Swimming Champion!

We had a great swim-team summer again this year.  Both Kaitlyn and Brynn seem to have a great time, and both girls improved considerably from last year.  Brynn swam her fastest freestyle at the district meet, and we were proud of her for doing her best and always having a great attitude.

Kaitlyn qualified to swim in the City meet in 25 yd freestyle, 50 yd freestyle, backstroke, and butterfly.  At the City meet she placed second in the two relays she participated in, and took 3rd place in the 25 yd freestyle.  There was a bit of discrepancy on her time in the backstroke since her lane timer stopped working.  According to our calculations, she should have placed 3rd in the backstroke, but they had her placing 4th.  I was proud of Kaitlyn for not making a big deal of this.  She also placed 4th in the 50 yd freestyle and cut 5 seconds off her district time.  She came away with a ton of medals.  Way to go Kaitlyn!

We had a great time watching and cheering on Kaitlyn and Brynn this summer.

Grown Up Girl

 Ellie started her first day of preschool just a couple of days after the big kids started.  She is attending the same program as Jared did last year so she is a peer model for a developmental preschool.  When the teachers last year asked if Ellie wanted to be part of the three-year-old program, I was a bit hesitant.  The preschool is four days a week, and I hate to push my little three year old out of the house so much.  The teachers told me I could send her as little or as much as I wanted.  I couldn't argue with that, and since we love the program and teachers I decided to do it.

 I was a little worried about how Ellie would do.  Ellie is a girl of extremes--she would either hate it or she would love it with no in-between.  Apparently, this little girl has been craving a chance to be just like everyone else in her family and have something of her own. 

The day before her preschool started I went to the school to fill out papers.  Ellie came up to me and was whispering something at me with a very mad expression.  I thought she was telling me she wanted to leave, but she was telling me she wanted ME to leave and her to stay by herself!  That was a good sign.

 On the first day of school funny Ellie refused to let me take a picture of her in front of the house.  I brought my camera to take a couple of pictures at the school, and as you can see she refused to smile or look like she was enjoying herself at all.  She immediately found the babies and busied herself with their needs. 

 She told me to leave, and so I did.  She loves to talk about how she just "marches" right up to her preschool all by herself.  In the past month she has grown-up so much.  She dresses herself, gets her teeth brushed and tries to fix her hair every preschool morning.  She can buckle her own car seat, and she continues to be a big help with Nathan.  It seems like I have such grown-up conversations with her too. 

She loves everything about preschool.  She especially loves the songs she is learning, and I have heard her singing them to Nathan on several occasions.  She definitely has no problem being away from me!  I sure love this girl and am glad she has something she loves to look forward to.

Kindergarten!

Jared started Kindergarten!

Jared is one of those "cool cat" kind of guys.  In a house full of emotion, he keeps his cool and goes with the flow.  Any talk of starting kindergarten was met with a blase attitude like sure he'd go if he had to, but he certainly wasn't overly excited about it.

He looked awesome in his BYU shirt and his new Nike's he's been dying to wear. 

On the first day his teacher read "The Kissing Hand" to the parents and kids and then gave each child a Hershey kiss to give to his parent.  I didn't want to leave--Jared was too excited about getting a Hershey kiss for himself that he didn't glance my direction once when I left.

Sending your child off to Kindergarten is a rite of passage--it's like the first step to giving them true independence.  And here, it feels even worse, because Kindergarten is all day.  That's over six hours a day where he'll be in someone else's care.  Six hours that I don't know what he's doing. 

He seemed to enjoy the first day, but didn't want to go back.  He told me he was excited for the first day, but now he'd rather stay home.  He was worried about getting on the right bus and none of my reassuring helped him.  His sweet teacher stepped in and gave him a little extra attention for the next couple of days to assure him that he was getting on the right one.

Six hours is LONG for a little boy.  He comes home very tired.  I know in a few weeks he'll adjust to the schedule and school will be fine, but it is hard in the meantime.  The teacher sent home a note reminding the parents of this, so apparently we are not the only ones struggling.

One night, shortly after school started I was laying by him at bedtime talking about his day.  He said, "Mom, I almost cried today at school because I was thinking about all the fun memories I have of being at home with you in the day."  My heart broke, and I knew exactly how he felt.  I wanted to tell him he never had to go back to school--that he could stay with me forever. 

I'm pretty sure Jared felt like his life of having fun was over.  The next morning Jared woke up early so Scott spent some time with him building Legos.  Jared was a new man after that.  He seems to do much better after he's had some play time with his dad in the morning. 

Back to School!

I don't know how it happened so quickly, but the summer is offically over.  School started two weeks ago for the girls!  They, of course, are thrilled to be back in school and love their teachers.  Both girls have at least one good friend from last year in class with them, which makes school even more fun.

Look out 4th grade...here comes Kaitlyn!

Brynn loves everything about 2nd grade!

These girls are growing so fast!  They are both one of the tallest in their class.  Aren't they beautiful!  I miss having them at home with me.  They are both so diligent about their school work and start their homework the minute they get home. 

