Ready for School

We went down to Ethan's school the other night to take some "first day of school" pictures. I figured if I did them early I could get some fun pictures before the school was crowded with other kids. I forgot that the gates are always locked so we couldn't really take pictures at the school, but just out front. Oh well.

While we were there, we got to see all kinds of fun stuff. There were lots of jack rabbits running all over the fields. We tried to get closer to them, but apparently stealth is not one of Colby's best qualities, and we kept scaring them away. If you look very closely you can see one in this shot:

We also found the school's little nature walk area. We had fun looking for lizards and more rabbits and birds in the desert.

Then Zak let the boys drive around the empty parking lot. Yikes. I am glad we still have a long time before we will have to worry about this guy behind the wheel!

So Ethan started kindergarten yesterday! He has been so excited about it. He loved preschool so much. I tried to tell him this was going to be different, because he would be there every day for a long time. He thought that sounded even better! Over the last few weeks, I was getting more and more worried about sending him off to the big bad world. We went to the open house last week and got to meet his teacher and see his classroom and everything and it made me feel a lot better. His teacher is great and the classroom is really fun. He is going to love it. When Monday morning rolled around and it was time for him to go, it was hard for me to be sad when I saw how excited he was!

He had so much fun on the first day. He came home and told me all about the slide and the books they read and how he got to go to a special room to eat lunch (I never knew a elementary school cafeteria was so special!). He also told me about some of his friends that he "made up". He gets to sit next to a girl named Olivia--just like his cousin's name. And there was a boy named Anthony, just like his other friend, but he is pretty sure it is a different boy because he looks different than his friend. (If only I could record everything he says--so funny.) I am looking forward to seeing how much he learns and grows this year. It is still quite the adjustment for us--Colby and I don't know what to do with ourselves all day. And the early morning thing is not something we are used to around this house. Hopefully within the next week or two we will get it all figured out and the routine will be good. I still cannot believe he is old enough to be in school!

Party!

We had a little get together for Ethan' and Zak's birthdays. Here are the two birthday boys blowing out their candles.
Ethan with 5 candles:
And Zak with 3--I didn't have enough to put 29 on! He is too old!

Ethan's 5--at least we thought

Ethan's birthday was last week. My big kid turned 5! Crazy! We had been talking about his birthday for weeks, and the night before, we told him he would wake up and be five. He came in VERY early the next morning, with such a sad look on his face. I asked him what was wrong, and he told me, in the most disappointed voice, that he was not five. He must still be four because he was not bigger and he had not lost any teeth yet. Poor kid. We had to sit him down and talk to him to convince him that he was really five, and he really did get to have a birthday.
I tried to have Ethan redo his sad face for everyone to see, but this was as sad as I could get him to look.
Happy Birthday Ethan! We sure love you! And I'm okay with you not being too much bigger yet!

His big present this year:

We have been looking for bunk beds for the boys for awhile, and we found this one on Craig's List. The kids love it!

Remember me?

Things have been pretty busy this summer, so I have not been finding much time to post what we have been up to. Now it's time to try to catch up! A few weeks ago we had Zak's Aunt Jan here. She has been able to make it out here every summer for the past few years and we love having her here. While she is here, we also get to spend lots of time with other family and friends that want to catch up with her. We got to have Christian, Cindy and Cooper come stay with us for part of Jan's visit. It was quite the full house! Once again, our camara never seemed to make it out of the bag. We are terrible at remembering to take pictures. Cindy, I hope you documented some of the things we did! Here is one pic I love--Aunt Jan reading a new Thomas book she bought for Colby. He is concentrating so hard! We have read this book about 3 times a day since. He loves it.

Happy 4th of July

Now that it is the 12th of July, I guess I will finally post about our fun 4th! We started the day at our ward's breakfast. It took a lot of convincing to get Zak to wake up early on his day off to go, but it was fun.
Later, we went to the circus! We thought the kids were going to love it, and they were so excited about it for days. There were a lot of parts they loved. Ethan thought the motorcycles were awesome, and Colby liked the dogs, horses, tigers and elephants. It was pretty long though, and Ethan actually fell asleep at one point. Then he just kept asking if we could go home. I guess the circus was not all it was cracked up to be. They will probably like it a lot more when they are a little older.
After the circus, we came back to our house and had some pizza--a great way to celebrate America! And then we went to see fireworks. It was a fun day. Here are the kids in the cute shirts my sister, Kerri, made.


My kids spend half the day doing headstands on the couch. They are always upside down. They wanted to do it for the pictures, but Madison and Wyatt could not figure out how. I guess they need some more practice!