a boy. his sister.: August 2010

Monday, August 30, 2010

First day of school

Today was the kids' first day of school. They are each going 5 days, 9am-1pm. They went in, all smiles, excited to start the school year. When I picked them up at 1, they were just as excited and their teachers said they each had a great day. Ms. Aimee even said that Brett was the cutest kid ever... I'm not sure what in the world he did on the first day of school to earn that title in a 4 hour time span. I don't think I want to know :)

I asked the kids if they made any new friends and what their names were. Kate started naming all of the kids that she knew from last year - Logan, Matthew, Cash, Jack, and Izzy. I asked her what the new friends names were and she said she didn't know any new friends. Then I asked her who she played with and what they played... she said she played with Cash and they played trains and dollies. Then I asked Brett if he met any new friends today and he said no. He said he played with Ian on the playground and they played Transformers - pretty typical - not much has changed with him from May to August!

Game 2

Some pictures from the kids' 2nd soccer game last weekend... enjoy!

Friday Night Fun

On Friday night we decided to go to dinner at McAllister's at North Hills. It's such a nice family-friendly area and the kids love to run around and check it all out! Those are some happy faces!

We've lost our MARBLES!

Just like last year, we spent the last week of summer getting to do some extra-fun things around town... the peak of the week being our trip to Marbles Kids Museum downtown. I think that Brett was just as fascinated driving around the "city" as he was going to the museum, but we all had a great time playing and exploring with new stuff. They even changed some of it since last time we went, so that was a pleasant surprise!

Fire-fighter Kate

This little fireman is driving the ambulance!

Picking her flowers, "See Mom?!"

As usual, my kids LOVE the train table and didn't want to leave

Still at the train table

Brett climbed up to the top of the pirate ship and I had to climb up to literally pull him down when it was time to move on

Water table - always a good time

Build your own car (or have mom do it for you) and race it down the ramp

Build a maze (or have mom build it for you) and race the marbles down

Part of the new section... all about finance and banking... these were sort of like the drive up teller stations. They suck all the way up, then you aim the thing to shoot the ball into a basket and watch it follow a track around the top of the room and into the "bank"

Building a giant lego house.. the part that is jutting out was Brett's addition - I had to help him make it more structurally sound. I don't see either of us as architects in the near future!

Collecting more blocks for the house

One of the favorite sections... real wood, real tools

Kate's face absolutely cracks me up here! Funny girl!

Painting is fun too!

Kate's first creation

Brett's first creation... he "drew the lines to make them safe"?!

Another Brett original - something about a soccer field

Kate's second masterpiece - the art of not mixing colors is lost with her

Balancing Act

A dance outfit and pom poms... love it!

Friday, August 27, 2010

5 years later

We've been in our house for 5 years, 2 months, and 5 days and we finally have some landscaping done! I'm sure our neighbors are thinking, "It's about damn time!" We've had a busy 5 years to say the least, starting with both of us working 60 hour work weeks, then the birth of Brett, then Kate, and well... you get the idea. All of the work was done by Greenscape, Inc. I would highly recommend them. I didn't deal with them one on one very much, but I'm pretty sure that Todd would agree ith me - they were easy to work with and did a great job helping us figure out exactly what we wanted and making it happen.