Labor Day at Spring Creek

I was soooo tired over Labor Day weekend...but when we got home from church, I was able to take a nap.

So since I was all rested up, we got wild and crazy with it and took the family out on Labor Day.  Nothing much, just a park with a creek running through it.  The kids looooved it.

These kids are pretty dang awesome, and we love hanging out with them so much.

Elliot and his baby

Seriously.  She's his baby, I just grew her for him...

He is always highly interested in her whereabouts and joining her whenever he can.

Trains!

When we first brought Thomas the Tank Engine in our home, I purchased a number of second hand die-cast trains and gave them to Elliot.  But it turns out that Elliot is pretty hard core about his train playing and wanted to be able to connect ALL OF THE TRAINS, which lead to much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth when he would connect too many of them and the line would break as he pulled it along the carpet.

So...sucker that I am, I went back to eBay and secured wooden ones instead.  Though we've extensively grown that collection as well and now he has a ridiculous quantity of wooden trains.  But he loves them, so it's worth it.

But now that he has his wooden ones, when Paxton needs a train fix, he has the die cast ones to turn to, which he does.

Paxton is an extremely clever little boy.  He figured out that the trains stay together if you put them on tile instead of carpet.  Our little engineer!

Playing with the baby

Bridget is such a sweet little girl.  So when she started doing her "Superman!" move, I had to get down and play, too.

Babies are so much fun!  Especially ones as sweet as our little Bridget.

The Big Kindergartener

So, a while back, we welcomed the most beautiful baby I'd ever laid eyes into our family...

And then we BLINKED and she was ready to start Kindergarten.  Honestly, we're pretty freaked out by how quickly that happened...

So, we went to an Orientation while all the other kids had their first day of school.

You always take one with a silly face for good measure.

And the next morning, it was time to send her on the bus for her first day at school...

Today is April 21, there's about 7 weeks left of school...and she still waves back at me from the bus every morning once she gets on.  I know that someday she'll be too big and cool to wave to her Mom from the bus, so I'm enjoying it while it lasts.

Kendra has done very, very well at school. When she went in for her screening before the year started, she was handed a box of crayons and asked to identify the colors.  Upon seeing the labels, she announced, "Oh, I'll just read the color words!  This one is, 'Purple-Voilet'!"  It was hilarious!  I'm amazed at what a great job the teacher does keeping everyone at different levels progressing--I know I didn't learn how to read until First Grade, much less START Kindergarten a fully functional reader!

At the gym I go to, one of the babysitters is a para at another elementary school in town during the day, and lately she has been bringing in worksheets that get left in the copy room because Kendra enjoys filling them out.

Such a big girl!

Photo Ops

I think it's okay to do a good, old-fashioned photo dump sometimes...this is one of those times.

We have some crazy, awesome fun around here, in case you can't tell from the pictures.  :)