A New Story

Delaney recently wrote a story and wanted to post it on my blog. Hope you enjoy!

A Butterfly's Wish

By Delaney Reighard

Once upon a time, a little butterfly larva was eating food. Then a big butterfly flew by her. The little larva said to the big butterfly, "I want to be like you, a big butterfly."

"Well," said the butterfly, "You have to do a lot of eating, turn into a pupa, and then form a hard case around your body, which is called a chrysalis or a cacoon. When you emerge you're a beautiful butterfly!"

"Like you," cried the larva.

"Yes, like me," said the butterfly. On and on the butterfly flew to find nectar.

The larva obeyed the butterfly. She ate and ate and ate until she was ready to be a pupa. When she was a pupa, she formed a hard case. Then when it was time, she emerged as a beautiful butterfly.

Now she will tell her children what she did and tell them to tell their children what will happen in their life.

Can you tell she was studying the life cycle of a butterfly in school?

She also illustrated her story, but I wasn't able to post those pictures.

Darilyn's Award

Darilyn received an award at the monthly assembly. Her teacher honored her with a Sightword Superstar award because she can recognize and spell all of her sightwords (about 70 right now) and also the Math Whiz award because she has the highest math grade in her class. You go, Darilyn! Mrs. Askins, her teacher this year and last year, told me that Darilyn is also very responsible in class and is the type of student you want to have in class. We have a parent/teacher conference tomorrow and I am expecting to hear great things about Miss Darilyn.

Accepting her award certificate from her teacher.

Mrs. Askins, Darilyn and the other 2 award winners

Miss Darilyn proudly showing off her award

Darilyn showing off her empty space in her mouth. She recently lost another tooth. This one on top as you can see.

In Honor of Our Heros

Happy Anniversary to Me and Kevin!

September 13, 1997 Kevin and I pledged to spend the rest of our lives loving, honoring, and cherishing each other. We are now 11 years and 4 kids later. Still in love, still committed, still excited about what the future holds. I love you, Kevin! You are a wonderful husband and father and I am so blessed to have a life with you! It just gets better and better!

Camping Out

One of the fun things we did this summer wast to camp out in our backyard. We set up the one room tent, which I then filled with airmattress and pallets from wall to wall. We cooked out (hot dogs, an all time family fave). And then we made smores, yumm! The kids love it! And it was very affordable lol! (Denae was actually asleep on the couch for a lot of this, but did wake up in time for a hot dog.) After playing chase in the dark, we let the kids change into their jammies in the tent (Kevin and I cheated a bit and used the house to change) We then piled up in the tent, enjoying the night sights and sounds through the tent window, which included watching a search helicopter fly around with its big light shining looking for someone (thankfully the helicopter was not very close by or our camp out would have been over). After a bedtime Bible story we snuggled down to sleep. At least most of us did. I think Delaney and Darilyn whispered for hours. Everytime I woke up, they were whispering, had rearranged their "bed", or had changed into the next days clothes and back into jammies. Good grief! You'd have thought they didn't share a bed every night! lol But all in all it was great fun and I think we will do it again.

A few more pics of the kids

On our way to church on a Sunday morning. I took a picture of Delaney, too, but where she was standing there was too much shadow so it didn't turn out.


Delaney received an award at the first awards assembly while I was in TX. It was for Academic Excellence. Great job, Princess!

Hey, I'm back!

Well, technically I've been back home for a couple of weeks, but I haven't been back on my blog for a while. It was so good to see my mom and dad and brother and his family in TX, but I sure did miss Kevin and the kids. Kevin came to the airport to pick me up and he brought Denae with him. My goodness, was I ever glad to see them! They had a good time while I was gone, but I think they were glad to see me, too! lol

The girls got their school pictures taken and back already. I think they turned out really cute this year. They wore their new cowgirl shirts. The bottom picture is the whole outfit that shows in the class pic. I took it before I sent them to school.


After I got the girls school pics, I decided to try to get some pics of Dallas and Denae so Grandma could update her picture frames with something more current than Dallas at 6 mos and Denae at 6 mos (I am horrible at getting new studio shots of the kids by themselves). These turned out really cute too, and the ones below are my favorites. I love the one of Denae looking back and laughing at Dallas because he said cheese in her ear.

And, the girls are doing really well in school. Delaney got her first progress report which they send out every month. She has straight A's. Darilyn got a great report as well, but it didn't actually have any letter grades or precentage points. They should get their first report card at the begining of Oct, right before they go off track for 4 weeks.

I have started doing preschool with Dallas and of course Denae has to join us. It is going really good. We are working with Dallas on letter recognition. We have flash cards that we use with capital and lower case letters. He is doing well and is starting to try to write some of the letters, too, although at this point it is more like drawing the letters. Denae has flash cards too. They are actually first word cards, with a picture and the word below it for begginner readers. She just tells us what is in the picture. For the cat, dog and horse she also gives us the sound it makes. She also "blows out the candles" on the pic of the b-day cake after telling us it is cake. And the gift card is a 'prize.' Anyway, it is fun for her to have her own pre-school cards and she stays out of Dallas letter cards and the girls' math and sightword flash cards.

I am going to post some more pics in another post, but before I close this one, I wanted to welcome back my long lost neighbor and friend, Kim. She is finally home from visiting her family in Oregon for a month (I wish!!) We missed you!