Made by Memilyrae

Okay – how cool is this? It’s a symptom guide from Babycenter.com. You put in your child’s age range (up to 8 years) & symptom(s) and a list of possible conditions. Is that cool or what? I’m definitely bookmarking this site!

My friend, Triana, is the best! She took our last family photos and I asked her to take new ones now that Garrett is with us. She gave me a little sneak peek…and I. LOVE. THEM!

Whoa…I almost forgot to post the ‘first day of school’ picture! I would have been frowned upon as a lazy mom! LOL

Spencer started Kindergarten at Reagan Academy last Monday. He attended Kindergarten Jumpstart during the summer so going to Kindergarten was ‘no big thang.’ He loves school, his teacher and his classmates already. He is doing great with his sight words and Steve and I have been ‘quizzing’ him with math (addition) and he’s doing great! He doesn’t use his fingers unless it’s a big number so I’m super impressed! He’s doing great practicing his lower case letters (we previously only did upper case) and does his homework without fussing. He loves to tell me about what they did in class, including how many happy face stamps he received and that there were 2 other kids that got the same number and 1 that got more. (Happy/straight/frowny face stamps indicate how they behave daily.) He’s learning the names of his classmates and which ones he plays soccer with during recess. They have snack time every day, including milk or chocolate milk. They work at stations on occasion working on letters, art, or math. They even got to go outside to do a nature hunt and he found everything on the list except for the bee (it was a chilly day so they were probably staying warm in their hives!)

I love how much Spencer is loving school, how great Steve is working with him on his sight words (with a computer game as incentive…but just to watch Steve play LOL) and how great Spencer is doing!

Evie took an 8 (really 9) week dance class this summer with a lady from Aunt Netty’s ward. Miss Kelly is super nice and is really good at working with the little girls. She always has a neat thing to pretend to get the girls to do dance steps. For ‘shuffle step’ she has them pretend to kick a quarter (or other coin), but then kick it back and stomp on it. With ‘first position’ the girls’ heals are kissing, but their toes don’t like each other, etc etc etc. Really cute stuff and the girls follow it very well.

After the 8/9 weeks of practice, Miss Kelly put on a big recital. There are 3 age groups that she taught and each of them performed. The music for the littlest group (Evie’s) would not do the words, just the music, so the girls were not sure what to do. Evie refused to go on stage. She was scared and there was a large crowd. I tried convincing her to go up there, promising to be on stage on the side, bribing her with chocolate kisses, and even guilting her about wasting money on dance class when she won’t show daddy what she learned. I feel really bad about trying to guilt her…especially because she is little and it was a big crowd and no matter what I had told her before hand to prepare her, I’m sure it was still really scary to her. See the #2 position between the girls in the picture below? Yeah…that’s where Evie was supposed to be.

Instead we were in the hallway looking like this:

Miss Kelly decided to put on a little dance recital for the littlest girls in the studio where they practiced. And the music had the words! Evie was great! She wasn’t nervous and she followed the teacher’s instructions very well. Spencer took all the pictures and I had my phone doing video recording. I’m so sad though! They did “Do your ears hang low?” and “Little Bunny FooFoo” – Evie is SO good at Little Bunny FooFoo and my phone only recorded 3 seconds of it! So I’m bummed because I didn’t get it on video. 🙁 Sadness!

Here’s Evie giving me thumbs up!

the Continental Soldier (“Do Your Ears Hang Low?”)

Little Bunny FooFoo (Spencer did a great job taking pictures, don’t you agree?)

One of the little girls came late so they re-did “Do Your Ears Hang Low?”

Evie in her costume

Spencer was proud of his little sister and wanted a picture with her.

Last Saturday we were trying to decide what to do…we haven’t had a full day with nothing planned for quite a while! Steve thought it would be fun to head to Salt Lake…let the kids ride on the Trax Train and spend the day at Temple Square. Sounded good to me! We called and invited Steve’s parents to come with us and we’re so glad they did!

We parked in Sandy, got our tickets (Wahoo! $12 for 4 adults versus $5.50 each adult!) and tried to not get blown over! The wind was insane! Evie was a bit scared when she wasn’t holding hands with daddy…she thought she was going to get blown away. I strapped Garrett in the snuggly backpack and we waited for the train to leave. The kids LOVED the train! It’s a 35 minute (ish) ride from Sandy to Temple Square and it wasn’t too bumpy.

