Preschool!!!

Bradley started Preschool! We had a little orientation day with the parents on Sept 5th, then his first full day (2 1/2 hours) by himself was on September 7th. He was so good at orientation, we had a little list of things to do including decorating his name tag and going around the school to find the bathroom, kitchen, and gym area. He was very excited and eager to do everything on the list. You were supposed to do them all in whatever order you wanted and that's all I was told. So we did everything in the classroom first, then went around the school, then went back to the classroom at the very end. We opened the door and were talking very loudly to each other and I look over and everyone was sitting in a circle while the teacher read a book and we interrupted everyone - oops :( We're obviously the newbies! That's one thing I was a little sad about. The week before Kevin and I went to a parents meeting where we met the teachers and learned what we would be doing on our parent helper days and all the rules. When talking to our teacher at the end she said we were one of the 2 new families, everyone else had their children in 3 year old preschool there the year before. I was kind of hoping everyone would be in the same boat doing this for the first time. After being there for a few weeks now I see it more in the parents than the children (friendships already formed). I have always been more of an introvert than an extrovert, Bradley is the same way. I am not one to just run up to someone new and introduce myself and start a conversation. I've talked to a couple parents while we're waiting to drop off or pick up the kids, but just little conversations. I am hoping that we can get to know some of the parents and kids a little better as the year goes on. :)

Back to the first day - Bradley had a blast! I was worried about dropping him off because we've talked up preschool so much and he was so excited to go that I knew Gracie would be sad leaving him and not getting to stay with him - boy was I right!!! Bradley had no problem saying bye to me and "see you soon" and went off to explore the paints (his favorite), but Gracie did NOT want to leave! She threw a FIT! I kept explaining to her that we had to leave him there and we'd come back for him and we couldn't stay there with him, but she was not hearing any of it. I called Mom right after I dropped him off and I could barely hear her with the screaming child in the backseat but she said to come by her work. We did and she brought Gracie out a cookie - which calmed her down big time! Then we got home and when we were getting out of the car she seemed to remember that Bradley wasn't with us. "We leave Bradley!!!! Oh Darnit!!!" She said very surprised and panicked! I had to explain that I meant to and we'd pick him up soon. When we picked him up she was very excited and Bradley was so excited to see us and show us all that he did. He was Line Leader on the first day of school and was VERY proud of that. Mrs Herman told us that he did a great job. There is a schedule on the wall with little pockets and pictures of the sequence of events every day and Bradley LOVES that! He runs over there first thing to see what the plan is for the day. Mrs Herman told me that the first day he went over there and tried to go through the whole schedule in about 5 min - circle time, play, bathroom, snack, outside, small group, then Mommy comes. It's a co-op preschool so I work there with the kids as a parent helper about 15 times during the whole school year. That's one of the reasons why I chose this school. I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to see him in that environment and be there with him sometimes and get to share that with him. My first day was the second week of preschool and I absolutely loved it. Not only that I was able to be there with him, but it is exactly what I went to school for and I felt very in my element with the kids. I can definitely see doing something like that once all the kids are in school, but for now it's the perfect balance because I get to be home and share that with Bradley every now and then. I think we're going to have to start Gracie in 3 year old preschool now because she wants to go SO badly! Every day she asks if she's big enough yet, so I keep telling her next year. But then Bradley gets all excited and says, "Yes, next year, then we can go TOGETHER!!" And I have to explain that he won't be there anymore, but it's sweet that he wants to be with her all the time.
I was very apprehensive about him starting preschool, mostly because of my selfish feelings of wanting to be with him all the time and just being sad that he is so old already and time is going by too fast! And this is the start of it all - the start of school and him being away from me more and more and it breaks my heart! I know that it's good for him, and good for me too, but I just miss him, and all my kids, when I'm not around them. I think the first day was hard on me but having to deal with Gracie being so upset distracted me a little so I think that actually helped me a little bit. All these feelings that time is going by so fast and they are all growing up too fast just reiterates the fact that I made the best decision possible when deciding not to go back to work. I LOVE being home with them and wouldn't trade it for anything in the world and I thank God everyday that I am blessed enough to get to be with them all day, every day. Now if we could just slow down time, just a little bit...

