First Day of School 2013

I knew the day was coming...of course I did, I have a calendar...but it still surprised me.  The first day of school is here already?  And my baby boy is going to kindergarten?  

Who am I kidding, this kid is HUGE and hasn't got a single ounce of baby left in him.  

**sniff**  

Here is my boy, doing the obligatory "first day" pose on the stairs.

Was he nervous for kindergarten?  No way.  This kid has been asking just about every time we drove by the school if kindergarten was tomorrow.  Finally, tomorrow is today!  Dax, how do you feel?

Arden is in second grade this year.  (I know, I know...second grade?  Insanity.)  She was excited about the teacher she was going to have this year, and she was happy that one of her bestest friends was going to be in her class, and a few of her other friends were there too.  She was excited for the first day too!

She got to pick out her backpack, and she chose this one with the bikes on it, "because I love riding my bike."  She is a champ bike rider, and isn't she cute?

Well, hurry up and get in the car and lets go down to the school.  The theme at school this year apparently has something to do with superheroes, because there was a flock of them wandering around outside the school.  Dax was very excited to see his favorite, Spiderman!  We got a quick picture on the way in...I also noticed that there were two Supermans.  Maybe it just seemed like there were two of him because he was using his super speed?  Or maybe one was Bizarro Superman (yes, my husband is a superhero nerd and I have picked up a thing or two).  Anyway.....

First, we took Arden to her classroom.  She was glad to see that she was sitting by one of her favorite friends (who isn't a girl) and also by another boy who was in her class last year.  She was all set, and all smiles.  See ya later, mom!  Second grade is going to be awesome!

Next we headed to kindergarten.  We had a little orientation meeting there, and his first official day is tomorrow.  While the moms were busy signing up to volunteer for this and that, the kids were working!  Here is Dax, writing his name on his very first kindergarten worksheet!  

Then they headed over to the mat for the very first time to hear their very first story.  Dax picked the square with the alligator on it (it was as close as he could find to a dinosaur, I guess):

 As the story progressed, Dax started to get cozy with and cute girl who had chosen the square next to him.  That's my boy.  He loves the ladies:

After we picked up Arden after school, we headed to get some celebratory FroYo!

Cora doesn't start preschool until next week, poor thing, but we let her have a treat anyway.

This first day of school was so much easier than last year's version!  I didn't cry, Arden didn't cry, nobody cried!

Today was a busy day for Arden, she had school, then gymnastics, then soccer.  I asked her while I was tucking her in what the funnest thing she did today was, and she said, "School!"  I am so happy that she is glad to be in second grade, and knows what to expect with the long days.

Dax's first real go-to-school-without-Mom day is tomorrow, so we will see if I start crying then....wish me luck.

Summery Random Thoughts

I keep thinking I am going to blog about this fun thing we did and blog about that thing that happened, but somehow the days keep sliding by and nothing is gettin' blogged.  Anyone out there volunteer to be my personal blogger?  I will pay you in dirty Diet Cokes because I just got restocked on my sugar free coconut syrup...any takers?

In the meantime, here is a mostly-pictures catch-up blog.  This picture is of Arden at our ward camp out up at North Fork Canyon.  Beautiful girl, beautiful sunset.  One of our cool neighbors brought his guitar and played it next to the campfire at night...I want to learn the guitar someday....

Here is Arden and her friend A the next day...they had so much fun running around together, and even discovered a beaver dam!  A got her shoes wet during this discovery and Arden loaned her one of her flip flops so for a while they each had one flip and one bare foot.  By the time I got my camera, they just had one flip from Arden and one Flop of A's on their feet:

 We took a trip up to Bear Lake!  Arden is hamming it up for the camera, and Grandma is helping Cora swim:

 We took the waverunners out, and you can see from this picture that we weren't the only ones who had the "let's go to the beach" idea.  It was crazy crowded, but we had fun watching the people next to us try to paddleboard.  I want to learn to paddleboard someday....

And here is the boy getting ready to go.  Remember how he loves to go on superfast roller coasters?  Yeah, he doesn't like to go fast on the waverunners for some reason.  The girls like to go pretty fast, but the boy likes to keep it low and slow.  Go figure.

 We went to This is the Place for my work party.  A butterfly landed on Cora's face:

 Dax was excited to ride a horse!

