Our feathered friends

The little ducks are still wandering around our house. This morning Hannah went out to get the Sunday paper and ran back into the house saying "The baby ducks are here!". Of course, we all ran out front and there they were, across the street in our neighbors yard. That mommy duck sure has her little brood under control! A few flaps of her wings and they all fall into line and head across the yard. They are probably in their pre-teen stage by now, giving her grief, I'm sure!


We give them their space so we don't frighten them but I'd sure love to hold one... especially the little yellow one. He's my favorite!

The many moods of Alexis...

Little niecey Alexis just turned 8 weeks! Look at those cheeks! She looks just like her momma!

We'll see you in 3 1/2 more months!

How Many Of Me???

I found this website on my friend, Amelia's, blog. www.howmanyofme.com You can go to this website and enter your first and last name and see how many other people in the US have your name. Now, when I was in college, there were 3-4 other Jennifer Matthews' (Matthews is my maiden name)....and 2 of them even had my same middle name! One of my dads friends lived about 30 minutes from the college and thought it would be fun to call me up and see how I was doing. He called the wrong Jennifer M and said "This is an older man from your past" and promtly got hung up on! =} I think he may have even called the other Jennifer M's before he got to me. LOL

Well, when I plugged Jennifer Churchwell into the website, I found out there are 21 other people with my name in the US. When I plugged in Jennifer Matthews, I found there are 796 others! Wow! As an FYI, there is only 1 Hannah Churchwell, 1 Haylee Churchwell and 2 Rick Churchwell's!

How many are there of you??

Our afternoon spent with a "Giant Rat"...

That is how Rick describes our time spent at Chuck E. Cheese. Today Haylee and I met her bestest bud, Jake and his mom there. The kids had a great time and Angela and I got a good almost 3 hours of visiting in! Haylee-Bear (as Jake calls her) and Jakey (as Haylee calls him) did a lot of fun things. They:

Ate pizza...


Played Mario Kart...


Rode in the horse race...


And chatted with Chatty Chuck E.


And now it's nap time.... ZZZZZZZZ....

First day of school...

Today was Hannah's first day of First Grade! I can't believe she's in 1st grade already! Here she is with her new teacher, Miss Jones.


Miss Jones seems like she is going to be a wonderful teacher. So friendly and very organized. Hannah wasn't too sure of the class pets.... 2 tarantulas! One is named "Webster" and there is no name for the other one yet. UGH! Hannah also has a reading loft in her room...kind of like a tree house that the kids can climb up into and read. They love those things!

This year Hannah will at least have spelling homework every night. And she's also going to start taking Spanish each week. This is a new thing at the school. I think it's great because Hannah is ALWAYS asking me how to say things in spanish so now she'll know!

I think the highlight for Hannah today, though, was seeing her best friend, Hana! She'd missed her all summer and they were so excited and squealing when they saw each other this morning.


Do your best and learn all you can, sweetie!

Soccer Mom!

Well, we're back into the soccer season! Hannah is back on her team after taking a break to try Girl Scouts. She had her first "mini-game" this morning and considering that none of the girls have even had a practice, it went pretty well! Even her friend, Savannah, who's never played before, did a great job! I know you'll be surprised to hear this, but the girls decided to call themselves "The Cheetah Girls"! I feel sorry for their very young coach. I'm sure he wishes he was coaching boys! =}

Here's Hannah chasing the ball down. (she's the one in the white t-shirt, chasing the girl in the red)


Here she is chatting with the coach before the game.


Here is Hannah and Savannah with their "game faces" on.


Here she is taking her turn as goalie. You can tell she was really into that position!


Of course, once we get our uniforms we'll be contacting our resident bow maker for some matching bows!

"Let's go Cheetah Girls, Let's Go!"

Could you save someone's life if you had to?

I'd have to say that I now feel that I could handle a situation involving someone needing CPR. I have taken this class for the past 3 years and I finally feel comfortable with what I have learned. Thank goodness I didn't need to perform CPR before this, right?? The preschool has us take this class every year and we always have the same great teacher. Here's our fearless leader now:

You can't tell it, but he has a screwdriver in the "babies" ear and is tightening something. Thankfully our teacher has a great sense of humor and lots of stories to share. Sitting through a 5 hour class could be a bit boring, but not with him!

We learned how to perform CPR on all ages... here is Amy working on her baby:


And here is Amelia and Yanel working on the bigger manikins:


We learned how to handle different situations... stroke, using an epi pen, using an AED (not an ADD, Julia) and how to handle flesh wounds. Here you can see a few of my co-workers trying to bandage a fake head wound I had:


Thank goodness it wasn't real otherwise you could have just pulled the sheet over me and pronounced me there! They were trying to figure out how to wrap my head without messing up my hair! LOL No worries there!

And here is our teacher showing us what he would do to us if we weren't quiet:


I am thankful I have never had to use this knowledge and hope I never have to. I am also thankful to our teacher (a local firefighter/medic) who takes his time to teach us these skills.....

OK, I just had to jump up from the computer because evidently Haylee wanted to test my knowledge from today... her finger was bleeding pretty good and she was crying her head off. It was only a small cut but I handled it! =} Whew!