Go fly a kite...

Kevin was able to get off early one night so we went to the park to fly some kites. I now see the importance of getting good quality kites, cheap ones just don't cut it. Bradley's broke when we were putting it together, it never even had a chance, so that was sad. Good thing we brought the football and he got pre-occupied with that most of the time. Gracie's fell apart several times but we were able to piece it back together enough to keep trying. It was the perfect night for kite flying, but our poor cheap little kite just couldn't get in the air for too long. But we kept trying, and kept trying. Then I gave up and decided to just take pictures. It was a lot of fun. I have since found some on clearance at Safeway that are really nice expensive ones and can't wait to go try them out but we haven't had the time or the kite-flying weather needed. Hopefully soon.

They were just fascinated by this water fountain. When you push the button the top pops up for the water to come out, it sure scared Bradley the first time...

Gracie thought it was funny :)

We even got to see a deer :)

Hot Air Balloons - nay - Balloon

A couple years ago we went to the Hot Air Balloon Show at the Windsor Harvest Festival and I LOVED it. So last year we tried to do it again, got everyone up early and got there and it was cancelled due to high winds - so sad. This year I heard of one at the Fair so once again - got everyone up early, got there, sat down with everyone else and started to watch and nothing was happening. All the trucks were sitting around with their balloon baskets but they weren't rolling out the balloons - they were just waiting. We decided to go to the free pancake breakfast and come back since nothing was happening. I'm assuming right after we left they called it because of weather again because we got back a little later and everyone was gone and no balloons were in the air - so sad AGAIN. Then the Windsor Harvest Festival came, so we tried AGAIN! I guess I didn't realize how lucky we were that first year to catch all the balloons. I'm assuming they cancelled it because of weather again because hardly anyone was there - but there was ONE balloon thank God :) I thought it was a perfect morning, but what do I know :) I was disappointed again but at least the kids got to watch one balloon go up which was very exciting for them.

Sammie is 7 months!

Samantha Jean is seven months old now and she is learning so much every day! She LOVES being on her belly now - funny how all that changes when it's not so difficult to hold yourself up and look around :) She will continuously roll around and can make some serious ground pretty quick! She's a great eater. No teeth yet which I'm surprised about, I thought she would get them early. She is so easy going and quiet for the most part. However, now she has realized that when she screams at the top of her lungs it sure gets my attention quick - especially in public places, so she thinks that's pretty cool :) She has been sleeping great in her crib and is always easy to put down for a nap. She's just gorgeous, if you ask me :) Such a sweetheart and so loving and fun.

Anniversary Vacation

Kevin and I just celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. We were trying to figure out something big to do and thought about getting away for a couple nights. You'd think being an anniversary get-away we'd go without the kids, but we wanted the kids to come so it turned into a family vacation. The last time I stayed in a hotel was when we went to South Dakota right after I found out I was pregnant with Bradley - so just over 5 years ago! That's just crazy to me. And it was crazy thinking that our kids, especially Bradley, had NO idea what it was like to stay overnight in a hotel and go on vacation. So - long overdue!!! We were kind of debating between Glenwood Springs or Yellowstone and because Glenwood Springs was half the drive we decided on that. We only had a couple days because Kevin could only take off 1 day, so we headed up on a Friday after he did a couple things that morning and got back on Sunday night. I was a little worried about Gracie in the car for 4 hours. She is VERY independent and VERY strong willed and has NEVER liked the car seat because she doesn't like being strapped in to anything and not having freedom to go wherever she wants. Even when she was a baby she would push and pull at the straps and grunt and squirm and try to get out for a whole hour straight. I was kind of expecting her to fall asleep since it was approaching nap time anyway, but that didn't happen. However, they were very very good. They kept each other occupied and were being very nice to each other (for the most part). I just switched their car seats and I'm so glad I did. Bradley used to be on the other side with Sammie in the middle and Gracie just can't keep her hands off of her and would bug her constantly (and take her paci), so now it's MUCH better! Sammie did sleep off and on and was a sweetheart as usual.

