First Day of School!

I had an excited group of kids this morning.  They were awake and ready to go by 7:30, and begging for me to take them to the bus at 8.  Unfortunately the bus doesn't come until 8:25!

My very big first grader!  She told me she had a good day and a bad day.  But the bad part was that she got a blister......so all in all a great day!  She told me the best part of the day was riding the bus and getting to see Mrs. Justice.

A beautiful smile!

And we have our second grader!

He made sure to pack his basketball for the first day of school.  He has been missing cliff ball with his friends.

Carter's favorite part of the first day of school.....gym class!

And a few more pictures of our family:

Off to a great start!

Open House

Proof of the crazy amount of errands we have to run this week:  

Dawson's paperwork for preschool which required two trips to the doctors (drop off and pick up), two trips to the dentist (drop off and pick up) and his supplies.

Carter's school medications which required two trips to the doctor, and two trips to the pharmacy.  

Then two big bags of school supplies that took me three stores to find everything.

Sounds silly, but I was awfully proud because it was a lot of work getting these three ready!

Tonight was open house and the kids love going in to see their new classroom and meet their new teacher.  Carter was running around before bed yelling "How many more days until school? I can't wait to go!"

Ava was a little more reserved, but she looked happy seeing all her friends from last year.  I love them both and I'm going to miss them!

End of Summer

Only five days of summer left!  We are getting in the last fun memories before next week.

What a fun little hideout he found!  I looked round the corner and just saw little feet sticking out and sure enough, there he is playing on his sister's camera.

I don't know if I should be worried, but we visited a friend's house and this kid really took to skateboarding!

We are at the pool every warm day that we can find.  There have been some beautiful days!  This little girl told me today, I don't want to talk about school it makes my eyes leaky.  Sure enough, we have had a few leaky eye moments but I'm praying for a better year.

We visited pump it up and played some air hockey, their favorite.

Family Camp out with the cub scouts

They had a ball just running around the woods, playing butcher and building shelters out of sticks.  I'm pretty sure Dawson came up with the idea but he was definitely the butcher chasing around all the other kids pretending to be pigs.

Daddy took the kids on some dates.  Carter and him went to the golf tournament.  They were very inspired and have been playing golf tournament in the back yard every second that they get.

While Ava choose sushi for her date.  I was pretty jealous because she went to a really nice sushi restaurant around here for dinner.  YUM!!

Dawson picked hot dogs.  Plain.  No ketchup.  Do not even say the word ketchup around him!

I love time home with my three.  Summers are the best!

Our Little Fishes!

Our main form of summer entertainment is always the pool in our neighborhood.  I like that there are always other neighborhood kids to play with, and it provides hours of entertainment for us.  Carter's newest trick this year: he can use and retrieve dive sticks from the bottom of the deep end (which is only five feet deep).  He also loves to play with the squirt guns in the pool.

Ava also showed me how she can touch the bottom of the deep end!  She loves to play mermaid at the pool and do front flips underwater.

Dawson is another little swimming fish.  He is really close to doing a front flip, any day now!  He loves to play with his brother, usually some sort of battle with squirt guns in the pool.

We are going to have to make sure we get there a lot this week, only one full week of summer vacation left!

Summer Memories

Summer Reading Treats:  our next coupon from the library was for free donuts!!  The kids were very excited because it was for peanut free donuts too.  We've been keeping up with our chapter books, but I haven't been as good about having a family dinner with each one.  But because I use the blog to help me remember things here they are: James and the Giant Peach, Chronicles of Narnia; The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe and now we are about halfway through Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.  I love reliving my favorite books with my kids.  I've been waiting awhile for Harry Potter because certain scenes are intense, but it was time.  So far Carter has been very interested and he will yell at me "No, don't stop reading, it's the best book EVER!"  I'm so glad he shares my love for this series.  He is typically a very non-fiction sort of guy but Harry Potter has really captured his imagination.

The other morning Ava told me she wanted to give me a massage and lead me to the bathroom.  She set up pillows, blankets, and all the lotions she could find, and then gave me a surprisingly long and very enjoyable massage!

Dawson helped too, for about five minutes.  I loved every second of the massage and even fell into a very relaxed, semi-sleep state.  Now I know what I'm going to ask her to give me for my birthday, haha!!

