First Day of First Grade

Today was the first day of school! Can you believe that I have a first grader?

Isn't he a handsome little guy? He was so excited to go to first grade!

I am super glad that we requested the later time schedule at our school. This means that Jacob has to be to school by 9:15 am rather than 8:00 am. We could make it to school by 8 am because the kids are awake, but it would be hard for me to have my three young kids out the door before 8 am. This way we have a much more relaxed, and fun morning with plenty of time for a mini photo session!

Of course I printed up some fun signs for our little photo shoot. I couldn't decide which ones I liked better, so we used both!

I love taking some pictures before we head out to school. Jacob is probably not a big fan of our photo ritual, but that is because he is anxious to get going! He kept asking if it was time to go to school yet!

But I did manage to get some nice pictures, I think!

Jacob was ready to go to school and I think it helped a lot that he met his teacher and even got to sit in his new desk at the school open house yesterday.

Of course I had to take pictures of him in his new desk! We really enjoyed meeting Mrs. Glass at the open house. Several people in our ward have had her as a teacher before and we have heard lots of great things about her. When we went and looked at the class lists on Friday evening, we counted and found out that Jacob already knows 9 of the students in his class. That made him feel at ease too! I showed him Mrs. Glass' picture on the school  website and he said, "Hey! She's pretty for a teacher!". I thought that was so cute!

I can't believe that I forgot to take a picture of the cute sign in front of his classroom! Silly me. Guess I will have to take one when I go to volunteer in his classroom or in the bookroom.

After taking photos we packed Jacob's lunch and headed off to school. Before we left, I had to take one of my favorite back to school pictures. I don't know why, but I love to see the feet of my little people!

So stinking cute. This year we got to add Amelia to the picture, since she can stand up and walk!

We loaded into the van and headed for the back of the school. Jacob's teacher told him that he would need to line up where he saw her name written on the sidewalk in chalk. He knew several of the kids waiting in line, so that was fun.

It will be strange not having Jacob at home for lunch! We said goodbye to Jacob and headed to the store. I was getting the kids some crafts to do with Grandma and Grandpa Devereaux while we are gone. While at the store we ran across some fun pirate hats.

We had a blast at the store saying "Arr!" to each other while wearing foam pirate hats. Before long Amelia was saying "Arrr!" and then grinning. What a cutie!

Isn't Ephraim a fearsome pirate?

We were so busy getting the house cleaned up and getting ready to leave. You see, next week Joe and I are going on a little trip to San Francisco for our 10 year wedding anniversary. Grandma and Grandpa Devereaux will be coming to watch the kids for nearly 6 days! It will be the longest I have ever been away from them. I know I will miss them, but I can't wait to spend time alone with my Honey!

 By the way, Jacob had a good day at school and was all smiles when he got home. So it looks like all is well!

Shining shoes

Today after church Daddy and Jacob went into the bedroom to shine their Sunday shoes. I thought it was so cute that I had to go in and take some pictures with my phone.

They weren't hiding in my room because it was a secret activity or something. They just wanted to keep Miss Amelia from playing in the shoe polish!

I love that Jacob and Ephraim have a Daddy who can teach them skills like shining their shoes, washing a car, and fixing all kinds of things. Daddy sure is a handy man!

Amelia Dresses up

This week Amelia discovered dress up clothes! We don't have very many girl dress ups yet, but she found a tutu that I had made for her sitting in her closet. She decided that she loved it and had to have it on!

As a matter of fact, she wore it nearly all day. I took the tutu off for her to take a nap and when she got up she wanted me to put it back on!

You would know that a girl who loves shoes would LOVE dress up clothes too! What a cutie!

Guess we will have to get her some princess gowns and crowns, huh?

Airplanes in the Park and Goodbyes.

All too soon the time came for Auntie Em to have to go home. Her plane did not leave until the afternoon, so to keep the boys busy for a while we decided to go to Evergreen Park and shoot off the boys airplanes. This time I was smart enough to take a video instead of pictures!

