First Week of First Grade

Kylee has officially been a first grader for a week! She came home happy from school every day this week and has been excited to go back the next morning. She has used the words "awesome" and "amazing" to describe her day. I am so happy that she is happy to be in school!

Kylee especially likes that she has her own desk and has really enjoyed eating lunch at school. We bought her a cute lunch bag and also a thermos so she can take hot foods from home for lunch. She took macaroni and cheese to school twice this week and thought that was pretty cool :-) I've been leaving her little jokes/notes in her lunch every day too, which she loves. In fact, I just found a bunch more on pinterest so I can keep it up throughout the year!

Anyway, here are a few more pictures from the first day of school. It's pretty fun that she is at the same school as her cousins!

Back to School Party

I can't believe that summer is almost over... school starts next week!! I decided to throw a small "back to school" party for Kylee and a couple of her friends from church who will also be in the first grade with her. We had a two last minute no-shows, so it was even smaller than planned, but the kids had a great time. They ate pizza, had cupcakes, and we had a couple organized games, in addition to "free play".

At lunch I asked each of the kids what they were most looking forward to about first grade. Here is what they had to say:

• Caleb: More play time.
• Kylee: Three recesses and getting my own desk.
• Tanner: Seeing my friends.
• Laura: Eating lunch at school in the cafeteria.

I think it's funny that Kylee is so excited about a "desk". I asked her how that was different from kindergarten... was it because a different kid sat there in the morning class? She explained to me that in kindergarten they sat at "tables" and in first grade they get to sit at "desks". I haven't seen her first grade class yet to know if she's right - hope she's not too disappointed if she has to sit at a table again!

Our first organized game was a "taste test". The kids took turns being blind folded and tasting a food that they might have in their hot or cold lunch at school this year. They did really well! The only one that held them up was the tater tot :-)

Their "prize" for participating in the taste test game was some pop rocks!

The other organized game they played was a school supply scavenger hunt. I found the clues online, which made my job even easier! I hid school supplies around the house along with the clues. At the end of the game, they got some pencils as a reward.

All in all, I think they had a good time! I know I had fun putting it all together. We will be headed to the school this afternoon to check out Kylee's class list, although it should be pretty much the same class as last year since Kylee is in the magnet track at school. It's still fun to check it out though! Kylee heads back to her mom's house in the morning... when we pick her up on Sunday she starts school the next day. Ready or not, here we come!

Camping in Garden Valley

Our family loves camping, but with Matt in training all summer, it's been difficult to get any camping trips planned. We finally decided that with the summer ending we just needed to fit one in. We knew we wanted to go somewhere close because we would leave when Matt got home from work on Friday around 5:30. After looking around, we decided on the Pine Flats campground, about an hour and a half away from Boise. Unfortunately, by the time we made this decision, we could no longer reserve a campsite (you have to reserve 4 days in advance). This always makes me nervous because I don't want to drive all the way to a campsite and then have no where to stay if all the site are taken! We decided to take our chances since the website still showed there were 13 "walk up" spaces available for Friday night. We pulled into the campground around 7 on Friday night, and guess what... there wasn't a single site available. They were all either occupied or reserved. The other rotten thing was that the few camping places we had passed on the way to Pine Flats were all full too.

We weren't quite sure what to do. I knew that the campsites near Idaho City were full (I had looked and tried to reserve a site at a couple different campgrounds earlier in the week). I knew there were some campgrounds north of Garden Valley that were "first come, first served", but I wasn't sure how long we would have to drive to get to those, and who knew if they would be full by the time we got there too. We had a sad little girl in the back seat who thought she wasn't going to get to eat smores, and Tyler was just starting to get whiny after a long car ride (plus it was close to his bed time).

Well, at that moment, I made a slightly uncomfortable decision. I have a dear friend, Robin, who has a cabin on the most beautiful little piece of property in Garden Valley, right on the river. Robin currently lives out of the country, so I didn't have a way to get a hold of her right away, but I didn't think she would mind if we set up a tent on the grass next to their cabin. We decided to ask for forgiveness instead of permission and drove to her cabin and set up camp (I did contact Robin via Facebook when we got home and she was okay with us staying there!). 

We had the most lovely time. We made a fire on "fire island" so that Kylee could eat her smores. Everyone loved just sitting around the campfire and enjoying the beautiful scenery.

The next morning, Matt made us a delicious breakfast of pancakes, sausage, hash browns, and hot chocolate.

The kiddos loved throwing rocks in the river and swinging on the swings.

After breakfast and playing around Saturday morning, we packed up and came home. It was a quick trip, but was one of the highlights of the summer. So thankful to the Smith family for "letting" us stay on their property. It truly is a little piece of heaven.

First Piano Recital

Kylee has been taking piano lessons from her mom for about a year now. We have her practice at our house every day (except Sunday). It has been fun to watch her develop and grow as she has learned to read music, play with both hands, learned about playing piano and forte, learned about repeats, ties, rests, etc.

