August before school

August.... continued to be busy! By then I had finally come to terms with the fact that summer is more busy now that I have a kid who does some activities. Plus having a teaching schedule made things a little more busy for us too. I just started scheduling fun stuff so we would make sure to do it before summer passed us by.

Collin got a new calling... 2nd counselor in the Stake Young Men's presidency. So for a few weeks he had meetings on Sundays at like 5:00 or something. That meant dinner for me with the kids alone... not a big deal, and they're smiling in this picture because this was during the Olympics and they were on at like all hours on Sundays! So we watched Olympics while we ate. They thought it was awesome.

Can you tell they were looking at themselves in these pictures!? ha ha

I LOVE it when I find him like this! Seriously could he make my heart beat any harder!!

A friend of mine moved in July, and we got to have her cute kiddos over to play a few afternoons. They really liked the tradition of playing in the swimming pool and eating popsicles. What summer's all about!!

They had free lunch for the first 2 weeks in August at Ashlyn's soon-to-be elementary school. We did a pretty good job of hitting it up. It was the best free lunch all summer.....actually little kid-friendly food that both my kids would eat! Plus I liked taking Ashlyn so the school would seem more familiar to her. 

Jamba! Who knew Elan would be such a Jamba lover. He only likes one flavor .... Peach Perfection (that's for you Sam and Andrea) but he thinks it's the COOLEST to have his own cup and will drink his own all up. 

We were in Twin up until lunch time a couple of times and Jamba was an awesome lunch stop for us.

And Ashlyn lost tooth number four!! This girl was visited by the tooth fairy a lot this spring/summer! This was her fourth tooth to be lost. How exciting. 

Little buddies.... sometimes...

Collin and I escaped on a date night to see Jason Bourne!! LOVE the Jason Bourne movies. It did not disappoint. The Mexican restaurant in Twin that we ate at beforehand however.... did disappoint! Not that great of food and it seriously took forever for our food to get to us. We had to gulp it down and get our check right away so we didn't miss our movie. Annoying! The movie was great though.

Busy little climber

Ashlyn really has become more willing to play with Elan now that he will at least run around with her and stuff like that a little more. They do love to chase each other if nothing else. What a sweet big sister. (as long as he's not going near *her stuff * or *her room* heaven forbid)

Yes he copied Lucy and tried it. 

A side note, Elan is SUCH a visual learner. Like, I am sure I am biased but I'm constantly impressed by it. He can copy pretty much anything he sees someone do. He's always been a good little observer--when we go somewhere new to him he gets quiet and turns into a little watcher, just watching everything. At home he constantly surprises me with what he picks up just from seeing someone else do it. As you can guess, he copies pretty much everything Ashlyn does. But even me--like how I tip my head back for a second when I swallow my vitamins--he copies that. It's so cute. 

Ashlyn made them both "ice cream" from play food and they were walking around "eating" it. One of those precious moments!

Swimming lessons!! Ashlyn had just one other kid in her class the first week... and he didn't come the second week! So she had private lessons! She was being a weenie about putting her face in (her teacher was a little too nice) the first couple of days so we made a reward chart on which if she stuck her head in each day, she would earn a Ty stuffed animal, something she had been seriously coveting. It worked and she did it! On the last day I told her I'd let her pick out two stuffed animals if she went of the diving board. Shockingly, she did it! I was seriously shocked. And super duper proud of her!! She has been much more comfortable in the water this year than last. She is still definitely not a swimming lover, but at least seems to enjoy playing at the pool this year. I take that as pretty big improvement!

I did a Mommy and Me class with Elan at the same time as Ashlyn's lessons. It was a good move! I would have just been frustrated chasing him around the whole time if we hadn't. The only bummer was, the weather wasn't that warm! It was usually only like 65 degrees when we got there at 11:00am. Not warm enough to swim outside in my opinion! Luckily they'd keep the pool pretty warm and we survived. Elan LOVED his little class. He was a little flirt to his teacher and really did everything we tried. His favorite was jumping off the side and having me catch him.

Tara, Paul and Lauren came by for a couple of nights on their way to and from a wedding in Stanley. One of the nights we hit up the Jerome County fair! It had been a long day and Lauren didn't last too long... and also sadly, Ashlyn got sick! She started complaining of her tummy not feeling good after we'd been there like 45 minutes, and she was acting really out of it. She had been SO excited to go to the fair, ride rides and eat cotton candy that it was definitely weird that she wasn't into it once we were there. Poor thing. She still rode a couple rides and we bought cotton candy that she didn't want to eat.... anyway we called it quits before too long and right after we got home she barfed a couple of times. She was all proud because she's never barfed before. (I know we're lucky! She's not really a barfer!) She seemed fine the next morning too, so whatever it was, it just pretty much lasted our time at the fair! Oh well.

Elan thought seeing these goats so up close was so funny!

This is in backward order, but we did also go to the Jerome County Fair parade! It is such a dumpy parade, what with most of the floats being local Jerome businesses and all.... but they throw out tons of candy! We love it! Ashlyn had so much fun and brought home a grocery bag FULL of candy.

Me and my lovies at the parade

Another Elan side note: He does NOT like the loud horns and music in parades. All the parades we've been to this summer, I've ended up covering his ears most of the time. He gets really nervous and scared by the big noises. My sweet boy.

