Soph's Open House and First Day of Preschool

Sophie before her Preschool Open House in UT. She was pretty nervous and shy, I was a little surprised. I think with the move and everything that her little life has been turned upside. All of this change is hard for them to understand. For this first couple of weeks they kept asking to go home, aka WA. She clung to my legs and wouldn't talk to her teachers or anyone when we first got there. I wanted to get irritated with her, but I tried to see things from her perspective. I just kept encouraging her to go and play and to meet new friends. It took her awhile, but she finally relaxed and made a friend. :)

I love how Noah is creeping into the picture. That boy loves to pose. :)

They are so cute together. They really truly love each other and Noah gets so sad whenever Sophie leaves.

Me and my big girl. One more year til Kindergarten...cra cra.

Cheese!

Outside of her preschool. My little Washington mole children are having a hard time with the bright sun here. Tragic. They'll get to used to it. But for now most of our pictures look like this. :) haha

And these pictures of Soph before her first day of Preschool! She kind of did the same thing as the Open House, but her preschool is great and had a cute little scavenger hunt and dinosaur footprints leading to the door of the preschool to help the kids loosen up a little. The scavenger hunt helped the kids to find where the bathroom was, where the books were, where the toys were, etc. Noah even had fun and was pretty mad when we had to leave. They had the best toys!! I must find them somewhere for Christmas or something. 

He really couldn't get enough of these magnet building toys. 

Soph with the duck puzzle she did.

More Noah. :) He was so happy to be there. I hope to one day have a basement like this to make as a playroom just for them. That would be heaven. Some day....

Soph with her new friend Marissa. They get along so well! Since they are both pretty shy, I'm so glad that they became friends. I don't really know her mom, but I hope to get to know her better to do a playdate or something. They really are well matched. 

I know that Sophie is going to do well in this Preschool. I'm so grateful how everything has come together for us here. I was so nervous about finding her a preschool so late into the summer, but things have worked out just fine. She loves it now! But she is in the afternoon preschool class from 12:30-3 pm, and man are preschool days hard! She is still in the stage where she needs a nap most days, so she comes home after all that mental and physical work and is exhausted. By 4 pm she is in complete meltdown mode. I've learned to let her watch a show and have a snack for about 30 minutes, then I've been trying to take them to the playground or somewhere where she can't think about how tired she is. Then we come home and have dinner and then bed. With Josh getting off late though, like 6:30 and not home til 7, it's hard to do early dinner 3 days a week. And Noah's naps have gotten cut short on preschool days now too. I'm on a waiting list for the morning class, but that would mean having to make all new friends. Might be worth it though to have our days back. We'll see what happens. But so far this preschool has been great and I hope it will help me to teach her how to read. She wants to soo badly, and has some words memorized. This little girl has the BEST memory! She memorized her entire Merida book, she got one of the leap pad pens for her birthday from Gma and Gpa Dickinson that reads to her. This is not a little short book. It has big hard words and is long. You can turn to any page and she'll recite it to you, word for word perfectly. It's kind of incredible. I'll have to take a video and put it on here. Blows my mind. But now she just needs to connect the words she's saying to the text on the page. We've been working with her, not as much as I should with moving and all. She'll get there though, it'll just click one day and then the floodgates will open, I just know it. But this preschool is going to help her tremendously. They focus on phonetics and sounding out words so that the kids can read anything. 

Anyways, thanks for taking the time to read all of that! This is going to become my journal so get ready for some writing. :) You lucky dogs you.

I mustache you a question, and other fun goings on

These two are so silly. :) 

The kids and I had a little picnic in WA a few days before we left. Sophie took this picture, not bad my dear. 

My pretty girl! 

My cute boy!

I don't know. But it's a rare picture of me with at least one of my children.

And this was from the Fourth but I forgot to add it to that post. I wanted to prove that I was in fact there. :)

Fourth of July

So for the Fourth of July this year we were in WA still. It was actually the one day I was glad it was overcast there because otherwise it would have been too hot. I know, I know. I can't believe I'm saying it either. :) We went down to the waterfront and did the Freedom Fest with Josh's family. They got a room at the Silver Cloud Inn the night before so we took the kids and hung out there for most of the day. We were supposed to stay for the fireworks, but since the kids missed their naps they were disasters and I wasn't feeling so hot from all of the extremely healthy fried food that we partook of earlier in the day. So we decided to head home about 6 and just do our own little fireworks at home. It was a great day though and a nice way to close out our time in WA. We love the Freedom Fest and I'm sad that we'll probably be missing it for the next few years. The kids loved the airplane show and walking around to see all of the cool booths and things. There was even a pole vaulting tournament going on, random, that was soo cool to watch. I would definitely cause some serious damage trying to do that, both to myself and the audience members. :) haha We were all glad to go to sleep that night. :)