How I keep in touch

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

We have a Kindergartener

Today was a really big day! Hannah's first day of school. Real school - in a real school building, for the entire day, teachers, desks and lots of learning. We're so proud of her and prepared for a long time for this day. I couldn't believe it finally came!

I spent the day with her yesterday - just she and I having a special mommy/daughter day before I set her off into the "real world" of school. We didn't do much, but had a really great day. We did some shopping, had lunch together and then came home and baked cookies. She picked out snickerdoodles to make and practiced reading by following the recipie.

Then she did all of the sprinkling of cinnamon sugar and put extra love in the cookies.

Then we picked out her outfit for the first day

And packed her lunch and snack

Then this morning, I woke her up and she was so excited about the big day! It had been storming early this morning, but thankfully stopped as she was getting up.

She got dressed - she was so super cute in her uniform! She wears navy or khaki bottoms or jumpers and red, white, light or navy blue shirts. Love that she's wearing uniforms - should make getting ready in the morning easy.

She got her brother up - he had no clue that it was a special day, just being his ornery self!

She ate breakfast - oatmeal today

And then we got her backpack all ready and took some pictures.

Then it was time to go out to wait for the bus. We met McKenna and Allie at the sidewalk. They were all al bit chilly, but so super excited for the first day.

We went in to get jackets & sweaters and took a few more pictures.

Then continued waiting for the bus. It was right on time, however, as bus 83 pulled up and stopped we were ready to wave it along since we were waiting for bus 58. Laura went to talk to the driver, and it was in fact our bus, with cover up numbers over the 83 on the door side of the bus...sort of silly that they didn't cover all the 83's - a bit confusing for the first day, don't you think? But then we all crossed the street to get on the bus.

And then the big moment, Hannah got on the school bus to go off into the world of school, never again to be our little baby, but she promises, she'll always be our little girl!

And then the bus drove away.

I had some serious tears welled up in my eyes and let them fall after I went in the house a little. I'm happy for her, but sort of sad too. Everyone always says how fast the time goes, but it's when I sit and remember her as a baby, then as a toddler and then she seemed to go from 3 to 5 in such a hurry. Now that school has started, I'm sure time will continue to fly by.

I took Nicholas to daycare and then headed to work. The day went super fast and I left for the day around 3:15. I wanted to go to meet Hannah as she got off the bus for a few reasons. The biggest was because we have had a little bit of a fiasco with the bus garage over Hannah's ride home. We requested to have her bussed to Valarie's house after school, mostly for the ease of picking up both kids at one place. The first bus stop they approved was 2 streets and 15 houses away from Val's house, so that obviously got another vist from me to the bus garage. Then they appproved a cross street only 4 houses away. We tried to get them to agree to drop Hannah off at the driveway since she is a licensed daycare, but they said their rule is bus stops must be at cross streets and they wouldn't budge. So I wanted to meet her today to ensure they got her to the right stop and to make sure she knew how to get to Val's house from the bust stop since it's a neighborhood she's not really familiar with.

So I got to the stop at 3:30. School gets out at 3:15 and I knew they stopped at another school to get more kids, but I had no idea of what time she was going to be dropped off. The public school bus came and dropped off those kids and we kept waiting. Then it was 4:00, and 4:10 and at 4:15, Tony called. I told him I hadn't called yet because she wasn't home yet. Of course he got upset, but I didn't want to worry just yet - it was the first day and maybe they were running late. Then it was 4:20 & 4:25 and I started getting concerned - wondering if she got on a bus to go to our house or if they dropped her off at the original stop 2 streets away. I called the bus garage and got voicemail. Then I called the school and the secretary tried to help me out by calling the bus garage. She finally got through and left me a voicemail just as Hannah's bus was pulling up to Val's driveway to safely deliver our Kindergartner! It was around 4:33, but she was fine. It turns out she is the very last stop for that bus, so her normal drop off should be around 4:20. The good news is that the bus driver agreed to drop her off at the driveway instead of the actual bus stop, so that's a load off my worry chart. She will be on the bus for a bit longer than I would like, but she'll be safe and she'll be fine as she starts making friends.

She had a great day, was very tired, but all is well and she's going to do great as she gets used to the rountine! We get to do it all over again tomorrow, and until June I guess! Boo for summer being over now, but yay for Hannah taking another step ahead!