We have had so much fun with these little airplanes we bought at Costco. They are so easy to use and just require you to twist them up. The boys love them!

After lunch we drove Auntie Em to the airport. Jacob was teary-eyed as he said goodbye. He will miss his Aunt Emily. Ephraim was sad too. I told the boys that we could write letters to Aunt Emily and that she might write back to us. Ephraim said he was going to send her a card that said, "Come back Aunt Emily, it is more funner with you at our house." Isn't that the cutest thing?

I will miss having Emily at our house too. It was fun to have someone else to talk to and do stuff with during the day and I know the kids loved hanging out with her! Hopefully she can come back and visit again soon.

Daylight Donuts and the Day of Disasters

For the summer reading program at the library, one of the prizes that we won were coupons for Daylight Donuts. The boys were so cute and said they wanted to wait to go to Daylight Donuts so they could go with Aunt Emily. Since Amelia was still asleep when we got up, I sent Emily to get donuts with the boys in their pajamas. They thought it was awesome!

Thanks for the picture, Auntie Em!

I wanted to try one more time to take a picture of my three kids together. I thought it would be easier with Emily there to help me. So we dressed the kids up and headed to the Provo Riverwoods.

 Unfortunately Amelia was NOT in the mood to do pictures! She was so stubborn and uncooperative! We started out on the bridge, since it was still in the shade. This is the best picture I got there.

I also got a cute one of Amelia that I like. Look at that sly little smile.

Then we tried several other places. Amelia did not want to sit with her brothers! She kept trying to jump off the rock, and when we tried to use a cute little kid's chair she practically threw herself off of it. So we just gave up!

I got enough pictures that I was able to put together a nice picture of my three kids.

You totally can't tell that this is actually three different pictures combined into one, can you? I am getting pretty good at using Photoshop!

The boys tried really hard to do their best for me, so we went to the movie like we had planned even though I was feeling a bit grouchy. We went to see Madagascar 3.

I would highly recommend this movie! It was probably my favorite one out of all of the Madagascar movies, and the boys loved it!

There was one part of the movie that I didn't get to see. Amelia was doing just fine, eating popcorn and sitting on my lap when all of the sudden she spit up all over her shirt, my hand, and the floor. So I got to go to the bathroom and try to clean her up. In the end I just took her shirt off and washed it in the sink because it was so gross. That meant she got to watch the rest of the movie with her shirt off.

She got restless at the end, so I gave her a sucker that I had brought to keep her occupied. So we got out of the movie and I had a shirtless, sticky girl. Emily and I just laughed about it because it just added to the disaster that Amelia was that day. It was pretty comical. We had to take her home and give her a bath and put her to bed!

What a day!

Auntie Em's Surprises

Aunt Emily brought a couple of "surprises" with her when she came to visit the boys. Ephraim asked about the surprises EVERY day. Finally we got to break out one of the surprises, which was the mentos geyser tube. Emily brought it the last time she visited, but only Jacob really remembered it.

So we went to the park and attempted to get a good geyser going. Our first couple of attempts we tried to pour some of the soda into a smaller bottle so we could do multiple geysers. That didn't work, so we went for a big one.



Unfortunately we ended up with more of a sprinkler! It sure was funny though.

So later in the day we tried again with some smaller bottles. We were more successful this time!



The boys thought the geysers were fun, but they LOVED the second surprise which Emily got out a day or so later.

The second surprise was a water balloon launcher/ slingshot. It was pretty cool! Unfortunately I completely forgot to take pictures because we were having so much fun. We took the sling shot to the cemetery and Emily and I held the two sides while the boys pulled the sling shot back and watched the balloons fly. Don't worry we only launched the balloons down the road, not at the headstones!

We even had a whole troop of boys from next door come over and launch balloons with us. I think we ended up with 7 boys total. What a blast! The boys all lined up to take their turn and see who could shoot their water balloon the furthest. It was amazing how far they went!

