It's so quiet

The house seems so quiet today.  I sent the boys to school, and then took Ally to tumbling.  Now walking around the house I only find empty rooms.  I peek into Ally's room to see what mess she is making, but it's quiet and clean (well, clean for her anyway)!

 She likes to watch her shows in my room.  She will get her coloring book and markers and stand at the dresser and color while she watches her shows.  But the TV is off and there are no markers spread across the dresser or floor. 

 Davis just moved his stuff downstairs.  That left his old room upstairs, that Ally quickly claimed as her toy room.  She loves to spend time in here playing with her barbies or babies, but this afternoon it was empty also. 

All these empty rooms and quiet house must mean my kids are all off to school including Ally and kindergarten.  Ally has had a calendar on the fridge all summer that she crossed off the days till school, and she painfully had to wait all week while the boys "got" to go to school and she didn't start till today  (I am sure they didn't agree that they were the lucky ones when Ally got an extra week of summer vacation).  Well, today was the big day, she started kindergarten today and I'm left in a quiet empty house.  Can't say I'm enjoying it too much either. 

 I told myself I was going to be brave and not follow her bus to school to see her in her classroom, but the bus helped me out on that one.  School starts at 12:30, and at 11:25 she came in my room upset because she missed her bus.  I told her there is no way that was her bus an hour early.  Well, we went outside at noon to wait for her bus and we just kept on waiting.  Finally I called a friend and she told me that was their bus and we had missed it.  Ally was so upset missing the bus on her first day of school, but I was happy inside because that meant I got to take her and get a pic in her classroom.  Tomorrow I guess we will be out waiting for the bus an hour early.  She will be so exhausted once she gets to school after being on the bus that long, but she insists on riding the bus.  We will see how long that lasts. 

 

The day of a mom

It rained yesterday for a minute, but Gator and I had been waiting for it to start so when it did, we were out playing in it.  She is the best rain buddy ever. 

 Gator was asleep and Owen at a party, so Davis and I chatted while enjoying some milk and cookies.  We talked about his first week at school and his football game his team had won earlier. 

 By time Owen got home, the other two were in bed, so I got some one on one time with Owen as well.  We laid in his bed and talked about the party and school and making the team at school.  He loves to point out how much bigger he is than me.  That was the first thing I noticed when he was born, his hands were huge! 

Run, kick, stop and smile for mom!

Gator loves soccer and today soccer season started again.  She runs quick and kicks hard!  And she is so excited to be purple this year. 

More importantly, it was a birthday!!

The first day of school.  Owen took off early this morning for 8th grade and Davis an hour later for 5th.  And just like that, summer was over.  Look at poor Bella, even she looks sad that they left. 

 Davis had his shadow back this morning heading down to the bus stop. 

 We may have celebrated his day last week, but way more important than the first day of school was Owen's 13th birthday!!  It was pretty low key because of school and football, but he isn't loved any less.  He wanted bacon cheeseburgers and homemade fries for dinner, and we sang to him with a candle in a cupcake.  Owen, you are a fantastic kid, and we are so proud of you.  I am so glad we have you to celebrate with and I love you so very much.  Happy Birthday. 

And so it begins

Football Season 2013 began today, and what a way to begin 40 0.  Way to go D Stew and team!!  Owen is absolutely dying not playing yet.  He is trying out for the Jr. High team this week, good luck Owen!  Davis is #1 this year so look for that or the X on his helmet in the pictures I post.  It was 100 degrees, but these kids played with all their hearts, they looked amazing.  I love football season! 

North Shore

At the beginning of the summer, I bought a Groupon for North Shore aquatic center.  It has just been sitting in my folder while we've done everything else on our list. 

 

Sleep blogging...I got on Friday morning to post our pictures from swimming yesterday, and I had posted them Thursday night.  I guess I tried to write a post, but I was so tired I don't remember.  As you can tell it wasn't very complete.  So now that I have slept, I can fill in the details.  Anyway, I got an email saying my coupon was expiring soon, so with 2 days left of summer vacation we went and cashed it in and had a fun afternoon.  The boys spent most of their time in the big pool on the diving board, and Ally bounced from one pool to the next trying everything out. So, that is it.  We had science day and swam at North Shore this week, our summer list is all crossed off.  It is so crazy how at the beginning of the summer, our list goes up on the fridge and it looks like so much fun and seems as if it will take us forever to get through everything, but here we are, what seems like just a couple weeks later, and it is all marked up and crossed off.  It was a hot one, and I'm ready for the cooler days of fall, but I am a little sad that summer is over.  Next week, the bus will come again and this year Gator will climb aboard as well. 

Happy {early} Birthday Owen!!

This year August 20th is the first day of school for my kids.  Owen just is not happy about this.  He has never been in school for his birthday, until this year.  So we had his birthday today, and what an awesome birthday it was.  We went down to Farmington Station and ate lunch at a place he's been wanting to try, Johnny Rockets. Tyler showed us a store that reminded me of Wreck it Ralph.  I walked through the doors and felt like I was in the game Sugar Rush.  We were right by lagoon, so we figured why not go for a couple hours.  It was so hot, I wish we would've had our swim suits, but Rattlesnake Rapids helped cool us off.  We couldn't stay long because Davis had to get back for football practice and we had a party to get ready for.  Except for one year that he got to take some friends to a movie, Owen has never had a birthday party anywhere but our backyard.  With a summer birthday, it is so easy to have all his friends over for a hot dog roast and some swimming,  but I thought this year was a big year, 13!!!!  I felt he needed a big party.  We rented out classic waterslides and he invited a bunch of friends, and they had a great time!!  It was probably the easiest birthday party I've ever thrown.  I bought some cookies and brownies, put them out on a table and spent the rest of the evening in a chair chatting with my friends.  Owen had a wonderful early birthday.  Funny, he got this awesome early birthday, but all he can talk about is how excited he is to be able to play football on his real birthday.  The Junior High is having try outs on the 20th right after school, and he is so excited to finally begin football season.  The boys love their football! 

 Some of the kids.  I tried my best, but getting over 50 kids all in the pool at once for a picture is darn near impossible. 

Science Day

 Last summer we had a science day.  A day, where we spent the whole afternoon doing different science experiments.  The kids talked about how much fun they had all year long and asked to do the same thing this summer.  I went to Pinterest and found a bunch of fun experiments and we had just as much fun doing our science day as we did last year.  Definitely a new summer tradition. 

Salt crystal trees

 Lava lamps

 I was skeptical about this one, but I was amazed it did really work.  You can fill a Ziploc bag full of water and poke sharp pencils through it, no water will leak out. 

 This was a cool one.  Those are gobstoppers in a dish with water.  As the gobstoppers dissolved, the colors did not join.  The colors stayed separate the whole time. 

 These are m&m's.  The colors dissolve in water, but the m's float to the top.  This one was pretty cool. 

 Balloon rockets, probably next to the lava lamps the kids favorite. 

 It is hard to tell, because we used such similar colors in a row, but these colors did not mix.  There is orange, red, yellow, blue and green all separate in the cup depending on the sugar level. 

 Fireworks in a jar

 This one sat over night and the next day we had orange and green water in those empty cups.