Trip to England August 2016

Ben and I took a quick trip to England to see the family. I had warned him that it wouldn't be a holiday as such and that a lot of the time would be sitting around talking to people, but he insisted that he wanted to come with me.  I'm so glad that he came, I really needed him around for the company.  He was so excited about flying.  We flew to Newark and then on to Birmingham

Ben took this picture out of the window-flying above the clouds

Waiting in Newark for 4 hours before our Atlantic crossing

Ben developed a taste for English coffee

No trip to England would be complete without fish and chips from the local chip shop!!!!

Rich took Ben to see Forest play.  It was a good game-7 goals!!!!

Picture outside the pub

.....and one in the stands

Always got to get a few pictures of mum's beautiful garden

Ben went away with Marie and Co for a couple of days to Gloucestershire.  They went to a crocodile farm while they were there

We stayed with Rob and Teresa while we were there-they have more room than anyone else.  This is the view from their house-I had forgotten how much of the surrounding countryside you can see from their house

We went out for dinner with Marie and John.  Ben had fish and chips and then this yummy chocolate trio for dessert

John had a cheese plate-he looks very happy with it!!!

We spent a lot of time in hospitals.  Ben learned first hand the pluses and minuses of the NHS system!!!!

On our way back home-didn't waste any time getting our first Starbucks!!!!

First day of school, 2016

First day of school was a bust, the power went out during a storm in the night at our house and at the school.  School still opened as usual, they were hoping the power would be back on at 8, but they abandoned the day at 10:30 as still no power.  Ben and Maggie didn't go at all since we were one of the areas affected by the power outage.
So, first day of school started a day later than planned, but turned out to be successful.  Maggie complained about how boring it was ("all we do is sit there and work") and Ben raved about how he saw Ms Rahaman in the hallway and about the dress she wore!!!  Things are back to normal......

July events

Ben, Maggie and I went to Eckerts to pick peaches, and ended up with peaches, vegetables and flowers.  We bought these zinnias for Jan

The peaches have been very good this year, we bought our usual 20 lbs of them!!!!

We picked some cosmos

and zinnias for ourselves

We had a huge storm come through and knocked out our power for 48 hours.  It started just as I was picking Maggie up from the YMCA

We ended up going to the Galleria the first night so that we could eat dinner and to charge our phones.  Ben took his book to read while we were at the Galleria!!!!
We stayed at the Drury Inn on the second night, it was much better.

Ben and I have continued our tradition to go to Starbucks on Tuesday night while Maggie goes horse riding.  She has decided that she doesn't want to go any more, so we did not sign her up for August.

Ben decided that he wanted a saxophone for his birthday, so we ordered one from Amazon.  We will wait and see how often he plays it!!!!!

July trip to MBG

Our July trip to MBG started bright and early on Sunday morning.  We met Arline at 9 am to try to avoid the heat as much as possible.  Ben is not enough of a morning person to come with us, but Sam and Maggie made it.

Maggie decided that she had to stand in front of the fountain, apparently "we always take a picture here"!!!

"Jack is Back"-the corpse flower was out on Sunday morning.  When they say it smells bad, they are NOT joking!!!!

The water lilies are still flowering.  Honestly, I thought that they only flowered around September ,I had no idea they flowered for so long-one of the pluses of us going to MBG every month this year.

Water plants by the water dragon statue.

The kids just cannot resist flicking water at the person standing nearest to them, no matter who it is!!

Took a picture of these blue globe thistles because they had so many bees on them, need them for my water garden and my bee sanctuary (when it gets done)

Another picture "we always take"!!!

Maggie saw this dragonfly in the Ottoman garden.  I'm picking this photo as my "best of the trip"

Maggie took this one of this rose with a bee in it. the rose garden was very nice this trip.

The stargazer lilies were amazing

Can't remember what this is, but it was beautiful

This was the view from our table when we ate brunch-lovely

I had the Irish breakfast-very nice but way too much food again

Sam had the eggs Benedict-even he couldn't finish it

Sam, Arline and Maggie

This pot had a fan flower in it, never seen them before, but I loved them

Hanging baskets are as beautiful as ever

Bee on the zinnias

Beautiful flowers in the Kemper Garden Center

We searched out the kiwi plant-the "kiwis" haven't grown since last month.....

I can remember when Maggie's feet didn't touch the ground when she sat on these sheep!!!!

Ben's final growth statistics

I took Ben to see Dr. Tollefsen and found out that he has only grown 0.2 inches since January.  They did a bone scan and his growth plates have sealed over, so he isn't going to grow any taller and we can stop the growth hormone now.
He is now 5 ft 5.67 inches and he currently weighs 118 lbs.  He's in the 29th percentile for height, so really he hasn't done too badly at all.  He wasn't interested in doing his growth hormone shots for the last few months and it's up to him at the end of the day.  He insists he doesn't want to be any taller, he got his wish.  Hope he feels the same way when he's older.

First trip to the zoo in about 4 years

Ben suggested that we went to the zoo and I thought it was a great idea.  We haven't been to the zoo in years, the kids have not been interested in it recently.  Of course, the first photo I took was of a plant-collective family groan!!!

Oh, a picture of an animal!!!!

I told Ben to stand by the snake in the River's Edge-we have pictures of him no bigger than the snake (I just need to look for them!!)

HaHa-anything you can do, I can do better!!!!!

Elephants at the River's Edge

Sam and Ben in the butterfly house

.....and Maggie!!!!!!  Good enough to be our Christmas card this year!!!!!

Maggie wanted to go and see the stingrays, so Ben and I went to see the penguins while Sam took her in the stingray exhibit.  It was a relief to get out of the heat from a little while

We saw the new polar bear exhibit.  The polar bear definitely needs someone to keep him company....