Back to School

Heading into third grade, first grade, and preschool for the four oldest kids this year!  Our back to school feast was so much fun!  I did a beach theme for the decorations and food and it was a lot of fun!  I was so happy with how it turned out that it was the only thing I took a picture of! 
This year my parents were able to join us for the evening.  We ate our dinner then talked over this year's theme and what it means.  "So little children, lets you and I try to be like Him.  Try, try, try."  It is from a Primary song.  After we talked about our theme each kid got a father's blessing.  I was also able to get a blessing from my own father which was very special.  I can't remember the last time he was able to give me a blessing.  To end the evening each kid got their new school clothes which was a tradition I had growing up.

All of the kids had a great first day of school!  Ethan and Wyatt have both never gone to school outside of our home.  Ethan understood what was going to happen and went right into his classroom with excitement.  Wyatt didn't really understand what was going to happen and was a little uncertain when it came time for me to leave.  I walked him into his classroom and sat him down at the table to trace his name like they do at the beginning of every school day, and he was good!  He ended up having such a great time!  I am excited for this year and see the growth that each child has.

Mary is in Preschool!

Mary was so excited leading up to preschool starting!  When the first day of school finally came she was asking all morning if it was time to go yet!  We ended up walking to school just so the time to leave was a little bit earlier.  She was so excited and looked so big walking into school and sitting down.  When it was time to go, Ethan was crying so hard because we had left Mary!  Soon enough though, it was time to pick her up.  Mary had a great first day and even made a friend, her name is Frankie.  Mary's whole first week was great, with a little hiccup when it was another student's birthday and he got a sucker.  Mary really wanted a sucker too, and had been sad and crying when I went to pick her up.  That's my main concern for her this year, she can be sensitive and get sad, and it's very hard to pull her out of that mood.  Thankfully, every other day I have picked up a happy, smiling, jumping little girl! I'm so excited to see how Mary learns and grows this year.
We're so excited for our sweet Mary girl!

First Day of First Grade

Avery is now through with her second day of first grade and so far everything has been good!  She was so excited about school, mostly excited about having two recesses and getting to walk out to the car instead of me coming in to pick her up.  Her first day was a little different than it normally would be because of the eclipse.  They got to watch a live stream of it as well as go look through some pin hole viewers.  She also didn't have any homework on the first day!  She came running out of the school and jumped into my arms and we talked all about how her first day went.  Her favorite part of the day ended up being her two recesses.
I'm looking forward for her school year and the growth she will make.

Back to School Feast 2017

We have a tradition in our little family of doing a back to school feast before the school year starts.  This is our third year doing it and it was once again a wonderful night!  This year our theme came from a quote by Gordon B. Hinckley,

"Believe in yourself.  Believe in your capacity to do great things.  You are a child of God of infinite capacity."

During dinner we talked about our theme.  We talked about how we do lots of new things in school, and sometimes it's a little scary, but we need to remember who we are and believe in ourselves.  If we are scared it's okay, we can always pray for help and Heavenly Father can help us.  We went around and talked about what we were excited about for school or what we were feeling nervous about.

After dinner we had dessert.  I need to explain this part a bit.  We have a fun Primary CD titled "Scripture Power"  and there's a song on there called "I Want to be a Mother" it's a cute song, but there's the most ridiculous line in it!  The song is all about how this little girl wants to be a mother when she grows up and what she's going to do as a mother.  Part of it says that she's going to give her kids cookies and milk and yellow balloons.  What mother does that???  Cookies and milk, okay.  But the yellow balloon part?  Come on.  Click here for a video of the song on YouTube.  Anyway, moving on, I thought it would be fun for the party to decorate with yellow balloons and then have cookies and milk for dessert that night.  So that's what we did!

After dinner Louis gave the girls a Father's blessing.  They were wonderful and the best part of the night.  After Mary and Avery got their blessings Ethan said it was his turn and went and sat on the chair folding his arms.  Louis decided to give Ethan a blessing too since he was asking, the blessing was beautiful!  Ethan sat there the whole time with his eyes closed and his arms folded, it was beautiful.  

After the blessings, I gave the girls each a new school outfit.  They both loved them and wanted to try them on right away.  When the girls started changing Ethan got so excited that he ran upstairs and grabbed some pajamas so he could change too!  He also needed his picture taken once he saw me take one of the girls.  He's just the cutest! 

It was a fun night together.  We are excited for our girls.  We're excited for them to grow and learn.
We're excited for them to make new friends and stretch themselves in new ways.
I hope they can remember to believe in themselves and to rely on our Heavenly Father for anything.

Kindergarten: Mission Completed

The end of May brought lots of fun things for Avery!  She got to go on her very first field trip and ride on a school bus for the first time.  She had her first field day at school.  She also got to participate in her kindergarten graduation.  She is growing up so fast and is such a beautiful, sweet, helpful, happy girl.
For the kindergarten field trip they got to go down to Ogden to go to the Tree house Museum.  I volunteered to be a chaperone so I got to tag along with Avery.  When we got to school she was so excited to find out that her friend was in her group for the day. She was also going to come over after the field trip for a play date so they got to spend the whole day together.

 The girls had fun running around and exploring, their favorite thing was dressing up.  

I don't know if you can tell from the picture below, but it was a super windy day!

Avery had fun with her kindergarten graduation.  She got to dress up in her favorite dress, sing us songs and 

recite poems from the school year.  It was the most enjoyable graduation I've ever been to.

Then just like that it was Avery's last day of kindergarten.  She had a great school year and learned so much.  

Avery is really excited to be going into the first grade!  I can't wait to see what this next school year brings her!

Kindergarten

Avery has successfully made it through her first week of Kindergarten!  She is looooving it so far!  I was able to go with Avery to her first day of school which was nice to be able to see what a typical day will be like for her and get a bit more information on how things work.  One thing they failed to mention though is that on Fridays they get out half an hour early, so I was 30 minutes late picking her up today!!  Luckily I wasn't the only mom who was late or I would have felt even worse than I already did.
Avery gets out of class every day with so much to tell me about her day and each day she says "I had so much fun!"  I'm really looking forward to this year and seeing how much she is going to enjoy everything and how much she is going to learn.
I love this girl of mine!