(unfortunately the picture I took of daddy and Evie did not copy over along with 4 other photos)

We hadn’t had lunch (but we had a late breakfast) so we were ready to eat around 3:30. We went to a restaurant across from the Trax platform where we got off to eat. After that we went to an LDS history museum (I don’t remember the name). They had many neat things and we only saw a section of it before the kids were needing fresh air. Next we went to Temple Square and I ran into a girl who just started her mission about a week or two ago and will be heading to LA this Wednesday. We also ran into our neighbor who was at the Temple for his cousin’s wedding.

At one point I called to Spencer and Evie “Hold up you two!” and as I did, two sister missionaries were walking by, paused and turned to look at me. I said “sorry…not YOU two!” We had a good laugh!

We went over to the Conference Center and took the tour…even though I’m sure we’ve taken the tour 4, 5, or more times. You always learn something new every time you go, plus the people giving the tours are super nice. Mom Shaw’s feet were tired so they offered her a wheel chair (I almost asked for one too!) and Evie decided to help push and get a ride throughout the tour. At this point Garrett went to the bathroom in his diaper (which was a size too big) and it went down his leg and onto my jeans. At least it was only pee!

Yep, that’s right. I have a 3 week old. I’m not sure how you feel, but 3 weeks have flown by so quickly! Possibly because I still don’t feel like I’ve got a good handle on getting everything in order…Spencer to kindergarten, Evie to preschool (starts next week), sleep, nursing, and getting to know all the cues this little man gives us. The nice thing is that Spencer and Evie have been so great! They *usually play great together, let me sleep if I’m tired, and help get things if I can’t.

Garrett is a lot more vocal now than he’s been in the past. Like most babies, it’s the ‘feed me I’m hungry’ or ‘change me I’m poopy’ or ‘help me I’m gassy’ cry…which we’re fine with…but boy has he gotten loud! And he still sounds like he’s a cat half the time! LOL Can’t you just hear how loud he is in this picture?

Garrett will sleep great during the day and then decide he wants to be awake for a few hours when I’m ready to sleep and then I have to struggle to stay awake while he is. But, none of that bothers me TOO much cause he is such a little cutie pie! I seriously still love to just stare at him and kiss him all over his head. Like my Mom-in-law says, I just want to squeeze him to butter! LOL Plus I love watching him sleep…his chubby little cheeks, his cute little hands….all of it!

Spencer and Evie are getting really good at taking pictures and getting their pictures taken.

When Garrett’s belly button stump thing finally fell off we gave him his first bath in the sink. He loved it. He didn’t scream or cry at all. He loves the water.

I took a picture of his foot prints to keep them digitally…

And Little Miss Evie is so cute and goofy….here’s the proof!

Before Church (2 weeks old)

At his 2 week appointment. 9 lbs 0.5 oz and 21 1/4 inches

He’s awake!

And back to sleep

Yay! We’re making progress! I decided tonight to get Garrett started with the shield and then take it away…and guess what! He latched on and nursed!!! Then I tried on the other side and it worked!!!

Look how sweet he is!!!!

I saw these and thought they were awesome! Steve loved them too. So I bought them. he he he.  They are AK47 bullet ice cube trays. how cool is that?

Spencer starts Kindergarten on Monday. KINDERGARTEN! He’ll be gone for 3 hours, 5 days a week. He had so much fun at Jumpstart and I know he’s going to LOVE regular Kindergarten. At Meet the Teacher night last night he got a list of sight words so I thought I’d FINALLY get around to making these fun sliders that I saw on Serving Pink Lemonade.

I made mine just a tiny bit different…I made notches on both ends of the skinny paint samples so when I put them through the holes of the larger sample, they would not fall out. That way I can keep them together and not have to worry as much with them being all over the house.

I wish I would have used an exacto knife, but what’s done is done and they turned out just fine.

I had to bend the skinny sample just a little to get them in the holes. They’re staying in just fine though, so that’s good news.

And I used her sample as well as the sight words Spencer received from school to write down the beginning sounds and the ending sounds.

Sorry for the dark images…I’m crafting on my bed while Little G sleeps in his bassinet. Here they are:

So I’m not completely “feeling” these pages yet, but once I pull out my external hard drive with more digi scrapping stuff I will probably change it up a bit. Until then, these will have to do. 🙂 I might make it a 1 page instead of 2 page spread…but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.