weekend, Mims and Pa came up for Grandparents' Day. There was a nice dinner at Ella's school where they got to see her classroom and have their picture taken with her. It was so nice of them to come up and Ella really enjoyed getting to hang out with them. They decided to stay Friday and Saturday as well which meant they got to go to Ella's soccer game Saturday morning. They brought a cool surprise for the kids for the game....their very own chairs! Luke was very excited about them.
Here he is waiting for Ella and Mims to get back from the movies....he waited in the driveway for them in his chair and pulled up sissy's next to him so she would have her's when she got back. It was really cute....and yes he is in his PJ's in the middle of the afternoon. Mims got him some new sweet car PJs and he wanted to put them on after his nap...he assured me though that that didn't mean he was tired!

We had quite the cheering crowd at Ella's game. She played really hard and we all cheered for her!

Thanks so much for coming up, Mims and Pa! It was great seeing you!
 Ella and Luke are lucky to have such great grandparents!!