It was a good Saturday

Today was Madeline's cheerleading banquet. The season has come to an end. She was super excited to be receiving her first ever trophy!

Kyle Invaders Football Cheer Banquet 2010 from Melissa Spence on Vimeo.

There was a special guest at the banquet, our town mayor! Lucy Johnson was there to shake hands with all of the players and cheerleaders. She is the first person Madeline shakes hands with.

Here are Ashleigh and Madeline with their trophies.

Madeline was so happy to have a trophy just like her Daddy has (the kids and Stephen went through his box of childhood trophies). When we came home Madeline asked for some baby wipes so she could clean and make her trophy shiny. :) She said she would like to do cheerleading again next year.

Today we also got part of our new couch set! Part of our set was the showroom floor sample because they had discontinued the Chocolate brown color (we were able to get $500 off total and an extra ottoman). So our awesome neighbor went with Stephen to pick up these pieces. We love how they look in our family room! Our over sized chair that goes with our other ottoman (and will be replacing Stephen's beloved "man chair") will be delivered on Tuesday.

Lastly this isn't a pic from today but from Wednesday when Madeline had her cheer buddy Ashleigh over for a playdate after school. Here the girls are eating their mac'n'cheese dinner with apples. They had a lot of fun jumping on the trampoline and playing with Penny Lane. James had his buddy Aaron over, but the boys didn't want to pose for a pic.

Her 1st Competition

Yesterday Madeline competed in her first competition with her cheer squad. The girls on her squad range in age from 4-6 years old. And they've been practicing for this competition for about a month now. Considering this is the first time all these girls have done cheerleading I think they did good for their 1st competition. They had to have a 3 minute routine which consisted of 2 cheers, 2 lifts and 1 dance routine. Here is the video clip of their routine. Their squad was the 2nd one up in the competition and we followed a really experienced squad (who won 1st place) so all of us parents were a little worried - but the girls did their BEST & had fun ...that is all that matters.


Kyle Invaders PeeWee Squad Cheer Competition from Melissa Spence on Vimeo.

Madeline is in the back row 2nd from the left. She calls out the first cheer by saying, "Ready!?". In the first lift she is the spotter standing behind the girl that is lifted. During their dance routine to music I thought she did great by actually "running" in place instead of just moving. And during the last cheer Madeline is one of the girls who kneels down on the right side to lift one of the girls up, actually it is Madeline's leg the other little girl trips and falls over. Whoops! At least she got up and they completed the lift! Way to go girls!

Unfortunately they didn't "place", but all the girls earned a gold medal on a ribbon for participating. The whole event took nearly 3 hours and on the car drive home Madeline konked out. We were so proud of her for having the courage to get up there and participate!

Homecoming Mum & Block Party

It was a busy Saturday for us. Madeline had her last official football game to cheer at, their homecoming game. I guess the youth leagues have "homecoming" games like the schools do. And we learned here in Texas that not only is it homecoming season, but homecoming mum season. What is a mum you ask? It's a Texas tradition. To make these big corsage like pins (mums) for the girls and garters for the boys to wear around their arms on homecoming game day.

So there were several volunteer moms on our league that made all the homecoming decorations, mums and garters.

Madeline is on the front right kicking her leg up. She really enjoyed her first season of cheering.

Here is Madeline and Ashley, her best cheer buddy, after the homecoming game with their mums.

So more girls on her squad with their mums.

It started raining after the game.

They even picked names out of a bag to choose a homecoming queen and king at each game. Madeline's friend Ashley got picked.

And here's Daddy with his homecoming beauty.

And this afternoon we had a block party on our culdesac. My friend Kate from across the street came up with the idea and asked me to help her orchestrate a party. So I made these invites and passed them out in the beginning of October.

Here is one of the desserts our neighbor made, isn't it creative!?

Kate set up a jump house in front of their home.

As well as a table to paint pumpkins at.

Our neighbor's daughter checking our other neighbor's son.

We invited Mia to come over for the block party and have a sleepover. She enjoyed holding one of our neighbor's twin baby.

The guys, probably talking about sports or beer.

We set up the food table and some table and chairs at our home.

No, none of our neighbors called the cops, actually he just happened to be driving by our street and stopped by to talk and show us his really cool cop car! The kids loved the lights and his really big guns inside his car. And the cop was nice enough to show us how he can check our speed from the front and back of his car.

