First Day of Kindergarten

Here are the photos. And a little commentary.
Obligatory front door photos.

 Sorry it's fuzzy. Walking (running) to school. He refused to put on his backpack, and although it was empty, he said it was too heavy and he stuck it in the stroller for the last 100 yards to the school.

 It's not the newest or fanciest school in the world.

 He successfully found his cubby. This was a big worry for him (even though he new exactly where it was.)

 The kid before us had her photo taken by the front door of the classroom so I decided to do that as well. This is Joshua kind of nervous but not willing to admit it. My kids stick their fingers in their mouths when they feel awkward or uncomfortable. it's kind of weird.

 His teacher helped him find his seat right next to Jaxon, who is in his primary class at church. As I left I heard Jaxon say, "Hey Joshua. Remember me? I'm Jaxon."  I'm glad Joshua has a friend.

 Abigail didn't feel like running on the walk home. She felt more like crying. It was, however, not totally because she felt left out - although she did ask why she couldn't go to school that day like Joshua and insisted that she was already 5 years old. It was really hot. If I were only 3 and my mother refused to pick me up and make me walk 4 blocks home, I would have thrown a much bigger tantrum. Overall, she did pretty good.

 School's out! Joshua didn't see us right at first. He looked really concerned and walked back inside his classroom for a second.

 Then he found us!

 And we went out to Coldstone Icre Cream to celebrate. This is the first time the kids have EVER been out to get ice cream at a real ice cream place. Well, that's not exactly true, but I can only ever think of one other time AND it was on "vacation."  This was a real sit down affair and they thought it was awesome.

Joshua is feeling pretty good about things. Right now he wants to do homework, but not SCHOOL homework, just homework that I make up for him. He doesn't get "real" homework for another week... and then it's just writing his name with lowercase letters. I'll have to make some things up for him to work on. That shouldn't be hard. I have a feeling that even though kindergarten is going to be a lot of fun, it may not be super academic. But what do I know, it's only the first day. I suppose we should want our kids wanting more from school when they leave instead of crying and wanting nothing to do with it. Good job, Joshua.

Video from April 2010

Joshua and I watched this "old" home video this afternoon and we both started cracking up. It is too cute and I'm glad he thought so too. He was such an adorable little toddler. I can't believe he's going to school next week. I'm kind of dreading it, to be honest, for a lot of reasons. I wish homeschooling could work out better, but getting pregnant kind of puts at least an 8 month pause on everything and I don't feel good about having (eventually) an 8 or 9 or even 10 year old staying home doing nothing for school for such a long period of time. Maybe once I'm done having babies he'll be OK with having homeschool again. I would love that. I love homeschool.

Anyway, I decided that even though he is going to a public school, we can still do our schooling together. Today we worked on his first assignment together, and I have to say, he did a fantastic job. By the end of the day, he could write his name out perfectly. In the photo, you will see, he was having a little bit of trouble with that "S" and the "U".  I'm not quite sure why "U" is a difficult letter for him, but oh well. He was supposed to decorate his little person to look just like himself and then cut it out, write his name on it, and bring it to the open house today. He took the assignment very seriously. I told him not to work too fast, but just do his best. The mirror image wording on his shirt cracks me up. I don't know how he managed to almost perfectly write SPEED completely backwards. He was especially proud of how he drew the mouth. He said it looked really really good. I think he's awesome.

Bridal Veil Falls every year

I had this really great idea in my mind about a great post where I go through all my photos and find that once a year trip to Bridal Veil falls where I have the same photo taken of me and my kids in the same pose in the water. Then I could post them all up in order and it would be so cute to see how the kids have grown over the years.

The problem with this idea, as I quickly found, was not so much that I couldn't find the photos I took in my semi-archived files and files of digital photos, but that I didn't actually TAKE those yearly, same pose photos I remembered so well in my mind. Anyway, here is what I do have, and it's still kind of cute. (PS Charlotte, I'm still planning on trekking up there with you in September, I hope you're still planning on it too!)

2008 - Joshua and Mama, pregnant with Abigail.

2009 - Missing.

2010 - Joshua, Abigail, Michelle (a visitor from Germany) and Mama pregnant with Lukas went up but unfortunately this is the ONLY photo I have of that experience. That is Joshua in the blue shirt.

2011 - Joshua, Abigail, Lukas and Mama - NOT PREGNANT!! We went with Charlotte and boys, not pictured.

2012 - Joshua, Abigail, Lukas and Mama pregnant with Caleb (yes, we've already changed his name once. You should probably count on this happening again before he actually arrives.) This time we went up with Grandma Paula.

Anyway, I really like going to Bridal Veil Falls, and although through my photos I realized I sometimes do go up more than once a year (well, like it happened twice one year) I think I should probably go up more often.