Hannah as a first grader

This is Hannah on her first day of first grade. She and her friend Emily are wearing coordinating outfits which is funny because it wasn't planned, and they did the same thing in Kindergarten (also unplanned) so now they are planning on continuing the tradition. And they are both missing the same top tooth! I asked Hannah how school was and she said that first grade was easier than kindergarten. She explained that now she knows more Spanish so she can understand the teacher better (for math and science). We started car pooling with another family (3 boys, a 5th grader and twin 2nd graders) that lives in our neighborhood. This weekend we played at the neighborhood park and Hannah asked if we could walk by their house on our way home "just in case they are outside playing." It made me smile. We did stop by their house for a visit. She seems to have grown a lot since Kindergarten with interacting with people she doesn't know as well. I love this girl so much. And I love that she loves school!

Jacob's first day of preschool

This is Jacob after his first day of preschool. Doesn't he look so happy? I was wondering how he would do especially since there were some criers in his class this morning, but once he pulled out a game, he was good. He had made a letter for his teacher and her aide and Hannah had written a letter to Miss Cindy also. Hannah's letter asked to be informed on how Jacob did in class and Miss Cindy wrote a letter back that Jacob had done great. She told me that he was just happy go lucky all day. I am so glad that he is finally in school, he has been ready for a while now and it is so fun for him to have this thing that is just his.

Girls camp

I just got back from girls camp and it was so much fun! That is the first time I have been to camp since I was a young woman. Whew, pretty weird to be on the leader side of it this time. All the girls were great, I love them so much. Hopefully I will get some pictures from other people because I didn't bring a camera. I went up on the high ropes C.O.P.E. course ( don't know what it stands for) which is a course of logs or ropes thirty feet off the ground (you wear a harness and have a belay person on the ground like in rock climbing). I was surprised at how much my legs were shaking when I got up on the course. I loved hearing the girls' testimonies and getting to know them better. After snuggling with my kids when I got home, I took a shower and slept for about six hours.

Hannah's photo shoot

Natalie's birthday present to Hannah was a photo shoot. Hannah was beyond excited. Natalie said that she underestimated Hannah's stamina for having her picture taken. They took over 240 pictures with multiple outfits, backgrounds, and props. That is love.

Major bling

I really love this one

Hannah and Jeff at Carol's retirement party

How I love this girl! I need to get more pictures of her now that school is out. I recently bought her some new hairbows and rehung her hair bow holder that had fallen down. She was putting the hair bows back on and told me that she was putting them in alphabetical order.

Me: Do you mean color order?

H: No, alphabetical

Me: for them to be alphabetical they would need names

H: I call this one Twirly

Lego chick house

Jacob loves legos and he loves these little fuzzy chicks. Here is a lego house he built for them

Chick in an airplane

The two chicks in front are on a white sofa. Notice the blue and yellow coffee table. The slanted thing beyond the table is their tv. The two chicks in the back room are sleeping on their yellow beds.

Turning over a new leaf!

I hereby make the goal to blog at least once a week. Here goes.

Here is my boy making a silly face while stirring something. I think Jeff was making cupcakes with them. Yes, our banana holder is empty. sigh.

I love this picture. We have Jacob wear ties to church because A. I think he looks adorable, and B. I am hoping that he will just be used to it and it will never be an issue. It's an issue. As he was sitting with my dad at church he complained that he doesn't like the top button of his shirt being buttoned. My dad quietly confided: I don't like it either.

I love my boy

Fatal lens error

Part of why I haven't been blogging (aside from laziness) is that our camera has experienced a fatal lens error which means it is irrevocably broken which makes me mad. We have a back up camera that is so large as to be humorous and I don't like my technology to change so I haven't done much with it yet. Bah. So for any one who may be concerned, we did have Christmas. It was really wonderful, the kids got plenty of toys. Thanksgiving happened also. Oh, and I should probably mention that I moved the piano into the kitchen to make room for Hannah's perform-a-play play date (disaster) and tore a big chunk out of the linoleum (and made some serious indentions)(also a disaster) so we are currently tiling the kitchen (quickly becoming a disaster). So send some happy thoughts my way!

More snow pics

Kids playing in the snow

Hannah missing her two bottom teeth!
She lost them over Christmas break and it was a really big deal for her.

I don't know why this picture is tiny. urgghh.

More stuff

Lots of snow for us! School was cancelled for a whole week and we had soo much fun making snowpeople, snowfighting, and sledding. Here is Jacob refusing to smile just to tick Jeff off.

That's me but my face is blurred for some reason. Hannah and I made a snowgirl

While the guys made a snowMAN. Using all stuff from the garage.

A bunch of stuff that happened since I last posted

Jacob got a different bike (Thomas the train). After we got home I noticed this little warning. What kind of bike comes with training wheels and no brakes!?!

Here he is giving me a flower. This kid's noggin is massive. His 3+years helmet has become too small so I went to the 5+ helmet and it is so snug he doesn't want to wear it.

Kids

This kid definitely takes after me and his Mimi. How does he keep his knees up when he is asleep? Why is his puppy's shirt ALWAYS pulled off of one shoulder? Why does the puppy's shirt being off one shoulder bug me sooo much?

Hannah decided to flop onto the floor and Henry decided to sit on her.

Why I can't keep my house tidy...

Jacob decided to decorate the entryway.

Hannah decided to add a sign. Good thing we will be borrowing Hazel over Thanksgiving weekend.

Living with males

I most certainly was not the one who tied the monkey to the ceiling fan but that was my candle stick and my bloody foot.

Summer list 2010

I loved this idea that I saw on a blog and so we made one for our family. I am so impressed that we will actually finish everything that we set out to do before summer ends (not one of my strong points) so I think we will do this for each season.

The borrowed dog

Every now and then I get a hankering for a pet. Fortunately I have a friend who was willing to loan me her dog. The kids were ecstatic. Hannah really wanted her (the dog) to play fetch. The dog was really not interested.
But she was always good for a snuggle. Unfortunately, she was a REALLY good dog and it made me want to just keep her. Jacob really wanted her to sleep in his room at night so we let him keep his door cracked in case she wanted to go in there (she didn't, but it made him hopeful). As soon as we got him in bed, he would start calling for her over and over again until about 3 minutes passed and he finally gave up. That is a long three minutes.

Shooting of the rockets

On our list of things to do this summer was building a rocket
Hannah was more interested in getting her picture taken with the rocket than anything else.

It took a lot longer than we had planned and the kids were pretty rocketed out. Still, glad we did it.

Hannah's first day of school

Here is a very late post of Hannah on her first day of Kindergarten. She is doing first position.

The Beach

They really did have fun, I promise.

Practicing first position. The next pic is gross, fair warning.

Jacob definitely ate a fair amount of sand that day.

River City Cafe and the delinquency of minors

While at the beach we went to one of Jeff's fav places to eat (I like it too). It is a real relaxed sort of place where writing on the walls and furniture is not looked down upon in the least.

So we let the kids dabble in a little graffiti while we waited for our burgers.

JW + MW 4 ever!