I was a little disappointed when I realized her mom didn't put on recitals for her piano students... so we decided to put on our own! And one advantage of doing our own recital was that Kylee would be the only performer :-)

So several weeks ago, Kylee and I planned her recital. She decided which songs she wanted to play and we talked about who to invite. We made and emailed invitations and then Kylee practiced her songs so she was ready for the big day. Her recital was last night and we had a great turnout of family - there were 20 of us all together! Kylee did so well and Matt and I were so proud of her. I think Kylee was pretty proud of herself too. Here is a quick clip of a couple of her pieces:

4th of July 2015

As usual, we headed to Inkom, Idaho for 4th of July this year. We really missed not having Kylee with us. It was so weird. As I was packing, I kept thinking I needed to pack for her. And then when we were in Inkom, I kept thinking things like, "I need to fix Kylee a plate of food for lunch." I'll just say, it is weird to be on vacation without one of your kids!

Anyway, we still managed to pack in the fun. We enjoyed a flag ceremony, parade, carnival games, good food, laser tag, and then finished off the evening with a BBQ with my cousin Janelle and her family in Pocatello.

Summer Harvest

We love having a garden. We currently have just three garden boxes, and one is completely full of strawberry plants. We had abundant berries in late spring and early summer. We picked bowls of small, sweet strawberries about every other day and ate them as a snack, with lunch, with dinner, whenever!

Our tomatoes are coming on now. Man, I love fresh garden tomatoes. Kylee likes the sweet cherry tomatoes :-)

We also had the opportunity to go to a friend's house to pick raspberries. My friend and I did most of the picking while Kylee and Tyler played in the backyard, but that was fine with me :-)

We got quite the haul of berries, and then my friend gave us some additional berries that they had picked and frozen. Kylee and I took the opportunity to make a couple batches of raspberry jam. It was her first time making jam and we had a lot of fun... and now we are enjoying eating the jam on bread or toast :-)

Tyler Lately

I have several pictures of my littlest kiddo that I wanted to post, so thought I'd do a little update on him.

Back in Tyler's 18 month post, I talked about his hives and his upcoming allergy testing. We did end up running several tests on him. We started with a "back test" where they expose you to different foods you could be allergic to. It's a pretty quick test, just 20 minutes. The only thing that came back positive for Tyler was a mild allergy to egg whites. The follow up blood test showed the same thing.

The doctor wanted to do a peanut butter challenge just to make sure that there was no peanut allergy. This was a 3 1/2 hour appointment in the doctor's office where they had Tyler eat peanut butter in increasing doses every 30 minutes or so and monitored him for any reactions. He passed with flying colors. We are thrilled his hives must have simply been from a virus and that we don't have to worry about food allergies with him. I was also pretty proud of how well Tyler did during his doctor's appointments. He colored, read books, played with the iPad, played with stickers, etc.

Playing with stickers has definitely become one of Tyler's favorite activities. As you can tell from the above picture, he not only likes to put them on paper, but also likes to put them on his face, arms, etc.

Tyler also enjoys playing with the Light Bright. We have been lucky that Tyler doesn't really put things in his mouth. It's fun watching him move the pegs around the board. The Light Bright can keep him entertained for quite some time.

I've mentioned before that Tyler likes to help me unload the dishwasher. Well now, instead of handing me the silverware, he insists on putting it in the drawer himself.

The other day, I told Tyler we needed to put on his shoes so we could go to the store. I found him like this, wearing his dad's shoes and all ready to go. Such a cutie!!

Tyler is mostly sweet, but I've started having some issues with him. First, he has started hitting. I have no idea where this came from, but I'm having a hard time with it. I'm not sure the best way to deal with it. I tell him hitting isn't nice and I have tried several things to try to get him to stop, but we haven't had a ton of luck. He has also started throwing some pretty big tantrums, mostly when I make him stop doing something he likes (i.e. when we leave the park, when we leave his cousins' house, when we leave grandma's house, etc). I am not sure what to do about these tantrums either. He screams and cries and flails around and it is often difficult to get him to calm down. I hope these are just phases that he will grow out of very soon, because I hate it when he gets like that!

Summer Fun

I haven't been very good at blogging this summer, but I do have some random pictures I wanted to post :-)

Matt's sister Michelle adopted a baby boy that was born just a couple weeks after Tyler. The adoption took over a year and a half to finalize! We were excited to have them come to Boise to have their sweet JJ sealed to them in the temple. Here are a couple pictures of Kylee and Tyler as we waited outside during the sealing.

Kylee took private swimming lessons at a pool in our neighborhood this summer. She worked on both front stroke and back stroke. She still needs to work on breathing to the side on her front stroke, but she definitely improved a lot gained a lot of confidence.

Kylee has also been practicing tying her shoes. She's finally got it down - she and I are both proud of this accomplishment!

We try to plan at least one or two "fun" things a week. Some of the kiddo's favorites are going to the park, bowling, eating lunch at McDonalds, or hanging out with their family (grandmas, grandpas, cousins).

Some of Tyler's summer favorites are corn on the cob and playing with the hose.