First Day of School 2011

The craziness that is getting the kids back in school has begun.  Monday was the first day of School.

First I got Emma out the door for her first day of second grade.  She was very excited.  I was glad that I was able to leave the boys at home with Scott while I took her to school.

Then when I got home I got Alan boy ready for the kindergarten open house.  

Of course the other boys had to get in on the pictures.

This year they had the kindergartners just come in for and open house on Monday.  Then they came in one day during the week for evaluations.  Alan's teacher used the words "very advanced" when she was telling me about how he did in math.

At the open house they did a really cute little scavenger hunt.  Bryce LOVED every bit of it.  I think he thought he was going to get to go to kindergarten too.

The last stop was checking out the kindergarten playground.

I spent the rest of the day watching the clock and hoping I didn't get a phone call from the school.

When we got there at the end of the day Emma was all smiles.

I can't believe the kids are getting so big.  This year Emma will be in second grade, Alan will be in kindergarten, and Logan will be in preschool 3 days a week.  Meaning I be home alone with Brycey 7 hours a week!!!!  Crazy!!!

Getting Ready to go Back to School

 All summer Emma had been wanting to have a "late night" with her friends and the kids were wanting to have a pool party with their friends and all summer I planned on letting them.  Then suddenly I realized that summer was just about over and I never let the kids have their parties.  So on the Friday before school started I let them have their parties.  It was crazy having two parties at the house in one day, but the kids had a lot of fun so it was totally worth it.

We passed out invites to friends in our neighborhood.

The  kids ate like 40 something popsicles.

They danced in the bubbles

 And the popped about 250 water balloons,

The a few hours later we have Emma's night owl party.

We invited all the girls in her class, as kinda a get to know you type thing.  It was hard to get everyone invited (since we didn't know everyone), but we managed to do it.

When the girls arrived we still had the bounce house set up from the party earlier so I let the girls have fun bouncing while everyone arrived.  The girls had a LOT of fun.  I let them eat huge bowls of popcorn while we started the movie and then we took a brief intermission to make ice cream sundaes.

BTW, do you like that piece of furniture in the picture?  That is not its permanent home but I thought it would work will for the sundae table.  I got it at DI and I have plans to totally redo it.

I let the girls go totally wild with the ice cream.  They got to put on as many toppings as they wanted. (they went through 3 cans of whip cream.)

From what I have heard all the girls had a really good time.

While Bryce entertained a bunch of little girls, Scott to Alan and Logan for a quick camping trip.  From what I hear they also had a lot of fun.  The boys loved hanging out by a fire and sleeping in a tent.

Saturday morning was the primary bike parade.  The boys were still gone so just Emma was in it.  They made their way through the neighborhood and got treat when they were done.

  

Once Scott and the boys got home we spent the rest of the day running all the errands in the world.  That may have been a slight exaggeration, but since it was over 100 degrees out side it sure felt like all the errands in the world.  Our last errand of the day was getting on new hermit crabs to make up for giving up our baby kitty.

On Sunday after church Emma and I had a little fun trying on new outfits to the first day of school.  

What ever will we choose????

Our Awesome Vacation - Day 5

Day 5 was our final day.  That morning we once again got up, loaded up the van and headed out as early as possible.  Then we headed off for the San Diego Zoo.

We were planning on heading home after the zoo, so to make our zoo visit go a little faster and more relaxing we took the bus tour.  It was a double decker bus and we got to sit up on the top.  (It was very exciting)

The tour was great and we got to see a ton of animals.

The Polar Bears were super fun.  One of them was eating carrots (which the kids thought was very funny) and the other one was in  the water playing with a ball.  He kept throwing it at the glass over and over again.

After the tour we said goodbye to these wonderful people and decided to check out the zoo a little more before starting our very long drive home.

We decided to check out the reptile house and the Children's Discovery Zoo.  You should have seen Logan.  He was so excited he couldn't help but dance and skip around.  We also let each of the kids have a turn with the camera.  Emma chose to take pictures of the porcupine and Logan got a great shot of some mice.  Kids are silly.

Scott took the kids into the petting zoo and I took pictures from a safe distance.

OH and I didn't get a picture of it, but while we were walking around looking at animals, some zoo keepers walked past with a leopard on a leash.  It was pretty cool.  They warned us that it was not safe to get to close to it, but it was very cool.

Then after stopping off at the gift shop and a grocery stop we started the drive home, which seemed to go on forever.  I think it was because we had a couple of long breaks on the way and driving at night through the desert is crazy.  You just drive on and on and nothing ever changes.  It is just you and the darkness and the lines on the road mile after mile.

When we got home we were totally exhausted.

As soon as he was awake, Grandma and Grandpa brought Bryce home.  We had all missed him so much and I was especially glad to see my sweet baby again.  Bryce on the other hand seem glad to know we were back, but also seemed a little mad at all of us, especially me, for ditching him.  In the following days I also realized the extent to which Bryce had been spoiled at Grandma's house.   He now expected that if he was sitting in the family room playing, someone would be sitting there playing with him at all times, and if he was in his high chair eating, someone would be sitting next to him just watching him eat.  I humored him for a few days, but then slowly he got used to the idea of me being able to do the dishes and stuff while he was eating or going in the play room to play with out me and he forgot all about our betrayal of not taking him with us to Disneyland.  Next time we will let him come too.