Monday, August 15, 2011

Ooops, missed a few big moments

That's what happens when I don't blog for a month. So now, the punishment is mine to do a catch up post to capture all of the happenings in the past month - and we've been busy!

So Tony's dad's visit ended July 24th. We had a last minute get together the night before he left with several of Tony's aunt's and uncle's, which was really nice since we usually see them under less fortunate circumstances like a funeral. It was a nice visit and I'm glad we were able to all get together.

We also celebrated Don's birthday which was at the end of the month.

We took a few pictures before Grandpa left.

And then Hannah took a couple of us

Oh, and here are a couple of our darling children at their finest

Hannah being silly

And this is Nicholas' hidden talent, he sticks his fingers up his nose because then when he talks, it sounds funny and he loves being silly and making everyone laugh!

Then came Vacation Bible School week. Hannah had a blast this year. Our theme was Inside Outside Upside Down on Main Street. She learned a lot of fun stuff and good things about being a good person. We enjoyed seeing her perform the songs she learned that week at the program at the end of the week. Picture taking isn't the greatest, but here she is (in the pink dress and bow in her hair) singing her praises to God!

The next big exciting thing we did was taking Hannah to her first concert. We saw Taylor Swift on Saturday night, July 30th.

She was so very excited to go and I think we were equally as excited to take her. We didn't have very good seats, but the show was great! We went with Jerry & Maci too and we all enjoyed the show. Here are the girls with their T-shirts ready for the fun.

And with their daddy's

My big girl baby and I

Hannah as Taylor was coming out on stage

And then as the night was nearing a close, Hannah was pretty tired but still had concert fever and was using my phone to show her light during the encore.

Nicholas spent the night at Grandma's by himself for the first time that night. He did just fine, but missed his sister. Wonder how he's going to feel when she goes off to school in another week and he's without her every day!

Perhaps this is how he'll be......

Time out is becoming a common place to find him at home and at daycare. He even puts himself there when he's misbehaving. He lets himself out though when he's done throwing his fit.

Then we celebrated Kendal's 16th birthday.....really, 16? It doesn't seem like that long ago when I first met her and she was a little girl that I read nursery rhymes to. And then she was just a little girl when we got married and now she's 16. She's a very smart, pretty young lady and I hope she has fun being 16! The kids had fun swimming in the pool and playing on the trampoline.

Nicholas is Uncle Jack's sidekick for sure!

Hannah had her last swim lesson for the season. She's doing better, but still needs to work on getting her face in the water and gaining more confidence to swim independently. She actually did really well at Aunt Dawn's pool with goggles on and getting her face in, but without them, she's so hesitant. She's getting more comfortable in the water, which is big progress. Hannah and Nicholas played a little b-ball before that last lesson at the Rec Center

I went to Columbus for a business trip this past week. I thought I was going for a standard corporate type training on Diversity and Inclusion, however, I was so pleasantly surprised at the experience I went through. It was a really awesome self-reflective two day training full of energy, emotion and really great stuff. It filled me with some great positive thinking and feeling and I'm so excited to have had the opportunity to share with everyone in my life.

I came home and the next night we took the kids to the county fair. They seemed to have fun and Nicholas even got to take a couple rides on the carousel.

And lastly, we spent the weekend back in Columbus for a family reunion. I hardly took any pictures - shame on me - but it was so super busy that I just didn't seem to have the time. We got in Friday night and sort of settled in. Sunday we did a little shopping while the guys golfed and then I took the kids to the water park. They had a blast! Nicholas has no fear of the water at all, which is super scary for me. He loved the water slides and Hannah is getting more fun to do that sort of thing with since she's bigger and braver. We all went to dinner together - about 35 of us, and then hung out Saturday evening. Here is one of the few pictures I took. Tony was missing as he snuck away to catch the Browns game.

We got home yesterday afternoon and did normal weekend stuff like laundry, cleaning and grocery shopping. Here are my two adorable babies being best buds and having fun in the laundry basket.

They're so awesome!

And there you have it, the last month of our lives - pretty much all the good stuff. There were some other happenings like a flooded basement, fevers and puking, car repairs.... but really, some things are better off forgotten!!!