It is a bit difficult getting them ready to go and out the door on time in the morning...it's hard to get ready fast when you have a book in your hand and you're trying to read the entire morning!  I never thought I'd tell my kids to stop reading, but these girls have a hard time doing anything else.  They definitely try to multi-task and Kaitlyn told me she wished their was an invention where she could read in the shower.

Have a great year girls!

Garage Sale Goodies

All summer long the kids begged me to let them hold a lemonade stand.  Thoughts of sitting with the kids in the hot summer sun for seemingly endless hours on our quiet neighborhood street tucked away from any potential customers made me want to evade the subject each time.

They continued to beg, and beg, and beg.

And then I remembered the time my mom let us have a lemonade stand during a garage sale we had.  She even made homemade cinnamon rolls for us to sell--I was old enough to know homemade cinnamon rolls took a lot of effort to make, and I remember thinking that my mom must really  love us to do this.  Of course the cinnamon rolls were a big hit of our sale, and I remember neighbors buying several at a time.

So when I heard a family from our ward (Steel's) was having a garage sale along with several other neighbors I decided I should jump on the chance to create a great memory with my kids.  All their children are grown and they were happy to have my kids set up their lemonade stand during their garage sale.

And of course, I made cinnamon rolls for my kids to sell--so they would know that I loved them enough to do that too.  (It was a good thing too since the morning we held our sale it was overcast and cool.  A perfect day to sit outside for a couple of hours, but not the perfect day to sell ice-cold lemonade.)  Scott helped think of the slogan for their signs "Garage Sale Goodies."

We all had a blast, and I'm grateful I had this opportunity to create a positive memory with my family.  The Steel's and their neighbors were very generous with the kids and made several purchases.  Brother Steel taught my kids about sales and so all four were yelling, "Ice-cold lemonade, Homemade Cinnamon Rolls" to every potential customer who walked by.  The kids manned their sale for about an hour and a half and made about $30 to split between Kaitlyn, Brynn and Jared.  Not bad for a summer day!

Best Quote of the Day:
Jared was beginning to get thirsty and complained to me.  I told him he was welcome to have a cup of lemonade (I could already tell the bulk of the profits was not going to be from their lemonade sales) or I had a water bottle in the car.  Jared quickly jumped on the water bottle choice and exclaimed, "I don't want to give us a bad bargain!  I'll take the water." 

The idea of a "bad bargain" kept all the kids from eating and drinking their products.

Book Reports

Before school starts again, (only 10 more days of summer for us) I thought I should write about Brynn's 1st grade year of book reports.  To challenge Brynn, whose reading level was already several grades ahead when she started 1st grade, her teacher had her read a chapter book and then do a book report "project."  She made a Candy Land type of game based on the characters and plot of one book, she made a diorama for another and a mobile for another.  She read so fast and finished her projects so quickly her teacher told her she was going to run out of ideas for Brynn.  That made Brynn only more excited--she had plenty of her own ideas!

Her last project took her a bit more time.  Brynn read The BFG by Roald Dahl and wanted to make a timeline of the book for her project.  I was thinking beginning, middle and end.  Brynn obviously went well beyond that.

Brynn had a full page written for every heading--"Before the Beginning", "Beginning", "After the Beginning", "Before the Middle", "After the Middle", etc. After each written page she illustrated it with wonderful drawings.  She was very careful throughout the entire project. 

Her finished report was over 20 pages long.  She taped them all together in a time line fashion and literally had one of the longest reports ever!  I was impressed by her hard work, and her teacher was amazed again by her creativity and writing ability.  She is one smart cookie!

Can't Get Enough!

Every one of us is mesmerized by this little boy.  How can we not be...just look at him!

Nathan is already 8 months old!  I realize more now than ever how fast time flies by.  Nate barely has some blonde peach fuzz on his head.  It sticks straight up and reminds me of his cousin Sam.

Nathan loves to eat real food and threw a fit today during church when the Sacrament was passed--he was not about to let us leave him out of a little bread and water!  (Obviously he'd like to eat the grass too).  He loves a tray full of Cheerios or baby food puffs and even enjoyed our fresh bread this weekend.  It is nice that he can feed himself some of these finger foods now so I can put him in his chair while I fix dinner, and he is content.

He has the highest pitch squeal you've ever heard--it's piercing to the ears and can either mean he's very happy or he's very mad.  I think a couple people at church got an ear full of it today.

Nathan definitely prefers his mom to anyone else.  It looks like his first two teeth are on the verge of poking out--we can finally see them.  He is so easy-going and puts up with a lot from his siblings--especially his little Ellie mom.  He even seems to like some of the antics she puts him up to. 

Nathan leans forward from a sitting position and puts his hands down like he is going to crawl, but his feet are in the way.  It is hilarious, although he gets frustrated.  It is nice that he hasn't been in too much of a hurry to be mobile--life will take on a new level of excitement when he's on the go.