80's Child

This might be one of the funniest moments I've had at 7am in quite awhile!  We're trying to get the kids to be a bit more independent in the morning.  We lay clothes out the night before.  Since they wake up at the butt-crack-of-dawn every morning, but aren't allowed to come out of their room until 7, they use that time to read some stories, get dressed, and make their bed (when they're in the right mood to actually follow directions, of course).  So, that's what they did this morning.  Both kids' rooms were cleaned up, beds were made, and they were dressed.  Brett was in his school uniform - belt on, shirt tucked in, good to go.  Kate picked out different clothes than we had picked out the night before, which is fine.  She added some stylish accessories too!  My little 80's child!

Sunday

Just a typical Sunday afternoon at our house... hanging out, watching the Packers, (a little) thankful that the make-up soccer games got rained out, again!

Crazy hair gymnastics

I realized that I haven't taken pictures of even talked about Kate's gymnastics class in a long time.  She is still taking gymnastics one night a week.  She aged up about a month ago and is now in a class of all 4 year olds and is doing great.  She was doing great in her old class too, but had gotten to the point that she could do everything without a lot of new challenges, so this class is good for her!  Pardon the crazy wig, side pony tails, and other weird hair you may see in these pictures - it's crazy hair week at gymnastics!!

Run, jump, push, and flip... she runs and gets distracted by other people in the gym :)  But she can do it!

Handstands are fun!  This particular class day they only had two kids in the class - Kate and her friend, Ava, from school

Building up some arm muscles too

Kate really enjoys the bars and learning how to do new things... mostly.  Right now she gets tired easily, but has fun!

Concentrating on keeping her legs straight and pointing her toes

A bad picture, but a pretty good cast!

Backward roll, without the teacher's help!  Definitely a more recent skill - yay!

Forward rolls are easy and fun :)

Practice makes perfect

Our weeks, while hectic, have a certain routine to them.  Monday is gymnastics, Tuesdays are practice, some Wednesdays I work late, Thursdays are Todd's soccer, Friday is family time, Saturdays are kid soccer, Sundays are church and football.  You get the drift.  Usually, Todd takes Brett to practice (Todd and our friend, Mark are the coaches for our boys' team) while Kate and I stay home, eat dinner, and call it an early bedtime.  Well, this week Todd had to go to a college fair to represent Marquette.  It happened to fall on the same night as team pictures.  Let me just tell you now, in case you ever need to know... if you're ever going to miss a practice night, that would be the night to do it!  Pictures are so chaotic, despite how organized they try to be.  Either way, it's mostly a nightmare for coaches who are trying to get the kids focused on practicing.  Eventually, after a great picture like this (see below), everyone finally got into the practice frame of mind and did ok!

Go Dolphins!

The girls are showing them how it's done!

Warm up with some jumping jacks

Stretch those legs!

We don't want any pulled muscles (that's mostly for the coaches... the kids are fine!)

Little siblings got to watch too!

It takes lots of stretching to get ready to play!

Look at that coordination!

Starting to get silly

Cute or hot mess?  You decide!

Finally onto some drills

Dribble away

Waiting patiently (?) for their turn

Memere's Birthday

Long time, no post... I know!  I have a bunch of pictures to post, so bear with me for a few minutes!  This past Saturday was my mom's birthday and we were lucky enough to ALL be able to get together for dinner with the exception of my sister's fiance, Jeff.  These days, that's not too bad - only missing one person!  We grilled out and had a fun night celebrating Mom!  Brett celebrated with a fever and a cold, which we later found out was just a nasty sinus infection.  He's all better now :)

Modeling their Halloween costumes, courtesy of Kids Everywear (a large consignment sale here in town)

As usual, Kate wanted to help open presents

This was the card that Kate picked out for Memere - a "Monkey Fairy Princess" on the front of it.  Who cares what the inside said, right?!

Aunt Erin, being Aunt Erin :)

Mom with her shiny new trash can... the old one (while cute) was finally biting the dust!

Kate is definitely my child

Must.lick.every.bite.of.chocolate.off.every.candle.

Whoops!  Missed one!

Waiting patiently for her piece of brownie and ice cream (yes, no cake - Mom loves brownies and ice cream!)

Settled

Now that we're finally in our first FULL week of school (no half days, no early release days, no holidays), I can say that both kids are settled into their classes.  Kindergarten is definitely exhausting for this little guy, but he seems to love it!  He comes home smiling every day.  I love the carpool line.  I know, strange to hear someone say that they love the carpool line, but I love seeing his whole face light up as soon as he sees my car.  The teacher has to remind him every day to stand still until the car stops - every. single. day.  He's just so excited!  He loves to tell me about his day - how he did his morning work, he ate snack, he had morning recess and rest, he ate lunch, he had recess again.  I usually have to pry the rest out of him - what did you DO during morning work?  What letters are you working on today?  Eating and recess aren't exactly the highlights of what I want to hear about, but I know they are the highlights of his day!  I'm glad to hear about all of the friends he's meeting and to still hear about some of the same friends too!

Kate is adjusting well, too. She has a harder time adjusting to change and a new routine in general. Part of it might be the age and part of it might be her personality. She had a great first week of school, and then a rough second week. She cried almost every day the second week. Not just a little tear - I'm talking full out screaming, tears, throw herself down on the ground fit in the middle of the hallway. And she didn't do it as we got to school or anything like that, it was just when Ms. Aimee opened the door to let the kids in. Thankfully, it was apparently mostly for my benefit (or lack there of) and stopped within 5 minutes and she had a great rest of the day. After a threat of taking away the precious sparkle shoes (and following through with the threat), we've had a MUCH better week this week! Most of her close friends from last year are in the class across the hall, but she doesn't really seem to mind.  I let her stay after school to play on the playground at least a couple days a week, so she still gets to see those girls too, and she's already making new friends.  Two little girls, Camden and Erin, are usually popular conversation pieces after school!  Kate saw Erin at church this weekend and was SO excited!  I'll get some good pictures of her up soon, too! Promise!