I will have to get the boys a water balloon slingshot sometime in the future. They aren't quite strong enough to hold the slingshot by themselves (yet!), but they sure do enjoy launching the balloons!

Amelia's Dancing Shoes

So this morning I got bored of putting Amelia's hair in pigtails, so I decided to try something different. It turned out pretty well, so I tried to take a picture with my phone! I finally had to resort to giving Amelia some milk because she moves too fast!

See? I can pull all of her hair up if I want too! I also took a video to show her hair, and it turned out to be a hilarious one! She is wearing my shoes and dancing, which are two of the things that she loves! What a cutie pie!

Pirate Ship Pool

This year the boys have LOVED the "pirate ship pool" in Lindon. So we decided to take Aunt Emily and go for a swim! This time I actually remembered to take pictures!

The kids love to go down the little slides on the pirate ship, as well as the big yellow slide.

I caught this great picture of Aunt Emily and Jacob underneath the bucket that dumps water. So funny!

Splash! It was awesome to take the kids in the morning and have another adult there to help keep an eye on everyone! I probably would not have taken any pictures at all otherwise.

This next series cracks me up! Emily and Jacob lounging at the pool...

getting a little wet! Haha!

We went earlier in the day, and then planned to go back later in the evening with Daddy because you pay for the whole day when you go. Unfortunately Joe forgot that he had round table that night, so he didn't make it! We were bummed, but we went back with Emily anyway.

I borrowed a floating ring from a friend so it would be easier to go down the lazy river with Amelia. She enjoyed it as long as she didn't have to stay in it the whole time. She liked to get out and play too.

We also brought along some tiger floaties that we inherited. They were fun too. Here is a little video of Auntie Em and the kids floating down the lazy river.



We have had so much fun at the Lindon pool this summer. We plan on going at least one more time before the school year starts!

Museum of Ancient Life

The second day that Auntie Em was here, we decided to take a trip to the dinosaur museum. I have coupons for free children's admissions from the Orem Public Library and it has been a long time since our last visit!

Recently I have learned to take pictures in Manual mode on my camera, and I have found that I can take much better pictures, but it does take me a few tries to find the right settings right now! Here is Jacob, cranking the wheels of time.

We also got to see a paleontologist working on a fossil, which was pretty cool. Most of the time when we go to the dinosaur museum the workroom is empty.

The boys had a fun time looking at the exhibits. I have found that as they get older, they slowly start to take more interest in the other exhibits (you know, the ones that aren't dinosaur bones?).

Every time we are at the museum I take a picture of the boys by these fossils. This time we had Autie Em get in on the picture too!

Amelia mostly stayed in her stroller. I would let her out and walk with us, but she is not good at staying with Mommy and following us around. Instead she would rather be the leader, which doesn't work out so well!

We had tons of fun in the museum with Emily. I enjoyed taking pictures that I would not normally be able to take- without using the flash!

We stopped and built a dinosaur out of magnets, which was fun.

And of course we checked out all the fossils!

The kids even dressed up like dinosaurs and let me take their picture by the feet of the Brachiosaurus.

Of course no visit to the dinosaur museum would be complete without visiting the erosion table.

The boys love to play with the dinosaurs, water and sand.

They probably would have loved to stay longer, but Amelia was getting to the end of her patience with being stuck in her stroller. So we headed on!

Look at how much the boys and Auntie Em weigh! As much as a triceratops. Don't tell, but I wheeled the stroller onto the platform and stood on it too. We got the scale to go much higher than that!

The dinosaur museum was lots of fun. Of course on our way out we had to stop at the excavation area. The boys love to uncover the dinosaur bones.

Of course I let Amelia get out and play too. That made her happy!



It was fun to watch all three of the kids play in the sand and look for dinosaur bones.

We went to the museum before lunch, and by the time we finished we were all starving! Plus Amelia needed a nap so we had to head home. It was a really fun day at the museum. I was glad we went before the craziness of $2 Tuesdays in August. The museum was not at all crowded and we had a great time!