Week 32

Summer ends, school begins.
Saturday was our annual BBQ with the Girls (Alisha, Cheri, Beau Dee) and their families, here ar our house. Fun fun! The kids were so cute and played so well together while the adults sat around visiting.

Sunday Tyler got hit by a sky high fever. Poor guy was miserable. Luckily it was only a 24hour thing and the only symptoms were the fever and some watery eyes. Which meant we could focus on Kaitlyn's going back to school.

Monday we went to the open house at the school to meet her teacher and see her classroom.

Ty also insisted on testing out the playground.

Tuesday was Kate's first day in First Grade! She was SO SO SO excited. And the first thing she said when she walked in the door was "I had a good day."

Grandpa stopped by for something that morning and Ty ended up getting to spend the rest of the day with him. They had lots of fun, and finished off the day with a horseback ride.

Luckily Kaitlyn was home by then and got to go for a ride too.

And on Wednesday, I pulled a few friends together for brunch for our own little Back to School Moms' celebration.

Week 31

Sam was home for the weekend after what was a very frustrating week for him at the base. So Saturday was family fun time at the pool so the kids could show off all they've been learning. Kaitlyn was excited to get another crack at that diving board - she is now so confident she will run and jump off it. And both kids went on the big slide over and over by themselves. Sam and I were happy to not have to walk up all the stairs and happily waited for them at the bottom. Then the kids were off to a movie with Gma and Sam and I got a date - yay!

Sunday was a lazy day. Grocery shopping. Nascar race. And washing the truck (Sam and the kids washed it, I took photos. Thus the reason they got bored and didn't bother to wash the Yukon for me :( )

Final week of swimming lessons for the kids. They LOVE it. They were so excited that both were packed up and in their suits a good hour or two before we had to leave each morning. It was a pleasure to see how well they both paid attention and how much they learned in just 2 weeks. Both kids passed with flying colors. Kaitly is excited to move on to Level 3. We'll have to see how we feel about Ty next year - his teacher thought he would still be pretty small for the next level but suspected that if we signed up for the same one again he'd be well ahead of the others and would probably be moved up after the first day.

Sam had classes at the base this week and had to dress up a bit on Monday. He hardly ever has to wear this uniform so we grabbed a couple photos. Then the kids had to play photographer - this is one Tyler got. Are you impressed? I cropped it down of course, but not bad for a 3 year old! (I was so nervous letting him have the big camera without me keeping a hand on it)

We got a bit of the farm life (yikes! flashbacks for me) on Wednesday. I ended up helping Wyatt and Dad "haul hay" off and on most of the day (trying to get it in before the rain hit) and the kids tagged along with me. They thought it was great and I (surprisingly) didn't mind it until about 4:00. That's when we ended up waiting around for Dad to finish raking a section and the kids ran out of patience. We had some fun taking photos while we waited. But when 5:00 was closing in we gave up and went home for dinner.

Week 30

We are enjoying the last little bit of summer and gearing up for school. We took Kaitlyn to finish up her school shopping on Saturday. Mom came with us too (and let herself get talked into buying a few things for Kate that I wasn't going to spring for haha). It was a fun and relatively easy outing - no problem finding things we liked and needed, just hard to resist buying everything in sight! :) Tyler was a great little shopper too. He didn't get too upset when he had to leave most stores empty handed. And he had a great time trying on shoes at the last stop, and walked away with his very own pair of "Transformer" (green and black - not sure why he thinks they're Transformers) Sketchers.

We stopped for lunch at Panda Express and this was one of the fortunes.

Perfect for the day huh?

The kids had their first week of swimming lessons for the year. They LOVE them and are always dressed and ready to go a full 2 hours before we have to leave every morning.
Ty has a fantastic teacher - I was suprised to find out this is the first class he has taught. (Kate's is no slouch either, but Ty's is seriously impressive) And I've been happy to see that Tyler fully pays attention and participates the entire time. It's so fun to watch. Aren't they cute all lined up to practice diving?

Kaitlyn is turning into a very good swimmer. She says her favorite part is diving for the rings, which also happens to be the part she has the hardest time with. Her skinny little body just doesn't quite have the power (yet) to get her all the way to the bottom of the pool to grab them most of the time. But she tries and tries until she manages it, or until the teacher helps her out a little by holding them slightly off the ground for her. She is making great progress with the front crawl. And I'm most impressed by what she calls the "air glide" (they push off the wall on their backs and glide as far as they can with their hands above their heads before doing the back stroke to the other side). It just looks so smooth and effortless when she does it (especially considering that less than a year ago she couldn't quite relax enough to float on her back on her own). As you can see, she loves it.

Week 29

Saturday happened to be the busiest day of the week. We had Sam's buddy, Paul and his family over for the day. We all went to the pool (where Kaitlyn tried jumping off the diving board! and loved it.) and did a quick BBQ for lunch. Then it was time for our DJ Hero Party (I won the party pack - so funny! so we had to follow through and use it for a party).
That's Kaitlyn playing against Paul. Turns out Sam had the top score (by far), no surprise since he likes Guitar Hero and this one isn't too different.

And we ended the night at Xzavier's first birthday party.

The rest of the week was low key (can you blame us after that crazy Saturday?).

(that's a bubble pipe. we were making bubble pictures with colored bubbles)

Week 28

I'm a few days last posting this one because it was a busy weekend - details on that when I post Friday :)

Continuing with the Kamas 24th of July celebrations, we went to the parade on Friday night. Kaitlyn could have ridden the float with the princesses but this time she decided she'd rather collect some candy.

I think this parade was better than the one on the 4th (strange - maybe because fewer celebrations to compete with?) with some unique floats we hadn't seen before. We also sat by this really chatty guy (military guy so there was a connection right off with that) that Ty kept sharing his candy with. It was cute.

On Saturday the Princesses had their final appearance - they did a couple of their dances right before the Memory Auction. So Sam got to see at least one of her performances this year - finally. We took a look at the Classic Car Show afterward, then took the kids to a movie in the afternoon.

Ty also came down with a cold over the weekend - he had a fever a few days in a row and a cough. Then on Monday we started to notice a few "spots" but Benadryl cleared them up and we didn't worry too much. Then Wednesday Ty had fallen asleep on my bed and I went in to find him broken out in hives all over the places - face, chest, arms, legs... So I took him in to the doctor, who is pretty sure they were viral and nothing to worry about. Phew. Not strep (guess that can be bad if left untreated?). Not an allergy (which I had been wracking my brain to pinpoint something new that would have set it off and coming up blank - and would probably still be puzzled over it). Just thost nasty looking hives that kept coming and going and moving all over him for the next few days. They've cleared up now though and life is back to normal.