Waiting for the Bus & the 2nd Day

Let me start off by saying that I am not going to show pictures of every day of Colton's 4th grade year, but he did look really cute/handsome, so I took a picture this morning and put it on here (see below).
Well, Colton's first day went really well according to him. He seems to like his class and his teacher, so that is great! He did have homework on the first night, which he was not really thrilled about, but he did it. He rode the bus home for the first time. Not sure if it lived up to the hype that he had created in his head about riding the bus, but he seemed to enjoy it. He did say that it "was loud". He liked that he was able to ride in the same seat as one of his friends from his class last year.
You will see some lovely pics below of Matt and I waiting for his bus to arrive. My mom took the pictures as she was far enough away as to not embarrass him. My mom was supposed to be the one meeting the bus, but Matt and I ended being home due to someone stealing Matt's exhaust system off of his truck. Why would someone do that?????????? Matt thinks they did it for the copper in the catayltic converter.
Oh well, another day in the Dutchess Family!
Colton did get up this morning quite well and was ready to face another day as a 4th grader!

Waiting on the bus

Matt and Colton talking about the 1st day

Colton on the 2nd day of school-isn't he handsome

Colton's First Day as a 4th Grader

Today was Colton't first day as a 4th grader! I still cannot believe it! He has Mrs. Groce as his main teacher and Mrs. Ligon is his AIG teacher. Colton is really excited because he has 3 of his really good friends in his class and even more in his AIG. He was really excited this morning eventhough it was difficult for him to wake up at first (see pictures below). Also, today is the first day that he will be riding the bus home. Gram will pick him up today at the bus stop. You know he is getting older when he doesn't want her to take pictures of him getting off the bus :(

Colton right before I woke him up

Colton having a very hard time getting up this morning
Still trying to get up
Brushing the teeth
Applying the deodorant (He says he smells like Papa Kenny)-By the way, he said it was ok if I put these pics on the blog
Off to school

Putting the backpack on and getting ready to get out of the car at school

Back to School Sleepover

Colton had some of his friends from his 3rd grade class over for a back-to-school-I-hope-you're-in-my-4th-grade-class-this-year sleepover. They had a lot of fun. We had 6 boys (7 if you include Matt) in the house. They played Playstation, Star Wars, flashlight tag, basketball, and who knows what else. Matt grilled hot dogs for them and we made homemade ice cream sandwiches. We even made snow cones.
At 12:00 am we put in Transformers (a movie) and popped some popcorn so they could chill out. The next morning, Matt made pancakes and bacon, which they seemed to love!
It was a great night and it worked! Colton has 3 of the 5 boys in his 4th grade class! He was so excited when we went to Open House and read their names on the classlist.

Pancake Man
The boys (missing one)

The Weekend in Kenna

The Dutchess Trio drove to Kenna, WV! We went up to drop off Colton for his weeklong vacation in WV without his parents! Colton did better than his mom and dad!!!
Before we left, we enjoyed a weekend at Papa Kenny and Grahamcracker Libby's. Amy and the boys came up as well, so that was nice to visit with them as well. Then, some more family came over on Saturday when Todd, Melissa and the girls stopped by. It is always nice to see everyone as we don't get to come up as much as we would like. It was a weekend of fun, family, awesome food and "man's room" entertainment. I swear that is some delicious popcorn!!!!!
Colton and I took Grey to Wal-Mart so that he could pick out his birthday gift. After making his selection, Colton introduced him to Guitar Hero (a video game-see picture below-yes I took a picture of Grey while in Wal-Mart).
The kids enjoyed playing in the inflatable pool. Who knew that even the older kids would have so much fun!!! Ken, Matt, Amy and I played Scrabble while watching them. I actually won for once! Amy usually kills us all, so she must have been taken it easy on us. Later that night, we played "Last Word" and we discovered that Ken (I mean Libby) was VERY good at it.
It was a great time until it was time for us to leave without Colton; however, he had an AWESOME time which you will read about soon. Colton is going to write about his week on the blog this week and will include all of the pictures he took while he was there.

Grey in Wal-Mart playing Guitar Hero

Colton takes a picture of Grey enjoying his Dairy Queen ice cream
The boys jammin away in Dairy Queen


Morgan and Grey-how cute
Playing scrabble

Morgan squirts Colton with the water hose

Colton took the next 4 pictures
CHEEEESSSEE

You want some fries with that-Grey playing with the McDonalds toys

Snowshoe to Pipestem

Bets won Matt a seat in the WV Poker Tournament again this year. The tournament was held at Snowshoe. On our way up to the tourney, I about drove right into a deer on US 64 at about 12:oo am. It was huge by the way!!! Luckily, I swirved and we were able to get there in one piece. The drive was gorgeous (and curvy)! Our room at the resort was nice and we took advantage of the hot tub and indoor pool. It was Freedom Fest during the same weekend as the tourney (Freedom Fest means A LOT of motorcycles). Matt now wants us to buy bikes and Colton wants one of them to have a side car.
Matt did extremely well in the tournament. He knocked out several of the players. I would say he made it to the top 35 players out of 96. He lost with pocket kings. He went all in and ended up getting beat when the player got 2 pair on the flop and turn. He did so well and I was VERY proud of him. During the tournament, Bets, Rusty and Kaleb took Colton to the top of the mountain and watched the motorcycle games and looked around. Poor Bets had food poisoning, so she wasn't feeling that well, but she hung in there. You know she is not feeling well when she has to pass on her shrimp cocktail!! After the tournament, we met them at the top and enjoyed the festivities. There were bands, food, etc. It is really pretty up there. We were able to see a GORGEOUS sunset while on top of the mountain (sorry no pictures...forgot my camera).
We really had a wonderful weekend. It was nice to spend some together.
On the way back, we decided to take our time and stop if we saw anything "interesting". We had breakfast at a restaurant on the river in Marlington. There was a park across the street that had some of the "old" playground equipment that Matt and I remember playing on, so we had a great time showing Colton. Then, we went to a state park that had a civil war site (watch tower and other things). We climbed to the top, felt it sway and decided to climb back down. :) We spent some time at the playground there as well. It had a VERY TALL slide that Colton enjoyed "flying" down!!!!!! Then, we went by the John Henry statue, so of course we got out and took some pictures. The drive from there to Pipestem was amazing!!!!! We stopped at Pipestem and have found our new "place that we want to vacation". We took the air tram to the bottom of the mountain. We explored the river and looked around the hotel. Colton made a new friend when a little boy wanted to give him one of his fruit rollups. It was really cute. Colton and Matt skipped rocks and looked for crawdads (some of them were big). Then, we took the tram back up the mountain and reluctantly went home. Pipestem was gorgeous and there is even a drive in at the town. We will definitely be back.

A worker at one of the stores in Snowshoe had thrown out some apples, which attracted the deer

Colton and Matt attempting to see saw
The next two pictures are just too cute

Colton on top

Colton took this picture of the bears in front of the restaurant
Colton in the tower at the Civil
War site
Colton's picture of the view
On top of the very tall slide-he went too fast to take a picture of him going down it
Just a swingan

Colton's picture of the cannon
John Henry
The view from the tram
Looking for crawdads

Skipping rocks


Playing video games in the hotel rec room