The Sun Sport!

A few weeks ago Dave and I bought a motorhome with our good friends, Sean and Krista! A motorhome you say? oh, yes! Why not add it to our never ending toys! Dave and Sean have been thinking that they should really have a motorhome for Coug games and have been scheming to convince Krista and I to get one for over a year. When Jerry said that he was going to be selling his we decided to go and check it out. Turns out that all four of us thought it was nice and the price was way below what we had said we had wanted to pay so we grabbed at the chance to get it. It is a smaller motorhome (which I like just in case I ever would need to drive) and is an 88- older but has less then 50,000 miles on it. We tested it out a couple of weeks ago at the Coug game in Seattle. We had a fun tailgate party (thanks Brent for finding us a great spot!) and lots of good laughs in our first trip in the sun sport! We are looking forward to many more Coug games, beach trips with the Koval family and maybe even some camping!

A few pictures....

I had wanted to attach these photo's to my last post when my sister was in town with Emilie but my camera was not cooperating! Finally got everything squared away and thought I would share them with you all! Happy almost Friday :)

Miss Emilie! We love this girl!

Miss Maddie enjoying one of her favorite parks!

Miss Taylor....all grown up!

Hi all!



Phew...is it Winter Vacation yet? I'm exhausted! We survived our first full week of school- barely. By Friday all four of us were grumpy and tired :) We actually didn't do much outside of school and work but just getting back into our routine has been hard on all of us. I am really enjoying my new school. I have a lot of challenging kids this year, not so much behavioral but a lot of my student's are very low income, come from single parent homes or have a parent deployed right now. I also have a student with Spina Bifada (sp?) and another with autism. Throw in 3 more with IEP's for all academic areas and 7 others in speech and I have a very interesting room! All very nice kids but I am WORN out by the end of the day! Dave has been going non-stop at work...on the 7th day of school he even had to expel two students- Really? Taylor is loving Kindergarten but has been coming home absolutely exhausted. We used to have to fight with her about going to bed and now she is asleep by 7:15. She has a new best friend, Katrina, who lives just a block away from us. She went to Katrina's house for a play date today and hasn't stopped talking about her since! Oh, to be 5 again. Maddie is doing well but I have to say that she has had a rough couple of weeks. I think that Dave and I didn't do a very good job of adjusting her to being by herself at daycare without Taylor and throw in the fact that Taylor has been getting lots of attention and we have a girl who has been testing the limits...temper tantrums, a lot of "I'm not going to do it's" and even a cutting of the bangs with her scissors. Despite all that, she is loving her new preschool and loves, loves, loves going to Kaylin and Macie's house every day. She made an all about me poster this week at school and in it she said that she wanted to be a mom when she grows up. So cute!



We had a busy weekend. My sister came for a visit with Miss Emilie- Wow! She is growing like crazy and is as cute as can be. We went to the farmer's market and to the park and then hung out at our house for the rest of the day. We spent Sunday cleaning the house, getting groceries, planning for next week, decorating for fall and going to the end of the year Boston Harbor BBQ.



Have a great week everyone!

First Day of Kindergarten!

Taylor had her first day of kindergarten on Thursday! She awoke early and with great excitement and then quickly realized that she couldn't immediately head outside to catch the bus (it was 6:50). She had a great day! Thanks to mine and Dave's mom for being with her on this special day (this is when it really is NOT fun to be a teacher)- they walked her to the bus, met her at the school and then got to stay for the first 35 minutes. They both said it was priceless and that she was a good listener, followed directions and even helped Ms. Ott clean up the markers. By the time she got home, everyone in the family had called her and talked to her about her day and so she was highly irritated that Dave and I were asking her about it! Needless to say we didn't get much out of her. She was quite excited though about a book order form that Ms. Ott had sent home so we sat down and looked at all the books and she chose a couple to order. My heart has really never felt so proud and so happy! Yea for Taylor!

I loved this picture! Look at Taylor in the far right...criss cross apple sauce and hands folded in her lap! A teacher's dream :)

Hello!

**Warning...LONG post!!**

I know it's been way too long when Dave says to me: "Hey, you haven't updated the blog in a really long time". Horrible, I know and I apologize. August flew by without a blink of the eye and these past 3 weeks I have been working or taking a class for the new school. What is probably worse then not blogging is that I haven't taken a single photo this entire time! Again, horrible! So, here I sit. I will briefly update you and then I will promise to be better at this :)

Dave has been working his tail off this past month. He seems to be falling into his role as principal very well. The girls and I went and helped him decorate his new office in August and surprised him with a summer collage of pictures to hang. I think he liked it a lot! He had his in service days with his staff this week and he came home exhausted after talking for hours on end but said that they went well. I helped him get off on the right foot with his staff by making LOTS of banana and zucchini bread for all of them on the first day. Do I even need to mention his excitement for the opening game of the Coug Football season? I didn't think so :) He is heading over the mountains in the morning!

As I mentioned earlier I have been working quite a bit as well these last 3 weeks or so. I had to go to 4 LID days this year since I am opening a new school and we adopted new reading curriculum so I had training for that, I had to open all 65 of my personal boxes and put everything away....you get the idea! Other then working I have been trying to just enjoy the girls and doing as much with them as possible.

Taylor is on the countdown for Kindergarten! Every morning she wakes up and lets me know how many more days until she gets on the bus. I so love her enthusiasm for life right now! She rides her bike with passion these days, has honestly collected 200 or more shells and rocks this summer and got her own library card!

Maddie is loving life as usual! She has begun to show us quite the attitude over the summer so she is keeping us on our toes :) But just as quickly as she gets upset she is over it in a flash! Maddie continues to be the mother hen in our family. She lines up her 15 or so babies every day and plays and visits with each one of them. She will make a great mom someday! Maddie starts preschool on Wednesday and is very excited about being able to spend her days with her friend Kaylin and Macie and their mommy Krista.

I still can't believe that Taylor will be in school and that Maddie is very close behind her.

Dave's Grandma passed away last month after a wonderful life of 99 years! We had a really nice memorial for her at Carolyn's house and celebrated all the great qualities of Grandma Frosty! My Grandma had her first round of Chemo last week and I am so happy for her because it all went well and she had no sickness or any other reactions to it! She is still having some other issues but those too seem to be getting back under control. She is extremely tired but happy that all is going well so far.

I will leave you with the 3 pictures that I took today! Taylor got her hair cut and as you can see she got a lot cut off. She has been wanting her hair really short for a while now and I finally caved in- I think it is actually quite cute! And she is very proud of it. The last picture is of Maddie (she will kill me when she gets older and sees all these naked pictures of her!). The girls have been wanting to help with the dishes the last few weeks (yea!) and they are actually pretty good at it. Taylor was tired tonight so she gave up fast and Maddie went into the bathroom and came back out in her birthday suit! It cracked me up because she was so intent on scrubbing the dinner plates :)

I promise to be back soon! ~H