Monday, August 31, 2009

School Has Returned

Yesterday after church, I grabbed my camera after noticing that my kids matched! I really like this picture I was able to capture! I love Isaiah's smile with Uncle John.
First Day back to school!!! Colby has started 1st grade!
Isaiah wanted to pose for a picture too... with his gun.
Here's Colby & Abigail before the first day of school. Abigail started Montessori at Colby's school this year. She is completely loving it. It's made for quite a different few days for me at home with just Isaiah. It will take some adjusting getting used to her not being here, but it will be really nice to have some special time just with Isaiah.
Last week we celebrated Jack's birthday with a yummy dinner. I made Beef Stroganoff and Green Bean Bundles. Isaiah was very excited to get to help Jack blow out his birthday candles on a few mini-pecan pie muffins. It actually turned into a 30 minute activity of singing to each person around the table, just so they could blow the candles out! For those who were there last December to experience Isaiah's 2nd birthday, you can see his candle blowing form has thankfully improved! He created his own tune for "Happy Birthday" I hope you will enjoy too!

Friday, August 14, 2009

San Antonio!

Above is the only nap Isaiah decided to take during our San Antonio trip!

Last week, I decided to take the kids for one last trip before school starts. My precious sister agreed to meet us in San Antonio for four nights. The trip took 10 hours, mostly because of Isaiah's newly developed potty training skill as we had to stop 7 times! So, 525 miles later, we arrived. We decided to take them to Sea World each of the 3 days & we all had an awesome time. The kids really enjoyed all of the animal shows and the water park.

One evening we went to the Riverwalk and took the boat ride. Thankfully it was only 30 minutes long, as the history was interested, but not so much to Abigail & Isaiah. Considering it was close to 100 degrees didn't help either! Lisa & Colby:
Isaiah looks a little dazed in this picture, but cute! This was after one of our stays in the water park, going back to the car.
Lisa & Abby - waiting for lunch!
Shamu Show:
Lunch on the Riverwalk at Landry's.
We decided to plan a few inside activities to get out of the heat. We went to the San Antonio Children's Museum. If you are in the area with kids, I highly recommend it! It has many levels, which leads to losing kids, but great if you have a few adults to supervise. We stayed a few hours, but the kids could have stayed all day!
Here's a picture as we were leaving Sea World the last night.
One of the highlights for the kids was getting to feed the dolphins. Of course, I didn't bring my camera over there, but here's a picture after.
We also went to the Witte Museum and enjoyed their kid part of the museum.
This is an awesome interactive panel that has lots of games you can play on it. Colby, Abigail & Isaiah enjoyed the dodgeball!
Thankfully the trip home only took 8 1/2 hours, with 4 stops! I think it also had to do with Isaiah & Abigail taking an hour nap, which was great! It was really nice to get away one last time before school starts & especially to spend time with Lisa before she starts teaching again!
Here's a precious picture I took a few days ago at the park with some friends. Colby's the one in the orange huddling his friends around him.
The countdown has begun - 5 days until school starts!

Summer Fun

A few weeks ago, I decided to let the kids have some fun outside - painting with chocolate pudding! I got this idea from Jordan. Most of the pictures are quite x-rated as they decided it was more fun to paint naked.
This picture was just the beginning. Isaiah was quite hesitant about getting dirty, but finally decided to join in the fun!
Thankfully it was a pretty warm day, so after they were completely covered with pudding, I hosed them off & they all went skinny-dipping in the pool.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Milestones

This has been a week of unexpected milestones.

The first happened with my daughter Abigail in the area of swimming. Looking back with Colby, he was able to swim decently the summer before turning 4. I now know this was exceptional, but hoped for Abigail the same development. Well, last summer came and went and she refused to ever put her head under the water.

At the beginning of this summer I promised her a ToysRUs trip when she was able to swim from the island in the middle of our pool to the steps. (This is what I remember Colby being able to do before turning 4.) As June and most of July this year went by I really thought this goal would never be attained. But, thankfully through our last few weeks of swimming lessons, she can finally do it! Yeah for my almost 5 year old!!! Yesterday she actually jumped off of our diving board and swam to the steps - over & over! So, we took the trip to ToysRUs and now have a mermaid Barbie.

The second milestone we are quickly approaching is Isaiah being fully potty-trained! Very exciting! Since April he has been going in the potty for #2, which is a wonderful thing not changing dirty diapers. So, I haven't been too worried about fully pottytraining him because it's been so easy to just have him change his pull-ups. I decided to try to work on it this past week while Colby was visiting my dad. The first few days went great, then no interest the next few. So, I decided to just wait until another time. Then, Friday afternoon he decided he only wanted to wear underwear & no pullups! So, since then he's been doing great with not too many reminders. Hopefully this continues and he will be completely pottytrained soon. He is now 2 years and 7 months, which will make for the youngest pottytrainer of my 3 yet!

The post wouldn't be complete without mentioning a 3rd happening with my oldest. Colby went to my dad's house in Las Vegas, NV this past Monday and returned yesterday afternoon. This would qualify as the longest time he's been away from me since he was 11 months old when I went on a trip to Ireland. I really missed him! When we were at the airport last night waiting for him to get off of the plane, my stomach was so nervous waiting to see him. When he finally walked up I had to hold back my tears. I know he had an amazing time bonding with his grandparents and aunt and I'm so glad he got the opportunity to go! But, I'm very glad to have him back. He can't stop talking about all of the fun activities he got to do: 4-wheeling, magic show, swimming, golfing, watching G-Force, bowling, going to the M&M store, and so much more! It was nice back at home to only have 2 precious kids in my care. I was able to have alone time with each of them, which was very special!

So, now we are counting down to school starting - 18 days to go. We have a lot of swimming and relaxing to do.