And possibly I should have just sat by him while he ate.

Our Awesome Vacation - day 4

Looking back through the pictures I realized that I didn't take any pictures at the hotel.  To bad.  I think the biggest reason why was because we didn't ever really spend much time at the hotel.  We where just go go go everyday and our hotel room was just somewhere to crash and then shower before going again.

Day 4 we were in Sea World.  What a fun place!  It was a first for ALL of us.  We started the day over at the Arctic Adventure area.    Emma and I kinda got separated from the pack because Emma wanted to ride the Helicopter Adventure ride (or whatever it was called) and Logan was too short to ride and although Alan's mysterious fever had not come back we didn't want to push him with a ride warning against possible motion sickness.

We met back up with everyone at the Shamu show.

Guy, Kristin, and Adam where right up front.

We spent the rest of the afternoon catching a couple of shows and checking out aquariums in between.

I think our favorite where the Sharks.  There is this tunnel that goes through the shark tank.  So cool.

The boys and Logan especially really loved the Piranhas.  They were so pretty and sparkly.

We all played together at the sesame street play area.  The kids love the rides and Logan was like a monkey or something climbing through the nets.

There were tons of cool aquariums and open tanks.  All the kids got to pet some stingrays and other fish and pick up star fish.  They thought it was so neat.

The drive home from Sea World was also quite the adventure.  We found ourselves in some serious need of gas, Scott cell phone was dead (due to the weird reception or lack there of we had in Sea World), mine was near dead, and we didn't pass any gas stations on the way back to the Hotel.  Lucky we made it back (the gas gauge reading like 1 mile or something) and got directions to a gas station and a cell phone charger before heading back out to meet up with Guy and Kristin at Claim Jumpers for dinner.

Our Awesome Vacation - Day 3

Day 3 was not as perfect as day 2.  We planned on heading down to San Diego after we left Disneyland that day.  So before heading off to the park for the day we loaded up the van and checked out of the hotel.

Our first stop when we got into the park was the Mad Hatter for some mouse ears.  It was there that we realized Alan had a fever.  That's right, here we are in Disneyland, we have checked out of our hotel and don't have another hotel until that night, and Alan has a fever.  I had brought medicine on the trip, but it was back in the van at the hotel parking lot.  Luckily, Disneyland has fabulous first aide.  It is more like a mini hospital and it was free.  So we were able to get Alan some Tylenol without even leaving the park.

Since Alan obviously wasn't feeling well, he sat in the stroller and went with Scott to go pick up some fast passes to use later while Emma, Logan and I rode a few rides and went through Sleeping Beauty's castle.  I love disneyland, but one thing I don't like is that unless you have been there with little kids you never know when something is suddenly going to be scary.  For the most part it is okay, but sometimes it can cause a little panic to a 3 year old.  Sleeping Beauty's Castle was one of those places.  Poor Logan, we were about half way through it (with a ton of people behind us) when Logan and I realized things were going to get a lot scarier before they got better.

After the castle we met back up with Alan and Scott and headed over to Toon Towne.  First up.... Meet Minnie and Mickey.  We let the kids pick with one they wanted to meet.  No surprise that the boys wanted to meet Mickey and Emma wanted to meet Minnie.

There was a picture of Logan meeting Mickey, but I can't find it on my computer.

We spent quite a bit of time in Toon Towne.  It was kinda the perfect low keys fun for our poor Alan Boy.

While the boys and I played around Emma and Daddy went on the roller coaster.

You can tell which ones are Scott and Emma.  Scott has his arms up.

Toon Towne was also fun because the characters were out all over the place.  After a very healthy lunch :) we played a little more and ...

Alan decied he was feeling up to a ride so we went on the Roger Rabbit ride.  Logan spent the whole ride hiding his face.  Warning: Even if you child can handle Space Mountain that doesn't mean he can handle Roger Rabbit or a walk through a castle.

Next we met up with Guy and Kristin and took turns going on Indiana Jones (Logan was too short and possibly it would have been the last scare he could take.)

Alan decided he was feeling up to riding and he got to drive the Jeep.

Logan Cried and Cried and Cried because he REALLY wanted to ride the Indiana Jones Ride.  Poor kid.  Sometimes it is so hard to be little.

Then we hung out a little and the kids had fun taking pictures.

We decided to head back over to Fantasyland, or what ever it is called, before calling it a day.

I think the long days were starting to wear on poor little Logan a little.   While waiting in line to ride Dumbo he decided he just wanted to be alone.  At this point we also had Adam with us.  We kept getting weird looks.  I could tell people were trying to decide if Emma, Adam, and Alan  were triples or may be Adam and Alan were twins and we had 4 kids all relatively close in age.

I think this picture pretty clearly illustrates how we were felling by the time we rode the Casey Jr. Train.  It was getting dark and it was time to head out.

On the way out we let the kids each pick a souvenir and with that we were on the shuttle and our time at the Happiest Place On Earth was over.  As you can see Emma got an Eeyore pillow pet, Alan got a Mickey Mouse Light Saber and Logan got a set of Toy Story Figurines.  I hope I never forget how cute Logan was talking about his Rexy and Widdle Woody and all his widdle guys.

Day 3 definitely had a lot more hiccups than the perfection of day 2, but it was still a great day. And the kids were still so good and sweet.