Away They Go

School started yesterday.  I am lame and forgot to take a picture of William and Tessa before they left for the bus stop.  Jay took a picture of Henry on his phone but I don't have it yet.  Sigh.

Anyway, so far so good.  Henry leaves the house at 7:00 am and walks to school, which starts at 7:30.  He is in middle school and has a locker and seven different classes.  So far he seems happy with the way things are going. 

William and Tessa leave for the bus stop at 8:15ish, maybe a bit later.  I am going to have to start waking Tessa up earlier than 7:30.  She is soooo slow about getting dressed and eating breakfast and she gets mad at me if I push her along.  I think we'll try 7:15 next week and see how she does.  She has always just gone at her own pace but the luxury of hanging out in her jammies until 11:00 is now gone.  She seems happy in 1st grade so far.  William is an old pro at elementary school now - let's hope things stay nice and steady for him.

As for me?  Ha.  I've been busy the first few days of school, just getting caught up on things.  But next week I intend to take full advantage of my nice, long 6+ hours to do - well - whatever I want.  It's been a long time coming - for 11 years I have had at least one child home with me for at least half the day.  Which is great and fine and all that, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't intrigued by the idea of so much time for myself.   It will either be great or I'll be standing at the door everyday, waiting for the kids to come home.

Or maybe a mixture of both. 

DNA for Dummies

My poor children.  They have now officially all inherited my crappy vision:

$365 later, she's still beautiful.  And she can see.

End of Summer Spectacular

Well, I don't know how spectacular it was, but this past weekend we took the kids to Salt Lake City as kind of a last hurrah before school starts.  We went to the Hogle Zoo, City Creek Center, and the new Utah Museum of Natural History.  We ate at Cheesecake Factory and the Pie Pizzeria.  We stayed at a hotel and swam in the pool and the hot tub.  It was a fun 24 hours away and the perfect way to end our carefree summer days.

A few pictures:

This polar bear is at the new Rocky Shores exhibit.  It was playing with the crowd and kept swimming right up to the glass:

 William and Tessa really liked the giraffes:

 The baby elephant was really cute:

 William was in skull heaven - he loves stuff like this:

 William also loves bighorn sheep.  We got to watch the zoo worker feed it a treat of romaine lettuce:

 The train was out of commission for the day but we did ride the carousel:

 The carousel made William nervous, but then again so do lots of things:

 Henry and Tessa were monkeying around:

The Natural History Museum was awesome:





 Again, fossils and skulls made William very happy:

We had a fun day:

Flower Girl

Last spring Tessa planted two seeds in kindergarten - a pumpkin seed and a sunflower seed.  After the seeds started growing, she brought them both home to be transplanted.  The pumpkin plant sadly died a tragic death in our pumpkin patch.  The sunflower seed, however, turned into this:

She is thrilled.

The Graduate

Henry hit a milestone tonight.  He "graduated" from Cub Scouts and received his Arrow of Light award.  It is the highest award any Cub Scout can receive and requires quite a bit of work.  Henry loves Scouts so far and has enjoyed participating and was excited to receive this award.  Now that he is 11, he moves on to Boy Scouts.

I included this picture because I really like his smile here.

 He received a nice certificate, an arrow, and a badge that he can wear on his Boy Scouts shirt.

 In our ward they have the boys sign their names on a bridge to symbolize their transition from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts.

 After Henry's big award, he left to go to his regular Scout meeting.  William stayed at Pack Meeting and participated in the Raingutter Regatta.  The boys made boats and raced each other down raingutters by blowing on their sails.  He came in 4th, which made him happy.

Now we are down to one Cub Scout in the family.  Jay will be relieved - only one Pinewood Derby car to work on this year.