Back-to-School Night

Liam was so excited to bring us to his school for back-to-school night.  It was about a week after school started and a much more formal even then I ever remember our open house nights being.  First, we all heard from the principal, Mrs. Mentaberry, in the lunchroom and we introduced to all the teachers. Then we went to our child's classroom and listened to a story from his teacher and learned all about classroom rules, etc.  Then Liam showed us all around his classroom and all the fun things he'd been doing.  All sorts of little girls came up to Liam and gave him hugs throughout the evening, so we did end up having a discussion about personal space, especially after one girl tried to kiss him!  Yipes! Kindergarten, girls, kindergarten.




 
Liam is really enjoying his year so far.  We're so proud of him!

ELEVEN months

Thats right, folks. This little lady is only one month away from being a year old. Craziness.

A few things about Adelyn at 11 months old:
-She is starting to learn a few words.  So far her favorites are "Yes" and "Uh-oh".  Usually kids start with "No", but Addy is a fan of the word "yes." And while it's probably coincidental, today I asked her, "Addy do you have a poopy diaper" and she responding a very hearty "yes!"  :)  And I *love* how she makes the most adorable "o" face when she says "uh-oh" Soooo cute.
-She is occasionally standing on her own. I think she is a little more careful than Liam was, in the sense that I think she wants to make sure she is very steady before she tries to take any steps.  Liam just took off wobbling all over the place (not much has changed. haha).  I think it'll still be quite a bit longer until she takes off, which is fine by me!
-She is sooo super cute when she claps. She gets a huge grin on her face and claps away.  Adorable!
-She is starting to looove books.  Some pictures at the end of the post are ones I took of her today while she was sitting looking through a book. When she noticed I was there, she looked up at me with the biggest smile and went right back to 'reading'.  Here's hoping we have another little reader on our hands.
-Her allergies seem to be improving. I now only nurse her once in the morning and once at night and then she is on alimentum formula and baby food the rest of the day. Her skin is 90% better so we'll be doing a milk trial shortly to see just how reactive she is to it.
-She finally got that eighth tooth all the way in.  Crazy that my eleven month old has 8 teeth!
-She does have a bit of a temper-- in Michael's the other day, I took my wallet away to pay and she threw a little tantrum.  Whew! Let's hope this doesn't last long.
-On the other hand, she is sooo incredibly happy and sweet. When she's sleepy she'll just lay her head on your shoulder and suck her thumb. She knows how to melt her mama's heart.

And here are some cute photos of our little angel.  Girlfriend LOOOVES cheerios (as previously seen).  I just thought this one was so cute of her with her piggies. I love giving her piggies!

A little blurry, but adorable:

Action shot of her clapping:

And reading her books this morning:

Balloon Races

Every year we want to go to the balloon races, but for some reason, we just hadn't made it yet. This year was the year! My mom was in town to hang out for the weekend, so we got up pretty early (not dawn patrol early, but early) and headed up to the "N" to watch the balloons go up. We just parked up on the hill and watched them rise. It was *so* much fun. We picked a good day to go, too, because they came right over us and some landed right near us. Liam and Wes were able to go right up to one and talk to the people and Liam could see the fire. My Uncle Larry lives up there and we went to his neighborhood and one landed right next to his house on the street. Again, we had a great time. It was relaxing and fun to watch. So glad we made it- plus we got some awesome photos!

The Stephenson Structure

For Liam and Addy's birthdays and Christmas gifts, my parents got them an awesome play structure for the backyard. We'd been wanting one and after seeing how much my sister's kids love theirs, we went for it.  Liam was *so* excited when daddy started building his 'structure' (that's how he refers to his play structure lol).  We did a LOT of research, so much so that I was tired of looking at these things. :)  We finally decided on this one because it had a little picnic table, 2 swings, a double swing, and some monkey bars.  Because it had so much cool stuff, it had a LOT of pieces. The thing took about 15 hours to put together- no joking. Luckily, Wes is awesome and got it all put together with the Liam's help. Liam would get the tools and the piece and kept checking on Wes's progress.

Liam finally figured out how to pump on his own.  He loves to go out and swing by himself now.

One of Liam's favorite features is the little 'cafe' underneath the slide. It's just a little picnic table, but he uses it as his personal cafe. He made little signs that said, "Open all day" and "Closed all night" to hang out there.  Pretty cute. :)

Thanks, Nana and Papa! We love our play structure!

Kindergarten!

The day finally came.  Liam has been waiting for this day for over a year, I swear.  The days leading up to Kindergarten were emotional ones for me.  It's true when 'they' say "The days are long, but the years are short."  As I sat the week before Kindergarten and watched him rock the teacher's socks during his evaluation, I couldn't help but wonder how I was the mother of a kindergartner already!

