Here I am!

I've been a bad blogger! Actually, I have just changed locations for a spell. Most of you already know I'm on Facebook and that is reason number one for my absence on Blogger. Here are the other reasons...my photo account where I upload pictures to post on the blog is about 95% filled up and I now have to pay money to increase the storage capacity. It's not a big financial priority these days, so I haven't upgraded. Also contributing to my problem is my broken camera. Yes, it's broken again. Thankfully, I have been able to borrow cameras from other people for the important events, so eventually I will be able to share those special moments with you all.

It's hard to believe that September has almost come to an end. What a beautiful month is has been. I just love it when the warm sunny days of summer stretches into fall. We are planning to close up the pool this week, but Dan went swimming in it as recent as yesterday. 

The kids have been in school almost a month now and are doing great. Zander scored really high on his kindergarten assessment. Over the summer he taught himself to read and is constantly looking for new things to learn. Right now he is fascinated with numbers, addition and measuring things. He also likes counting really high using his calculator. At least once a day he asks me how long it would take to count to a billion. He is also keeping track of how many more days until his birthday, giving us daily updates.

Natalie is doing well in second grade too and has scored 100% on both of her spelling tests. This summer we read Anne of Green Gables together and now she is reading it (the children's edition) on her own. We also watched the movie and went to an Anne of Green Gables tea this summer. Over the weekend Natalie got to bring home the classroom gnome named Tom. She was assigned to write about what Tom did while at out house. Tom got to go with Natalie to sign up for Girl Scouts, to the Teddy Bear Parade and to church. I have lots of photos of Tom that I will share soon.

Hayden has adjusted to preschool better than I thought. He loves the idea of having "his school." His teacher is new to the school and is just the nicest person. I gathered from talking to her that Hayden doesn't talk much in school which doesn't surprise me. Last week was the teddy bear picnic and I got to hang out with Hayden at his school. The best part about Hayden being in preschool was that it forced him to be potty trained. He was pretty much potty trained when he started, but once he began school, he stopped having accidents of any kind!!!

Well, that's it for now. I'm gonna try to work out the kinks and get some photos posted. There is lots to share from our recent summer adventures as well as back to school fun.

Natalie's last day of first grade

Today was the day we were dreading all week...the last day of first grade. I had tried to give Natalie a heads up by warning her...only three more days of school, only two more days...and today...well, it was just plain hard to say good-bye. All week long Natalie kept saying "I don't want to be done with the first grade." It was hard even for me to write the thank you note this morning. Natalie's teacher is just one of those people who God put on this earth to teach little kids. She is truly amazing, kind and very patient. She raises the bar and they excel because she gives them the tools to succeed.
Here is Natalie sharing a painting she made for her teacher with the paints she gave her the day before.

We got her a pretty daisy to thank her for a great year.

Natalie has learned so much this year. She is now an expert on penguins and humming birds, she can read books, do double digit addition and subtraction, count money, write a simple report and read it in front of her class; she has learned new painting skills, new songs, and made new friends. It was a fun year for sure and I got to see just a small part of her experience when I volunteered on Mondays.

Of course I took lots of pictures and just like I did last year, I made a DVD slide show of the year's events. This year I was lucky enough to get to watch the slide show with the class and see their reactions...it was so much fun. They were giddy with excitement whenever a new face would appear. "that's me!" they would all cheer. It was also touching when I turned to her teacher and she had tears in her eyes. She told me she was going to have to watch it again at home with a box of Kleenex where she didn't have to keep her composure.
Here is her class, all dressed in their pajamas watching the DVD. The kids got to have a popcorn pajama party on the second to last day for receiving over 350 compliments during the year!

"Have a cool summer" ...so far it really has been cool. Let's hope it warms up a bit!

This afternoon when Natalie stepped off the school bus, I went out to meet her...and wasn't surprised one bit to see tears just streaming from her eyes. I tried my best to comfort her without falling apart myself. One thing I knew for sure would cheer her up...Ice cream!

I am continuing with our annual tradition of taking the kids out for ice cream on their last day, so she knew it was coming and it helped distract her from her sadness.

The Last Day...

I've never really liked the "last day" of anything. Whether it was school or summer camp or the last day of a vacation. The last day always means that something fun is about to end. I can still remember feeling sad even on the last days of school. I would miss my friends and my teachers and all the fun things we did.

I kind of feel sad even on the last day of school for my kids, no not because they will be home all summer, but it is kind of bitter sweet to see them complete another year of school. It still seems weird to me that Zander is all through with preschool now. In all the business of the spring field trips and programs and memory book coordination, it flew by so fast and now he is done!

Let me catch you up on some of the recent happenings in the life of Zander. Warning...lots of photos! I'm kind of behind!!!

During the last Chapel, Zander received his certificate and his memory book. Look for the memory pages on my Paper Caper blog.

On the last day, all the 4 year olds got to have a picnic. Zander was so excited to use his new bento box that Uncle Andy brought back from Japan. Hayden is using his too.

One last chance to play with friends Karly and Carson.

Field Trip to the Farm

We got to hold the baby chicks!