Some of our neighbors older kids enjoyed a couple games of darts in our garage while James and Aaron sat and watched. It was a fun block party. And we got to know some of our neighbors a lot better. We'll definitely have to do this again!

So now we're getting ready to head to bed. Here are the girls in their Spongebob pj's. Nighty-night!

Kyle Texas Parade

It was a beautiful Fall day to kick off our town's city parade. And Madeline was participating, her cheer squad was marching in the parade and throwing candy.

Here's Madeline's squad! She's right below the white arrow. She did awesome. The girls had to march pretty far, but they made it all the way to the end waving their pom poms and yelling their cheers.

Go Invaders!

Our town has 2 high schools and their bands and cheer squads participated too. I loved these girls uniforms with their white cowboy boots.

This squad did many daring stunts and flips, they were great!

James liked seeing all the police, fire and medical cars in the parade. They made sure to have their lights flashing and sirens on. Here's an old Kyle cop car.

And here's the new Kyle cop cars.

We waved to the firemen!

We saw lots of animals too,

like these horses drawing a carriage wagon...

...and these cows, pigs and rabbits. :) It was a fun parade. Afterwards the director of our football league treated all the cheerleaders to a sundae at Dairy Queen.

Stats

Life has been busy lately. But on Monday James had his 4 year well check up. Doc said it looks and sounds like James is on track. He passed his hearing and sight test with flying colors. He's a "tall and slender" boy being 41.5" in height (75+ percentile) and 34 pounds in weight (25- percentile). Doc says just keep feeding him. He was due for many vaccinations, 6 in total. Doc want to split them up and do some this visit and have him come back in a month for the rest. So he got 3 injections and was NOT HAPPY about them. Ya he really dislikes the Doc now. He was very upset they "hurt" him. And try explaining to a 4 year old why something that hurts is actually good for you and will keep you healthy. "No it won't!" he says to me. I think it gets much harder as they get older to get these shots. But afterwards we went to Chick-fil-a, he played and got a book, and rode his bike all evening in the culdesac. So the shots didn't even phase him. He's such a big boy!

Madeline cheered at another football game this weekend. She's got 3 more games until the season is over. I was able to get a great shot of Madeline getting lifted up for a cheer stunt. She had to yell, "Hi my name is Madeline! Go Invaders!".

We say "Kyle" You say "Invaders"

My mom arrived on Friday to help us celebrate Stephen and James' birthdays this weekend  - I have lots of pics to share from over the weekend, I'll put them into several posts. She also got to see Madeline cheer at a football game.

Mom took a pic of me taking a pic of Madeline with her friend Ashley during a water break.

Ashley and Madeline - Go Kyle Invaders!

James does pretty well sitting and watching all the football games we go to.

The girls sitting on the bleachers with Daddy.

Mom loved all our matching t-shirts so she wanted to take a family pic of us.

Last week at practice they had individual and team pictures. Madeline is the 2nd from the left on the bottom row.

Our cheerleader. Does the water tower in the background give away we live in Texas? :)

Madeline doing a cheer stunt

Go Madeline from Melissa Spence on Vimeo.

We "heart" Football!

While Stephen's parents and brothers were out visiting, we had a fun filled "Football" weekend! Madeline had her first home pee wee football game to cheer at. It's nice cause it's about a mile down the road from our house at a local middle school football field. Madeline was super excited her Nana, Poppi and Uncles were there to watch her. She did great!

Nana and Poppi even made sure to bring red shirts to support our Kyle Invaders!

Madeline after the game with her Uncle Mike, Uncle Bryce, Daddy and James. She got a well deserved snow cone...it was a hot game!

After Madeline's game, the guys headed to downtown Austin to catch the Longhorns first home game. Stephen's buddy Albert has a brother who coaches for Wyoming, so he was able to get Stephen some free tickets to the game. Over 100,000 fans came to watch this game! Here is Dad (red shirt) and Bryce (blue shirt) walking to the stadium.

Bryce and Stephen sat together.

And Mike and Dad sat together.

Bryce and Stephen were sitting right by the canon shooters. Bryce got startled every time!

They sat on the visitors side where the sun was setting and shining. They said it got pretty hot and sweaty at the game. But they still had a good time. And the Longhorns won! At least the Longhorns and Invaders won this weekend, can't say so much for the Vikes.