Monday, October 26, 2009

First Day of School 2009

Okay, so Baylee's birthday pictures were not the only thing I was behind on. We had four kids starting school this year! Shockingly, Tyler & Cameron are no longer willing to pose for first day of school pictures. We did have a couple of willing participants, though. Amata & Caleb are always more than happy to have their pictures taken.

This was Caleb's very first day of school, ever. And, actually, he is the youngest person in his class. Normally, they don't get to have their Early Family Special Education classes at the school until they turn three. But, since Caleb's birthday was only a month & a half after the school year started, they decided he could start early so he didn't have to make a chance after the year started. He gets to go three mornings a week. We weren't sure how he would do at school, since he tends to have a tad bit of stranger anxiety (which is putting it mildly). Obviously, we underestimated the thrill of getting to ride the school bus when you are 3! (Town kids don't bussed around here, which makes it even cooler to have the bus pick you up.)


The bus was a little late, so he got anxious & decided to wait outside.



Amata gets to go to ECSE 3 afternoons a week & regular preschool 2 days a week. It just worked out that her first day of school was the day after Caleb's. She wasn't thrilled about that, but Nana & Great Grandma were able to be here for Amata's first day, so that made it a little better.



Too bad their excitement for school will fizzle out within the next few years. We'll just have to enjoy it while it lasts!

Happy Birthday, Baylee

Okay, so technically, Baylee is now 2 years, one month & 10 days old, but none of the other kids have had a birthday yet, so it’s okay that I haven’t gotten around to posting any pictures yet, right? Heck, we had our family pictures done in August I think and I haven’t posted or ordered prints of those yet, either.

No worries, even though she is the youngest of 5 children and really has no concept of what happens on her birthday, let alone *when* it actually is, we did in fact celebrate her birthday, on her birthday, complete with cake & ice cream. We may have skipped the whole going out for dinner part, but she didn’t seem to mind, and really, it’s not my fault that she chose to have her birthday on Wednesday when Amata had dance. I even had all of her gifts purchased before hand…granted it was the night before, but still before. And, as a matter of fact, I actually bought the cake 4 whole days before her birthday!

Lucky for Baylee, she had lots of help opening her gifts from her older brother & sister!












She changed into her new Barbie cheerleader outfit before enjoying her cake.

And, of course, Amata & Caleb also had to blow out the candles.
We were not prepared enough to have remembered to get extra Schwan's ice cream, so we had to make do with Kemps. Chris has gotten really picky about that!
Notice how excited the teenager is…as usual!

Friday, September 25, 2009

Sunday Afternoon Fun

We went to our areas last parade back in August, and we remembered to bring the camera to this one. Tyler stayed home with CJ, as CJ is not so much fun at things like this, and Tyler feels he's too old.

Waiting patiently for the candy.

Here it is.



Big brother steps in to help out.

It's too hard to wait until we get home to start in on the candy.

Break Time


After the parade, we went home & Amata helped us get the corn on the cob ready for dinner.


And then, of course, we had to eat it.



Or most of us....Tyler & Cameron decided they don't like corn on the cob anymore.


And then it was time to help Daddy mow the lawn.



Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Go Twins

I may have mentioned that Caleb has a slight obsession with balls. Okay, when a 2 year old will sit and watch a Twins baseball game on TV...and when they get upset come October when the baseball teams on TV are not the Twins...maybe it is more than a slight obsession. So, we decided to take him to his first Twins game...and only game in the Metrodome.

He was very excited about it, until we dropped the rest of the kids at Auntie Marnee's and discovered that she set up a pool for them. But, we did manage to talk him into coming along with us with the promise of swimming later. (We never said how much later). He was kind of in awe when we walked into the Dome. This is a boy that recognized the word Twins as baseball, so there was a lot to see!

(side note...ignore the smudge on all of the pictures...somehow the camera lens had a smudge on it. I'm wondering if that was at all tied to all of the random pictures of feet that were on the memory card)



We brought Tyler with too...although I believe his bad attitude was the reason the Twins lost. (As soon as he found out who the pitcher was, he said that they were going to lose.)



Caleb enjoyed all of the food required to eat at the ball park...

Yummy Dome Dogs
The did let him bring his Twins cup into the park.
But of course, once he saw we had pop, the cup of water was no longer good enough.



The cotton candy was the big winner, of course. Pure sugar combined with lots of sticky...who doesn't like that?! Look, even Tyler is enjoying it!


But by the end of the 5th inning, all of the excitement wore him out. (The fact that he decided not to sleep at all during the 2 hour drive up to the Cities didn't help.)

Plus, they lost anyway, so he really didn't miss anything. He also did a whole lot better than the two girls sitting directly behind us who were several years older, they were ready to go by the third inning.

All in all he did awesome. I bet he'll be even more excited about going next year to the outdoor stadium!