Alia's first day of preschool

Alia is very proud to be able to go to her own school now.  Drop off went really well today.  I expected tears but she hugged me and went right in.  I was a little shocked by this but discovered why when I picked her up.  She thought that I had stayed at the school the whole time she was there and she was shocked I went home.  She said, "You left me there all by myself!"  I guess we will see how Wednesday's drop off goes now that she is aware of that small detail. 

This is what she said about her day when I picked her up:
We played on the playground and I played on the slide and teeter totter and balance beam, but the balance beam had sand and big rocks on it and the boy slipped on the rocks and I didn't.  The teacher rang her bell and we all came in, in a line like a choo- choo train.  We had spider man cupcakes but they were white and I wanted chocolate.  We had juice and goldfish crackers too.  I had lots of sugar so I won't pick out any candy today.  (She gets to choose a piece of candy when she earns 5 milk caps and she had 3 in the morning).  Over all I would say she had a great first day!  My day was a little too quiet, I guess I've learned to like all that noise around the house!

Tomato Hornworm

Today Avery discovered something unusual on our tomato plant .  We initially thought it was a fuzzy caterpillar, but after a little research we found out that is was an evil tomato hornworm.  He was in the process of eating all of the leaves and tomatoes off of our tomato plants when out of nowhere a hero appeared.

This friendly braconid wasp really should be wearing a super hero cape, because she came along and saved our tomatoes by planting all of her babies on the back of the pesky caterpillar.  They will suck him dry before they hatch and then take off in search of more evil tomato eaters.  If you find this caterpillar without the parasites, get rid of him!  If you find him with them on, just cut he leaf off and put it on another plant to rid your tomatoes of any more hidden caterpillars. 

6 month picture update

 Avery 6 years
Alia 3 years 6 months

 

 

 It started to rain here and as you can see they aren't taking it well.

She wanted a picture with a flower.  After her picture Avery asked for a flower and I thought he wanted a picture too but he just wanted the flower so he could rip it apart and throw the pedals at us.

First Day of Kindergarten!

 

 

I can't believe the day is here and that he started Kindergarten!  His favorite part today was riding the bus and playing on the playground.  He didn't like that they wouldn't let him play on the monkey bars and he was less than thrilled with the school work.  Alia loved today because she had me to herself and she didn't have to share anything.  At lunch she said, "This is a super fun day!"  Everyone always said it would be a hard day for me, but I was really excited for him and the next stage in his life. 

 Just for comparison, this is his first day of preschool when he was three.

Lake Superior Vacation

Don't tell anyone, but northern WI is really, really nice in the summer.  I wouldn't pick any other place to go, especially in August.  This year was extra fun because my sister and her husband where there and the weather was perfect.

We were extra lucky because the water was nearly 80 degrees rather than the typical 60 degrees.  With water that warm the only thing to do was to hit the beach.

Grandpa and grandma were sweet and got the kids wetsuits so they would be toasty warm in the water.

Little kids in wetsuits are so cute.  With water this warm we were able to swim for a long time without getting cold.  Alia was excited for her wetsuit and jumped right in and started swimming.

She basically swam until her lips turned blue.  Then she would run to shore and ask to be buried in hot sand.  She repeated this process all day.

Alia getting warm.

Avery kept busy doing what he does best.....

building cool stuff.  He collected about 20 pieces of driftwood and made a trap in the water.  Alia then swam through it.

After a long day on the lake you need a fire and s'mores; it's a rule.  The kids were more than happy to help.

The gloves are to protect them from sap.  (It's sticky)

Avery was our fire chief.

He made Grandma very happy by making sure the fire was always full and producing huge flames and I was happy to be able to teach him the art of roasting the perfect marshmallow.

The next day we got up to find the kids doing one of their favorite things.....

eating breakfast in Grandpa's garden.

After a full day on the lake the day before, we opted for something different.  We all went to the Wilderness Walk in Hayward for the afternoon.  The wilderness walk is sort of like a zoo but way more fun.  It has some animals in cages and some animals just running around.  You can feed them or just walk around the woods trying to find the animals. 

Here the kids were able to walk right up and pet the baby deer.

They also had a blast panning for gold.  Alia and Avery both were expert panners finding lots of "goldens".

It was also Avery's belated birthday and he was excited to get presents again and what could be cooler than blowing out your candles with an iron man blaster?

The rest of the days revolved around more of the lake.

More swimming


Avery tried tubing this year!

More getting warm.

More exploring

And tons of fun.

As always the trip was so much fun but way too short.  Thanks for the fun Grandma and Grandpa, we are already looking forward to next year.

Avery and Alia swimming

This was Avery's second year of swim lessons and Alia's first year.  Avery is doing really well and enjoys diving for toys, jumping in and going down water slides.  Alia has amazed me this year.  I never thought she would do so well being so young but she is a fish!  She loves to swim and swim and swim!  When she swims it looks like she is doing an army crawl across the water.  She is able to swim quite a ways by holding her breath awhile and coming up for air when she needs it.  She loves jumping in, diving for toys and floating around.  It's been a fun summer at the pool.

