Back to School

The kids have been so excited for school to start up again.  Rachel had helped all the kids choose out their clothes and had laid them out nicely in their rooms the night before.  They all woke up Monday morning at six and got dressed, combed their hair, and ate breakfast before I even came downstairs.  Kale was even wearing his backpack -- he was pretty disappointed to learn that he had to wait 5 hours before he even had to leave.

Rachel has been so excited to wear her new school clothes, so of course she wanted pictures on every morning to show off her awesome choices.  And, if you're taking pictures of one, you inevitably have to take pictures of the others as well.

 

Kale loved his one day of Kindergarten (even though he was disappointed that we had to come with him).  We really like his teacher, Mrs. Bodell.  Unfortunately, she is going to be gone for most of the first 2 months -- she just had a baby and so is taking maternity.  I figure Kale will be fine, although I still feel secretly kind of nervous about switching teachers after 2 months.

Yesterday Kale had his Kindergarten testing.  He was disappointed that I had to come to school with him AGAIN.  He is so excited to go today because he gets to go just by himself.  I had to just wait in the hall during his testing (which I hated -- I wanted to see how he did).  Luckily, Kale only has one speaking volume -- super loud -- so I could hear everything he was saying.  He did a great job and I loved hearing him chatter away to his new teacher about anything, and everything, that came to his mind during the pauses between testing.

 Everyone seems pleased with their new teachers, and I feel pretty hopeful for the school year.  Tonight is back to school night (which I weirdly love!), so I'll get to go and meet Rachel and Hallie's teachers and see how their classes run.  I love the first few weeks of school -- hooray for school!!

Remember in high school when you would think of creative ways to ask people to dances?  Well, I had "someone" ask me out similarly last night (I'm sure you can guess who that someone is).

We were just cleaning up dinner when someone knocked on the door.  Jon was washing pots and so asked me to get it.  When I opened the door there was a gift bag with a big J on it, and a yellow note inside.  Thus began a special scavenger hunt for me.  Jon had stopped on his way home from the airport and hidden clues around the neighborhood -- they were actually pretty far from our house; the kids and I had to drive to reach most of them.  The kids and I set off on the clue adventure while Jon stayed home to finish cleaning up.  The kids loved looking for the clues as we were driving, and they had so much fun trying to figure out where the clue was sending us next.  Hallie kept referring to whoever set up the scavenger hunt as "the man", thus keeping up the mystery of who could be sending us on this adventure.

One of the last clues said the date would be Saturday and then sent us back to the house to find out who was asking me.  When we walked in the front door, there were papers to follow on the ground, and then we were directed to look up and there was a string with a paper on it.  When we pulled on it, a whole ton of balloons fell out of the sky.

While we were gone Jon had taped up one of those plastic painting covers, and then filled it with balloons.  The letters of his name were written on the balloons, and we had to put the letters in order to find out who the mystery man was.  The kids were slightly stumped because they had thought Jon was the mystery man, but there were too many letters for Jon -- there was an extra N and Y.  Luckily, I knew just what to do.  So, an hour after we began, we solved the scavenger hunt mystery.  Looks like I've got a date with the best looking boy I know.  Wahoo -- I can't wait!

Kale's Birthday!!

Kale decided to have a family party at Trampoline Haven.  So, on Saturday we went to the trampoline place, and it was pretty cool.  They had all these different areas of trampolines.  One area had just big long trampolines and then at the end (and on the sides) there were trampolines on the walls, so you could just bounce all over the place.  There was a dodgeball area, a bunch of trampolines that landed you in a big foam pit so you could be brave and do whatever tricks you wanted, a zip-line (that also landed in a foam pit), and trampoline basketball.  The kids had such a great time!  They especially loved the foam pits and zip-line.  Kale loved showing us all his new ways to jump off the zip-line at the end -- he felt like he was pretty daring and cool.

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, at the very end of trampoline fun, Sky landed weird and twisted her leg somehow.  She was limping around for a couple days, but is doing just fine now.

 Here are a few pictures of Kale trying out his birthday toys -- oh, and also Sky.

 Check out this sweet cake.  Kale was certain he had to have this airplane cake that he found in one of my cookbooks (which is weird because he doesn't care one bit about planes or anything).  I tried to talk him into some different (a.k.a. easier) choices, but it had to be this one.  I think it turned out pretty good for my first effort at a cool cake.

 Of course, Kale had to have birthday cake with his cool Ninja Turtles mask on.

Kale is so happy to be 5 because it means he can finally go to Kindergarten.  He is pretty psyched.

And finally, here are a few random and hilarious pictures of Kale and Sky.  I came out of the laundry room one day and found Kale outside in this get-up (notice his jump rope lasso) -- because obviously, this is what real cowboys wear.

 Sky ate none of the dinner that we gave her last night, but felt perfectly happy eating all the leftover noodles out of this big strainer with the serving spoon.  What a nut!

The girls have been wanting to dress up in my clothes, shoes, jewelry, etc. and put on a fashion show.  I've been putting them off because it seemed like it would be too much of a hassle.  But, they finally convinced me to allow the dress-up party yesterday.  They had so much fun!  Here were the end results.

 Oh yeah, Kale also got in on the fun and dressed up in Jonny's clothes.  Kale thought it was so funny every time he would come out in a different shirt.  I would take a picture, the girls would go back and change, and Kale would say, "Do you want to get another picture just of me Mom?"  And so I would.  So here are a few just of Kale.

24th of July

Holidays are the best!  Jon took the whole day off, so we got to spend all day as a family.  We started off the day with a run (separate of course -- I could never keep up with Jon), and then went to the splash pad in Kaysville.  Sorry, no pictures -- I forgot the camera.  We spent a few hours there and the kids loved it even more than usual because Jon was willing to run through the freezing cold water with them a few times.

After the splash pad, we met up with the Snarr's for some swimming fun at our neighborhood pool (again, no pictures -- sorry).

We came back to our house and played until it was time for dinner.  Jon grilled up some hotdogs and hamburgers, and we had grilled zucchini and corn on the cob.  And of course, watermelon -- you can't have a barbecue without it.  We finished off the night with ice cream sandwiches and sparklers. 

 

Of course it was still light, but the kids didn't seem to mind doing sparklers with the sun still out.

 

It was a super fun day and I'm glad the Snarr's were here to help us celebrate.

Happy Birthday Sky Girl!!

Friday was Sky's birthday, and she was so excited for her little party.  We had Nick's kids staying with us for a few days and Anita, Ruth, Blake, and Baby Dawson came up to help us celebrate.

The kids were in charge of thinking up a few games for the party.  We played pin the crown on the princess (pictures were courtesy of Taylor, and the crowns were drawn and decorated by the girls) and hot potato, using a princess stuffed doll as the potato.  The big kids loved that they were in charge of the games, and I did too because that gave me more time to finish a few other things.

Sky got to choose dinner, so we ended up eating chicken nuggets and grapes.  Her first choice was actually cake and cookies, but I reminded her that we needed to eat real food first.  Do chicken nuggets really qualify?

We are so lucky to have spunky, little Sky in our family!  We love her so much.