first grade

things we've learned from Kate's first 2 days of first grade:
1. Kate can actually wake up before 9am!
2. I probably shouldn't give her a special new back-to-school bracelet because she will probably lose it on the bus and spend her whole first day crying and worrying about it. :( Also she may be so excited about lunch recess that she leaves her lunchbox in the cafeteria and then has to worry about that lost item too!
3. Her teacher is awesome. She looked for and found both items after school (after I couldn't find them!) and texted me to tell me. Big bonus points!
4. Katelyn's habit of writing me little notes when she's upset about something will indeed carry over to school. Her teacher told me she wrote on her math paper "I want to call my mom and go home" when she was sad about her bracelet.
5. Katelyn loves school! Day 2 was great, partly because she got to try out the "reading station" for the first time. She has cute friends and a fun teacher and loves all-day school. :)

Mr. Photogenic!

Owen has decided the last couple of weeks that he wants to smile for the camera!  It's so cute, all I have to do is call his name and he breaks out into a big smile.

 For example- who's the only one looking at the camera?? and smiling??

 and again here:

What a cute little blondie.

Watch out world, here comes Owen!

Here's what else Owen learned this week:

A week at Grandma's!!

Eric had the idea to take the week of his birthday off and have a "staycation" at his parents' house!  Of  course we were up for that!  And it was just as fun as we imagined it would be!  

First we had Cleo's blessing!  Eric got this too-bright 4 generation picture:

 And we got a family picture with everyone except Kurtis!

 Whitney had fun with Cleo all week

 And so did Owen actually!

 We enjoyed Grandpa's new fire pit a couple of times!

 We took the boat up to Pineview!  The weather was hot and perfect, the water was deep about 2 feet from shore, and the girls spent hours playing in it! and getting boat rides from Grandpa. Here they are about to do cannonballs into the lake, so fun!

 Owen LOVED the water, and finally learned how to splash this week!

 The next day we went to Lagoon!

 The girls were so BRAVE and went on a TON of rides and several roller coasters!  Whitney screamed in delight on every ride, and Katelyn clenched her eyes shut and held on, but as soon as she got off she was always laughing and talking about how "awesome" the ride was. :)

 This was the only ride Owen went on, and he LOVED LOVED it!  He was just giggling and screeching the whole time as his horse went up and down.  So cute!

 We went to the water park area at Lagoon too for a couple of hours, we had to cool off!

 log ride

 Whit loving the "dino drop"

 The 4 grandkids- check out Cleo's cheeser!

 We all wore our Star Wars shirts

 We also went to the pool one day, a movie another day, and miniature golf another!  And we celebrated Eric's birthday- Now he's as old as me!  But I stopped taking pictures by then!  Here's Kate jumping off the diving board in her life jacket- she took it off and swam a ton in the pool, she's doing so good!

She called this the "star jump"

 Whit was brave and jumped off a bunch of times too!

 And Owen was his super cute self, hanging on to the wall and splashing!

We had such a great and relaxing week, thank you Grandma and Grandpa!

Oh and one last thing to record- on Eric's birthday Whitney was saying our family prayer at bedtime and she said " I'm grateful that my Dad had his birthday and I'm grateful that he still looks the same"  hahaha, I had told the girls the night before that in the morning they needed to say "good morning Old Dad" since it was his 30th birthday, so she must have thought he was going to age over night!! So awesome.  

parade and dance performance

check out the blond fuzz on top!

 whit never stops waving!

 waiting for their performance

 whit dancing

 kate's the tall one on the right with her curls bouncing.

this.is.summer.

July was full of classic summer activities for us, and we 

LOVED IT!

So here are the kids playing in the locker room after swimming lessons (2 weeks of tan-getting, confidence building fun!) I did the baby class with Owen and it was super fun to just have 30 minutes to play with him in the water!

 We went camping and it rained- of course!  and with no fires allowed it just wasn't quite the same.  

But still fun!

Owen loved the cantaloupe... 

 Kate wore my jacket since she forgot hers...maybe I shouldn't trust my 4 and 6 year olds to pack their own bags?? :)

 Yay for Payson Lakes!

 and yay for snuggle time, even though in our new tent we have plenty of room!

 Eric got to come to swim lessons one day, so he took some very bright pictures :)

First- Whit in her class. She learned to glide and almost float and she's really good at going under and blowing bubbles now.  I wish she could have taken level 1 and actually learned to swim, but you have to be 5 years old.  Next year!

 Owen doing the only thing he learned, besides just getting used to the water- hanging on the the edge!  He's really good at it!

 Kate doing something, Eric didn't get a good pic of her.  She learned a couple of new strokes and improved her kicking and worked on being able to swim longer between breaths- like 5 seconds instead of 3.  

 I tried to take a picture of Owen's first tooth, but you can't really see it.  But it's there, tooth number one at just under 6 months!

 We went to some fireworks for the 24th and we thought they started at 10 pm, 

which is already SUPER late,

but then they didn't start until 11!!  

We played with glow sticks while waiting!

 And Whit decided she wanted to take the training wheels off her bike!  She's doing pretty good, it's going to take a lot more practice for her than it took for Kate, since she's 2 years younger!  I just think it's hilarious that they are both doing this in the same summer!

 And the OLYMPICS are here!

I LOVE LOVE the Olympics, and we sure have been enjoying watching hours of amazing sports day after day!  For the Opening Ceremonies we invited Elizabeth and KJ over and I made Olympic rings doughnuts.  They were both easier than I thought they would be, and they tasted better then I thought they would!

 And lastly, we've enjoyed a couple of great summer thunderstorms!  

This one on Saturday was fun because Eric was home and he convinced everyone to go out in it!  Owen and I only briefly, because as you can see from this look on his face "mom that was kind of fun but really wet and crazy and I don't want to go back out please rescue me"- Owen got soaked and didn't love it!  

 But Eric and the girls did!  

So cute.  Eric is so much fun. 

I just love how crazy he is sometimes!!  and so do the girls, obviously!

And now we're off to make the most of our last couple of weeks of summer!  Where does the time go??