It was so cute how excited they were. The hotel was very nice, it had a nice indoor pool with a HUGE slide. The first night we just hung out, ordered pizza and swam. I didn't get any pictures of the pool, which I'm sad about, but I kept debating bringing my camera and taking pictures or getting in the pool and swimming with everyone and every time I opted to swim :) (even though NOW I wish I took some pictures :) ) The slide was big and winded around and the first time I went down sitting up and it was SO much fun. Then Kevin went and told me to lay down so that you go faster. The next time I did I layed down and was going so fast that I pretty much got whiplash going around one turn. I heard my neck and back crack and it was sore the rest of the trip!

The next day we went on the tram up to the Glenwood Springs Adventure Park. The tram ride was a lot of fun. We were in the tram with a girl who worked there and I was taking so many pictures and she was texting on her phone the whole time - I guess it's not very exciting to her anymore - but we sure thought it was cool! :)

       

 

 

 

I ended up having mixed feelings about the Adventure Park. Gracie was about 1 inch too short to ride almost all the rides, even though all of them I would have gone with her and she would have been totally fine. A couple of the workers let her slide which I was VERY appreciative about. But all the others just made it SO hard on her. Standing in line to get on a tiny little Farris wheel then being told that she couldn't go just crushed her. It was a mess because then I didn't want to go at all, but then Bradley wanted to go so bad. I was SO mad at the lady because her head was touching the pole, she would have been just fine, but whatever... One nice lady let her get on a roller coaster when we first got there and the place was pretty deserted. Gracie was fine the first 2 times around, then she started crying which REALLY surprised me - I thought Bradley would have been more likely to do that :)

We rode the Giddy Up ride a lot because there was no line at all and the guy was one of the nicer ones that let Gracie ride.

Sweet baby girl just fell asleep watching all the excitement :)

We sat in the sandbox for a long time letting them dig and play since Gracie was so limited on what she could do, then decided to try out the 4D 5-minute movie - worst mistake of the trip! I didn't really know what to expect. Sammie and I sat behind everyone in the non-motion seats and I didn't even bother putting on the 3D glasses. Not even 15 seconds into the movie you got sprayed in the face with water as the car in the movie splashed into a puddle - and all hell broke lose! Bradley and Gracie immediately started screaming at the top of their lungs and we had to grab what we could and run out of the theatre. We had to go back in later to get the rest of the stuff we couldn't get in the haste to get out. It was such a mess. For hours, no, actually WEEKS, they would both randomly start complaining about how scary that movie was. Gracie would say "No like movie! Scary! Sprayed water in my face!"

 

 

They have a canyon swing that Kevin was going to try out but then we completely forgot about it since it was kind of off on its own. This was when we went to check it out and the kids didn't like how loud it was :)

We came back down the mountain and had lunch and relaxed at the hotel for a little bit then went back up right before it closed for the night, thinking that it would be less busy but it was worse. Then the next morning we got a late check out so we could go swimming in the pool all morning and we were the only ones so we got this huge pool all to ourselves, it was so nice. On the way back we stopped for lunch and Kevin took one bite and his spaghetti and meatballs got stuck in his throat again. I don't know if I've talked about his tiny throat issue on the blog before - but it's just that - he has a tiny throat. Food gets stuck very easily, he's had to get his throat stretched 2 times now and has learned how to deal with it pretty well and can usually get food out by himself - luckily we've only had to take 1 trip to the ER. This time it was lodged in there the longest it's ever been because he was being stubborn and not wanting another medical bill from the ER. If it was my choice we would have gone in, but 12 hours after it got stuck he finally got it out. It was an unfortunate way to end our vacation but thank God it didn't happen on the way TO our vacation.
I was thinking this little mini vacation would be the perfect amount of time. I hadn't taken a vacation in a long time and was even hesitant to do this one, I'm definitely a home-body and don't really like going too far from home. When I got back home - I was so sad! I could have easily stayed another day or even two and am longing to go on another one soon. Now that I know what I've been missing I don't want to go too long without one again! It was just so nice just being able to hang out together and not have to worry about day to day chores and obligations and Kevin needed a break from work and one mean client in particular. We're thinking about going to Colorado Springs next time because we haven't been there in a while and it's still close to home. Maybe some day we'll venture out of state! Gasp! :)