 The night before Kindergarten we made Liam's choice for dinner, which was homemade pizza. Then we read the book, "Twas the Night Before Kindergarten."  After that, Liam's daddy gave him his very first before-school Priesthood blessing. In it Liam was told he'd be brave and make new friends and that he'd also be guided to make good choices and be kind.  I could tell Liam knew how special his blessing was. 

Liam was up bright and early on his first school day. I made him green (his favorite color), chocolate chip pancakes and chocolate milk. Also at his breakfast table was his schultuete!  This is a German tradition that each child receives on their VERY first day of school. It's a large cone decorated by their parents to represent their school or their class. Inside is small goodies, candy, school supplies, etc.  I got one on my very first day of Gymnasium the year I was in Germany (I'll make a separate post with a picture of me and my tuete!).  It's a tradition that I've been so excited to share with my children. :)

After breakfast, Liam got in his school uniform and posed perfectly for some 'first day of school' photos. German schoolchildren pose with their cones on the day of school, so we did the same. I *love* how he looks just like a German school boy in these. :D



After photos, we let him open his tuete.  He found pencils, color change markers, scissors, skittles, tic tacs, a new train, Cars 2 die casts, fruit roll ups, and Gushers (I never let him get these at the store. haha). He loved it! It was a lot of fun.

His traditional "by the front door, show off your backpack" pose.


And here we are walking to school. The school is a 5 minute walk from our house. It's so nice to start our days with a nice little walk.  It would take more effort to drive and park to the school than it does to walk.






He's a Katherine Dunn Cougar!

The first thing he did when we got to school was head for the monkey bars. He had just recently mastered the bars on our set at home, but I was terrified when I saw him going for these much bigger and longer bars. I thought for sure that his first 5 minutes at school were going to be of him getting a broken arm. However, he proved me wrong and conquered those bars on his first try!

Saying good-bye to his sissy for the day:

I actually felt a little bit like a bad mom because I didn't cry when we left.  He was just *so* excited to be there and experience kindergarten that I couldn't be anything but happy and excited for my big boy.

Time to line up!

The kids went in and got their name tags and sang us a little song. Liam's teacher is Mrs. Butler and so far she's awesome and Liam just loves her. She told me that he's a very big help to her!





We're now two weeks into school and Liam is still loving it. He has told me all about the time 'a kindergartner wandered off during the fire drill.' And many other fun stories. :) I'm actually really impressed how he knows so many of the teachers' names already and he's got the rules down pat. He has earned 7 cougar cash so far, which they earn from being respectful, responsible and safe, which is the most in his class. He comes home and tells me all about his new friends. He sure knows how to make his mommy proud and I'm so glad that he LOVES kindergarten!

Want some cheerios?

Addy loves her cheerios. One morning I was doing some chores while she was eating them and I came back to find this. Liam said, "I know she loves cheerios, so I just wanted to give her some more." What a kind big brother.

I couldn't remember if I ever posted this picture from July so I had to post it.  I love Little Miss Blue Eyes.

Garden

I've loved attempting to become a gardener. While our home has a ton to be desired in the yard area, we're working slowly and steadily to create our dream yard. Wes gutted the flower bed in June and planted some pumpkins, tomatoes, sunflowers, and strawberries. By normal standards, we planted a little late, but we are starting to harvest some tomatoes. I *really* wanted pumpkins and so far we only have two good ones growing, but that's better than none. 2 of the pumpkin plants Wes grew from seeds of a giant pumpkin we had a couple of years ago.  The strawberries were a total flop, but at least we tried.  So here are some photos of our garden:


These are the pumpkin plants from seeds:



This pumpkin is a LOT bigger since I took these photos 2 weeks ago.  :D  It makes me happy.

And here's my gnome, Hans.  :D  He makes me smile every night when I go out and water. 

Summa, Summa, Summertime!

At the beginning of the summer, my sister and I had every intention of taking the kids swimming together every Tuesday.  For some reason the summer FLEW by. :(  But, a couple weeks ago we did get in another swim and we had a blast together. :D  All of our kids are total fishies, so we always have so much fun swimming. It was even more fun because Nana and Papa were able to join us. What a treat! Before we left on our little swimming adventure, we tried to take a picture of the cousins in their unintential matching swim gear. :D  With 4 children, 5 and under, you get pretty funny pictures. By the end of it they were just giggling.





This one cracks me up!

Pool Party in the baby pool!

Peyton is soo cute in the water. He is such an awesome swimmer too!  It's pretty amazing. He REALLY loved pushing Addy around in her little baby floater. I think she must have found it pretty relaxing, she laid her head down and almost fell asleep.



And these two cousins, what do we say about these two?  They had so much fun together. Pure fun.
 
I *love* this picture.  You can just tell they were having a blast.

And they're off again!




I didn't get any photos of us playing in the big pool or going down the slide because I wanted to swim too! I guess we can consider this afternoon swim our farewell to summer! You went far too quickly, summer, but we're looking forward to the fun that fall has to offer!