Happy 6th Birthday Avery

Saturday was Avery's birthday and as is tradition with all birthday's Avery rules his day.  We basically allow him to do anything that he wants.  He started out by deciding that he wanted to play video games.  Video games lasted until about 10:00 am when his stomach took over and he decided that it was time for breakfast.  We eat fairly healthy and never have sugary cereal in the house.  Avery decided that he wanted fruit loops and juice for breakfast.

His next request, pajamas all day.  His favorite thing is to be lazy and stay in his pajamas all day so he was excited to be able to not have to get dressed.  Then I was shocked.  What did he decide to do?

Clean!  Yes, clean.  He put a cloth under the bottom of his car and drove around the house collecting dust.  Alia jumped right in with the vacuum.

He followed this up with ................more video games.  The games were temporarily paused for a quick lunch but he jumped right back into the video games.

We were able to get him to stop long enough to take another picture with his banana.

Comparing to last year.

The rest of the afternoon pretty much consisted of him playing playing with Alia and his toys.  His request for dinner was homemade pizza.  He wanted to make his own so we made individual pizzas.

His pizza was cheese, spinach, kalamata olive, basil, tomato, and one pepperoni.

We had asked him what type of cake he wanted this year and he said that he wanted a ninja cake with red fire.  I had planned a grand flaming ninja cake, but it turned out to be an ordinary ninja cake.  I didn't want to have to call the fire department so I toned down the fire part of the cake.  I did add 6 candles as ninja fire shooters, which Avery loved.

This years cake was a cross between a reine de saba and chocolate stout cake.  It was three layers filled with chocolate fudge.  Just a little ninja cake can really kick your butt.  It was delicious and fun.

Each year we ask Avery and Alia the same set of questions and keep them in a book.  Here are some of Avery's questions and answers

What are your favorite foods - Plums, watermellon, and cantaloupe
When I grow up I want to be a - Ninja because they are fast, sneaky, and fight
What do you like most about yourself? - That I am fast, sneaky, strong, and I can fight (ninja anyone)
I like to collect - Rocks and bugs
My favorite thing to do outside is - Check the food in our garden
What is your favorite thing to do - Play with my family

After dinner we took a walk to burn off all that sugar and since it had just rained, let the kids play in the puddles.  Overall it was a very low key day and that was exactly what Avery had hoped for.  Happy 6th birthday Avery, we love you.

Jellystone 2012

One proud boy with his new nook!  He played plants vs zombies most of our trip.  I was hoping he would use it more for reading, maybe some day!

We stopped to do crafts.  Alia enjoyed doing the crafts but Avery was less than thrilled. 

We played mini golf and this is how Alia played most of the time.  She was content to just hit the ball, pick it up and then set it in the hole.  After awhile she decided to just sit down and hit the balls.  Here she is carefully guarding the hole because she didn't want anyone to touch her ball. 

All of the cousins: 
Gaven 14
Austin 8
Jaycent 6
Alia 3
Avery 6

 Our annual picture with Yogi!

A glimpse of what Gaven will look like in a few years?  He is 14, I think he needs a shave!  This weekend I will always remember Gaven sitting under the kitchen table eating a cupcake.  We bought him the game Quelf for his birthday and all played it one of the nights.  The game is so much fun that we all laughed most of the night. Bama and Austin even had to snort!  One of the cards required them to snort every time they laughed.  Anyway, back to Gaven.....the game had lots of random cards, the card he drew from the pile said he had to sit under the table until the next round.  Joel picked one and got to apply make-up on Amanda's face, Scott and Jaycee showed us some sweet yoga moves and Gaven made up an awesome song about syrup, chickens and feathers.  There were many memorable moments in the game!  I highly recommend this game! 

One of Alia's favorite times this year was sitting on the front porch and having girl talk with Bama.  Whenever anyone would try to come out and join them she would ask them to leave.

The last night we decided to stay at an indoor water park.  This was definitely the most thrilling part of the trip.  They had this enormous tube slide that was pitch black and super fast.  Both Avery and Alia went on this on our laps and had a blast.  Avery must have run up the huge tower of stairs 30 times.  We were the only ones there so we just kept going and going until they closed.  He was definitely thrilled with the adrenaline.

Happy Fourth of July!

 Avery and Alia are waiting for the parade.  Alia wouldn't look or smile until I told her we needed to take a picture before we could start collecting the candy from the parade.  She was so compliant!  She LOVES candy and gum!

 We spotted Mr. B and Music Schools International

 All of the golf carts attempting to leave the parade


 Alia is holding our red, white and blue strawberries she helped to make.  It's just strawberries dipped in white chocolate and then in blue sprinkles.  Pineterest always has the best ideas!

 Waiting for the fireworks