Poor little sickie still enjoying her ride at the fair

And poor little brother... too small to ride the rides! (oh the agony! ha ha ha!)

This is to document that I bought Elan a puddle jumper, finally! Sadly we only used it a couple times before summer was over. Wish I had bought it at the beginning, it would have been worth it. He is such a crazy man in the pool it was NICE that I didn't have to be on literal drowning watch every single second. He loves it too.

Licking the brownie batter! I got a new calling as Sunday School teacher for the 12,13,14-year old class, and that means making treats every week! It's been fun. I hadn't realized how much I never baked anymore. Ashlyn has definitely liked it!

Handsome Bubba

One night Ashlyn ate like 6 servings of dinner. It was crazy. She must be growing because starting mid-August (before school even started) she started actually eating like crazy! Wanting seconds and stuff! I'm thinking... great, all her new school clothes aren't going to fit her for long. :)

Our awesome friends the Binghams invited us to come pick corn for FHE one night. We picked like 100 ears and then shucked, cut and froze them all. It took us 2 late nights.... it was a lot of corn! We were thankful they let us do that and it is good stuff!

I spent a decent amount of time doing this.... something I got asked to do as a favor that turned into a 15-page document I had to compile! Yikes! I don't mind doing that stuff but summer isn't really the time I want to spend my nights in front of a computer screen! Anyway, I was proud of the work I ended up putting into it. I am now serving on the IMTA (Idaho Music Teachers Association) board as registrar for the next two years, and July/August was pretty full of board busy-ness getting things switched over to the new board and getting things together for the upcoming state conference. I wasn't used to actually having important emails very often, and I ended up needing to do a lot of emailing for a while there! I really appreciate my awesome colleagues at the state level and I'm glad to be able to be contributing a little at that level.

We took a quick day trip to Boise! We met up with Amber, Chandra, Lindsay and Lindy and their kiddos at the splash park in the morning. It was so fun to chat and catch up, and the kids had a blast. I had plans to take Ashlyn school clothes shopping that afternoon... but I started feeling super tired about halfway through the morning, and I couldn't shake it. I was seriously SO tired that I was like, "I can't even imagine going shopping." So we just headed back home. Yep, we drove clear to Boise and only stayed like 2 1/2 hours. But oh well. I felt sick the whole way home and then just collapsed on the bed when we got home. Feeling really tired and kind of sick to my stomach. Thankfully it went away the next day, but it hit Collin that night in the middle of the night too. So whatever it was.... was some little bug. I was sad we cut our trip short, but glad I was watched over driving my kids home while feeling pretty awful!

Re-created this! These are the kids at 18 months, 3, and now 5. Aw. They are getting so big!

Oh this boy! I think someone sent me this picture? Those big brown eyes seriously slay me.

Washing out her hair, I was admiring her pretty curlies. We missed them all summer. Summer just has too much swimming and playing to keep those curls out for long! Plus look at all those faces. This girl is nothing if not expressive!

While I was styling Ashlyn's hair the Saturday before school started, Collin took Elan out to run errands with him and they ended up at some car show. Elan is all about cars (his first and favorite word) and sounds like he had a great time toddling around smearing dirty finger prints all over the shiny cars. :)

After getting hair braided, Ashlyn and I went out on a little date after we got her hair done that day. She chose froyo for our treat, and then we had some fun at Old Navy getting the rest of her school clothes. Old Navy is right on the edge of the canyon, and whenever we go to that little shopping complex, Ashlyn requests that we walk down to look at the canyon. We did it that time!

So when we had bee doing Ashlyn's hair that day, her movie of choice was the 90's TV version of Cinderella... you know the one with Brandy and Jason Alexander and Whoopie Goldberg! And Brandy has long braids for most of the movie, like the picture above.... and when we went into Old Navy, Ashlyn was being all weird hiding behind me for a few minutes. I finally got out of her why she was being so weird, she whispered to me "I don't want people to think I'm Cinderella." I just about died from cuteness. Later I put these two pictures together and I can see why she was thinking that! So cute! By the way we trimmed those braids later.... I would never keep them that long on a 5-year old! We just needed them to dry thoroughly before we could trim them. Anyway, she got over the Cinderella worry and we had a fun time. When is shopping not fun!

And the first day of kindergarten!! She was up at 4:00 asking it if was time to get up yet! Just a little excited. I walked her to the playground with the intention of kind of sticking around until they went into class, and maybe even for a bit when they were in class. As we were walking to the playground, she held my hand and said, "You'll stay with me, right mom?!" Good thing I had my sunglasses on because boy did that bring on some tears! Anyway, as soon as we actually got to the playground, she saw a couple of her friends and took off to play. When they finally lined up and were walking into class, I caught up to her and asked her if she wanted me to stay and go in with her. (she was busy chatting it up with the girl next to her in line) She said, "nope, I'm ok Mom." That about brought even more tears on! Although I was happy to see that she was so excited and comfortable. So, I gave her a hug and a kiss and said bye, and that was it! I cried a bit on my way back to the car, but not as much as I thought I would. Afterwards, she was so happy and her most exciting news that she had about school was that she gets to have recess every day!