The baby sheep were just a few weeks old and were jumping all over the place. I've never seen sheep jump...didn't even know they could jump.

Here's another one on the left jumping and playing with all the sheep under the tree.

Zander got to plant some flowers too.

After snack, Zander had fun playing with his good friend Carson.

Bubble Day


Zander and his teachers.

Henry and Mudge Play
We all went to New Hope church to see the play. Here are the kids in front of the stage.

T-Ball

Eye Appointment
Here's Dr. Holland checking Zander's eyes. When his eyes are dilated he can see if his optical nerve has any preasure on it, thus indicating a problem with the shunt. Fortunately, he didn't see any thing wrong with Zander!!!

Here he is with his "robot glasses." He got to look through all different kinds of glasses, including 3-d glasses. It was obvious by watching him do the vision tests that he doesn't see 3-d. I also noticed this at the 3-d Muppet movie at Disneyland...he was the only kid not reaching out to try and touch things. The doctor says he still has depth perception, just not 3-d.

Grandma and Grandpa Roush came to watch Zander on Monday.

Grandpa tried Zander's helmet on and it fit!

Catching up with the kids

On Wednesday, Natalie was invited to a Japanese themed birthday sleepover at our neighbors.

Natalie thought I was weird for putting chop sticks in her hair, but I could tell she was relieved when she opened the door at the party and all the other girls had chop sticks in their hair as well. I was surprised to learn after the party that Natalie was teaching her friends how to hold and use the chopsticks. I guess she did really well in a game where you have to pick up Kix with chopsticks, so they all wanted to know her tricks!

Here are all the neighbor girls (minus one who arrived after we took the picture)

Here is Zander at his Preschool spring program. His class was singing that monkey song that goes "five little monkeys swinging from a tree...teasing Mr. alligator, can't catch me..."

His class all dressed up in monkey hats and tails and looked so cute! Here you can see Zander doing the hand motions for "along came Mr. Alligator quite as can be...SNAP!"

Jog-a-thon

Thank you to everyone who helped contribute to Natalie's Jog-a-thon fundraiesr earlier this month. Natalie ran 42 laps and raised $101!!! The combined total money raised by all the kids was over $10, 000!!!

Everyone who ran got a certificate and a gold medal.

Because Natalie (in the black shirt) got over $100 in pledges, she was one of 70 kids who got to throw a pie at the teachers. She couldn't wait to throw a pie at her PE teacher!

The most popular targets were the principal in blue and the PE teacher in green.

The kids were also rewarded with a fun Zone, which we all went to today after school. There were scooters, 3 bounce houses...

Dance Revolution

...and video games. Here Zander is learning how to "bowl" from a nice 3rd grader using the wii game system. He LOVED it. He even loved the Dance Revolution. At the end when his score basically read..."sorry you lose," Zander, who obviously can't read, said "I'm the winner!!!" and jumped up and down for joy! Now that's self-confidence for ya!

P.S. Natalie still needs to collect money from some of you who pledged...Thanks again!

Happy Leap Year!

Since today is a leap-year day, I was able to get one more workout in this month at the gym. (See stats on left side bar!) It was pretty miserable though as I just ran 4 miles on Wednesday and didn't have much energy to run very fast today. I managed to run 3 miles somehow, but now I'm really exhausted. This is how it's been the past 2 months though.

I feel I owe a big "I'm sorry" to anyone who has come over and seen my lack of house cleaning. I'm really focused on working out 3-4 times a week and plan to continue until I am back to my "normal" self again. Lately I just don't have any extra umph left and so the dishes and laundry have suffered...The way I see it, it's now or never. If I don't get in shape now, I don't know when I will ever find the time. Next year I will have 3 kids in school each with completely different schedules, so my "free" time to work out will be a thing of the past for a while. Who ever coined the term "stay at home mom" had a totally different job than I do!!!

I also wanted to post about Natalie's Spring music program last night. It was just for the first and third grade classes. The kids all sung nursery rhyme themed songs and played instruments. It was cute and everyone did a great job.


Natalie and Sarah were so silly afterwards and spent 10 minutes or so spinning around in their dresses. I somehow managed to get one photo of them when they were semi-still.

Golden Tiger Award

A couple weeks ago, we got a letter in the mail from the principal. The letter was to let us know that Natalie ws selected to recieve a Golden Tiger Award at her school. She was going to be honored (along with kids from other classes) at a school assembly and then again at an icecream social the next evening. Dan was able to make it to the assembly, but had to work during the ice cream social.

Here is Natalie telling everyone what her Golden Tiger award was for...trustworthiness!

Dairy Queen supplied all the kids with ice cream sundaes!

Zander's Fire Station Field Trip

Zander was so excited to see the fire engines last Friday. It was hard for him to wait for the rest of his classmates to arrive, so I distracted him by taking photos!

Zander's class. He's standing by his teacher.

Zander and Hayden get to walk through the rescue truck too...Hayden is not so sure about this!

Up in the big fire engine...where every boy likes to be!
Here are my 2 guys...so excited after getting to walk through the fire engine.