John's First Year

 John a few days old

August 2012
We celebrated John's first birthday this week.  Has it been a year already?  Apparently, and what a busy year it has been.  Here are some pictures from John's first year

September

October

 

November

December

January

February

 

 March

April

 

May

 

June

 

July

 

August 2013

Happy Birthday John! 

Turning Five

Anna turned five years old this week and boy was she excited about it.  She has been instructing me on how to properly run her birthday for quite some time.  She decided she wanted to have a Rapunzel themed birthday and wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese, since we wouldn't be having a friend party (we don't know many friends yet).  I also had a doctor appointment and first grade orientation for Matthew that day, so it was busy!  Scott took the day off work, so that was nice.  Here's Anna with her Rapunzel tower birthday cake.  We had some structural difficulties with the tower.  The engineer in me really wanted to use full sized glazed donuts but Anna wanted smaller powdered ones.  I think the tower would have been more successful with the bigger donuts, but oh well.  We made it work.

We went to Chuck E. Cheese and then played a few games at home.  We dressed up with Rapunzel hair, made foam tiaras and wands and foam Pascal party blowers.

 We also had a pinata

 I got a frying pan to hit it with, but Grant thought it was too heavy.
John thought hitting the pinata was HILARIOUS!!  He laughed and laughed.

 Matthew collected his pinata candy in the frying pan.

 We lit Anna's cake and it really lit up

We did a little treasure hunt for the lost princess's crown in the satchel (like the movie) and each clue visited something or someone from the movie.  This was supposed to be the festival of lights at the end where they found their treasure (the satchel, goodie bags and Anna's presents).

Anna was very excited and told me it was the best birthday ever!  She thought I had forgot to buy her presents 'cause I had been so sneaky about them.  So she was even more excited that she got some presents.  I felt bad for being too sneaky.  Anyway, it was a fun day and Anna is now five!  So grown up and ready for kindergarten.

First Grade!

 Matthew had his first grade orientation today and he was super excited!

We got to see his classroom and meet his teacher.

Here is Matthew by his locker.

Matthew sitting at his desk.  He also got to meet his music teacher and see the library.  He wanted to practice walking from the front of the school to Anna's classroom and then to his own.  Then he wanted to go back to the front of the school and practice it again.  He is very serious about wanting to escort Anna from the bus to her class every day.  It's sweet.  Although I'm not sure Anna thinks she needs to be escorted.  

First grade sounds like its going to be serious.  Matthew will get real grades this year with more serious homework.  He also has a stack of books and workbooks in his desk already, which we were both excited about!  I think Matthew is ready for this.  School starts on Monday, so we'll see!!

Ready for Kindergarten

Yesterday I took Anna to her kindergarten orientation at her new school.  I've been having lots of school induced stress this summer and going to her orientation helped me feel better.  Anna was fine. 

We picked where we will live here based mostly on what school the kids would be able to go to.  Out in town the last people to register (us) would likely be randomly bussed to some other school in the district of which we have no say...and they are some pretty scary schools.  Plus the entire district had lost all their funding for extracurriculars.  The school the kids on base go to has money for music and PE still and won't bus our kids somewhere else AND is highly rated according to all those school ratings websites.  So that's what we picked.

When I went to find out who their teachers would be, I found out there were so many kindergarteners this year that they were going to have to hire a new kindergarten teacher, and Anna would have the "new teacher."  This started my school anxiety up again. 

We went to the kindergarten orientation and met the new teacher, who was perfectly lovely and has 10 years experience teaching kindergarten and 1st grade, so I felt much better.

I'm still a little anxious about Matthew and Anna riding the bus alone to and from school (I never rode the bus as a kid) but I'm dealing with it.  They'll be fine...right?  Right?

The kids are super excited that they get to ride the bus to school.  And they both told me they are not nervous at all about going to a new school.  Anna already met two new friends at the orientation, so she'll do fine I'm sure.

 Here is Anna with her bags of school supplies...getting ready to go to orientation

 And here we are in Anna's class at Anna's cubby (mailbox)

 Anna's seat

And Anna's locker!  She has a locker inside her classroom for her gym shoes and big towel (for quiet time).  Her classroom is much bigger than Matthew's kindergarten class, but its also full day vs. 3 hours and has 20+ students vs 14 in Matthew's class.

So maybe I'm crazy for having anxiety about my little guys going to a new school...or maybe that just makes me a normal mom.

Anyway, the orientation helped me feel better about the whole thing.  And, as always, Anna is fine with it and ready to go.  Kindergarten here we come!!

Blackberries

After getting three baskets of peaches last weekend we have been doing a lot of canning.

We made a batch of jam and then canned the rest of them.  It took some time.

This weekend blackberries were ripe for picking so we went to pick some of those.

 

 

 Here are some of the berries

 At first we had some trouble finding berries.  A lot of the rows were picked over already.

 Plus some people would eat the berries as soon as they were picked (Blueberries for Sal style).

 But eventually we found some good berries and picked a bunch

 John really wanted to eat them as they were being picked

 Matthew and his berries

 Lots of berries

When we got them all home some of them were already beginning to smell a bit overripe.

We made jam with about half of them and froze the other half.  The jam didn't turn out as well as the peach jam or raspberry jam (the blackberries may have been too ripe), but it was still good.

Here is our peach jam.  Mmmmm, those were some tasty peaches and the jam turned out really good.

We're enjoying being so close to all kinds of fresh produce

Pick Your Own Peaches

This weekend we went to a local farm (Eckert's) to pick peaches.  After our canning success with raspberries we were ready to try something else and peaches are in season.  Here's Matthew with his crate, ready to pick peaches.

 

We got to ride on a wagon (pulled by a tractor) from the main country store to the part of the farm where peaches were ripe and ready.

 We were ambitious and got three crates!

 Here are the peach trees!

There were a lot of people out picking that day, so we had to walk a little to find trees with peaches, but we eventually found some good ones.

The peach variety was called Red Haven and they are ripe when they are mostly red, so they told us to look for red ones.  Here Grant found one.  He had a lot of fun picking.

 He didn't want to put his peaches in the crate, and he wanted to eat them right away.

 Scott found the good trees for us

Maybe Johnny helped

 Grant eventually started putting his peaches in the crate when it got to be too much to carry

 We found lots of peaches!  And they smelled so good!!

 Here we are after riding back to the market with our peach haul.

It ended up being 37 pounds of peaches!!

Matthew was mostly able to carry his crate.

Grant was upset about something here.

We played a little at the kiddie corral afterward.  We also got some ice cream.  The kids had a free ice cream cone coupon from the local library summer reading program.

 Riding off road tricycles

 The sunken tractor

Matthew wanted me to know this is a REAL tractor

 Running through the little covered bridge

They had a little mini golf place.  When I seemed hesitant to let them play there the kids kept shouting to me, "Don't worry mom, it's FREE!"

 Ringing the bell

There are apple trees in the background.  They will be ready to pick labor day weekend.

So we'll be back

And a sandbox that we briefly visited.  Grant's ice cream cone had dripped all over everything, including his feet.  We cleaned him up as best as we could, but I'm pretty sure there was still chocolate ice cream between those toes.  And after running around in the dirt and sand it became gritty muddy chocolate ice cream toes.  He got a bath as soon as we got home.  I'm pretty sure he's not inventing any new ways to get dirty, but some days he definitely amazes me.

Anyway, we had lots of fun and now we have 37 pounds of peaches to can, minus a few that may have been eaten along the way.