We've been doing a lot of science experiments together.  Here is an experiment in density with honey, oil and water in it.  Then we had to test float/sink properties of legos and nuts.  We also grew crystals, made a potato chip bag rocket, a weather vane from a pringles container and I even did the pepper/dish soap trick.  So much fun!

Dawson likes to be the first, and he was my first child to cut his own hair with scissors.  Thankfully it was an easy fix.  Poor kid has had a tough week because he got stung by two wasps on Sunday (boy, can he scream!) and today at the pool he scraped his toes pretty badly.  Kind neighbors came over to try to help him by bringing band-aids and he shouted "I HATE BAND-AIDS!"  He is a very opinionated small guy, and nobody try to convince him otherwise!

Speaking of opinions, I cut up cucumbers for lunch and he screamed at me "Get that poisonous seaweed off my plate!"  We are working on this little kiddos tact, for sure.

Lazy Saturday morning, playing board games with Daddy.  Thanks to Daddy who took over for me after playing board games with Doc for two hours before everyone else got up.

These kiddos and their imagination, it just cracks me up.  After growing and reading about crystals, Carter became convinced there was a cave hidden underneath the garden.  The kids decided the cave was going to have gold and crystals and they were going to be rich!  So they all got dressed in their warmest clothes (it's going to be cold in the cave) and despite the 80 degree temperatures started digging for the cave.  Carter took the dogs tie out and looped it around his waist so that he couldn't fall into the cave.  They also asked for masks in case they couldn't breathe in the cave.  Thanks to Daddy we found these painter's masks and they loved it!  Dawson had me cracking up because he said "As soon as I find gold I'll never have to sleep in my bed again!"  What a silly kid, he realized that our little money for sleeping in your own bed game wouldn't work if he had gold because he could buy his own toys.

We also had a play date at a park with my cousin and her family.  They live in Brooklyn, so we don't see them often and I've never met either of her kids.  We had a good time, and her oldest daughter really enjoyed spending time with Ava.  

And now the impending dread: school will be starting soon.  We have less than two weeks left and I know I'm going to miss these two when they go back to school.  I'm praying for a great year for everyone!

Jackson Belden Music and Balloon Fest

We ventured out on friday to go to the Music and Balloon Fest.  It promised to be a good time, there was supposed to be twenty hot air balloons launching in the evening and my Uncle was the band playing at 9:30.  Unfortunately it was too windy for the balloons, but we had a good time anyway.

We really enjoyed seeing my cousin Johnny, who also plays with the Houserockers.  They were a little intimidated at first, but he was very sweet and played with the kids so they warmed up pretty quickly.

One of the fun things we got to do:  sit in the cockpit of a helicopter.

Ava also enjoyed it, but Carter loved playing in the army tent.  There was football, basketball, cornhole and even a pull up bar.

We camped out backstage with our family.  I brought the kids glow sticks for the evening time, and they loved it.

The kids got to stand on the stage steps and watch the concert.  Ava and Carter had the longest attention spans.  Carter was really upset and he didn't want to leave, but it was 11 and Ava and Dawson were both crying and ready to go.

Dawson enjoyed kicking the beach balls on the hill during the concert when he lost interest.  

Wilderness Center

We went and visited the Wilderness Center this week and had a great time.  We were joined by one of Ava's favorite little friends from preschool.

I caught them holding hands together on the way to the pond.

We did a frog walk with one of the naturalists from the center.

Although we did see some frogs in the pond we were unable to catch any.  We did find lots of salamanders, crayfish, dragonfly larvae and all kinds of other cool stuff!

We took a hike and fed the fish and geese.  Ava loved finding the beaver lodges on the pond.

They also built a new nature's playscape which is amazing.  The kids loved having a storm drain that they were allowed to climb into, usually I don't let them.    

Logs for walking on

They had two play houses, this tee pee made from tree branches and vine and a log cabin.

THE MUD KITCHEN!!!!  They loved playing with the spatulas, muffin tins, pots and pans, egg beaters, spoons and so much more.

They had a pile of rocks to climb on and the kids played lions together.  There was also another spot called "dig to china" with shovels and gravel for them to dig away.  It was a fun day!

What a beautiful place to visit!  I'm sure we will be back!  It was a perfect summer day where they got to learn a little and play a lot.