 Everyone was excited to eat free ice cream!

 There have been tons of wildfires burning around here since it hasn't rained a drop in weeks and weeks and weeks.  It isn't so bad now, but it was really smoky outside the last couple weeks.  The sunlight was so red it was almost like we were living on another planet, like Mars:

It made for pretty sunsets though.  The girls were in a posing mood:

We busted out the slip n slide the other day.  Hours of entertainment...not only for us but for all the construction workers building the house across the street too I imagine.  Oh well.  Cora was having lots of fun going down the hill:

Yup, Arden can even do a supermodel pose while going down a slip n slide:

 But where is Dax in all this?  Trying to get a drink from the little jets of water that shoot up on the side of the slide, of course:

 And here is my cute little Cora, all snuggled up in the towel:

I can't believe that summer is coming to an end already!  School starts next week.  I am so NOT looking forward to rushed mornings and homework nights.  Can I please just have one more month???

Fishies!

On a particularly hot summer afternoon a couple weeks ago, we decided to escape the heat by heading to the local aquarium. The aquarium is moving to a bigger/nicer building this fall, so they will be closed down soon for a few months while the move takes place.  We thought we better check out the fishies while we had the chance.

Arden likes the jellyfish best.  I also love the jellyfish.  I even love those upside down jellyfish that stung me in the Carribbean.  I stick my face up against the glass of that tank and pretend I am snorkeling.  I love snorkeling.  I haven't been snorkeling in the ocean for oh sooo looooong....

But back to the aquarium.  Here is Arden and one of her gooey friends:

Everyone loves the stingray tank, because they are the only fish you can touch.  Here are the kids petting the sting rays.  We were there around feeding time, so the little rays were excited to see us, and kept coming around to check if we had food.  We didn't, but they kept checking anyway.

 Here is one, climbing up the wall to ask Dax to please pleeeease feed him:

We probably spent 45 minutes petting sting rays (yes, I cannot resist petting them either).  The kids kept asking when we could go back to Grand Cayman and go to Stingray City again.  Someday, my littles.  I hope.

We looked at every fish in the place, and I think my favorites are the sea horses and tube fish.  We even got to watch the Caimans (little crocodiles) have their feeding time.  It was a swarm of kids up by the glass, so I didn't get any good pictures of that, though.

Cora's favorite was the penguins.  They liked her too:

Dax's favorite is still...of course...the sharks.  He was disappointed that they didn't have any Great Whites there.  Sorry, dude.  If he had seen that one Jaws movie where the shark breaks through the aquarium glass and starts eating people he wouldn't think that.  I remember being just a little nervous as a young teenager at Sea World after watching that movie.  Who's with me?  (That movie was so bad it was actually pretty funny...but I still remember that scene.)

He also really liked the anaconda they have there.  It is gi-NOR-mous.  I was too busy gaping at it to take its picture I guess.  All I can say is boy howdy I am glad I am not the one who gets to try and wrestle that snake into a crate to take to his new home!  (Speaking of anacondas, have you seen the movie "Anaconda?"  You know, the one with old school J Lo and John Voight trying to do some sort of accent I can only guess is supposed to be Latin?  That movie was soooooo terrible it was freakin' hilarious.)

The kids had to be dragged out of the gift shop on our way out, but overall we had a fun time.  

I'd rather go snorkeling though.  

Or maybe just have a movie marathon of really bad shark and snake movies.  Who's with me?  I'll make the popcorn!

Teen Beach High School Movie Musical

I am not even sure how it started.  

One day a couple of months ago, I walked into the living room and found Arden ENGROSSED in "High School Musical."  What the what?  I have some nieces who were totally into those movies a few years ago, but I thought that since Arden was a baby at the time that I had dodged the High School Musical bullet.  

No such luck.  

Before I knew what hit me, I had High School Musical, High School Musical 2, and (most painful of all) High School Musical 3 taking up valuable space on my DVR (who the heck taught Arden to use the remote??  Oh wait, that was me.)

I canNOT express to you how cheesy these shows are.  They are absolutely dripping in runny, melty, gooey cheese sauce.  Just for a tiny example: in one of the movies (they all kind of blur together), the male lead (Troy!) is in the middle of a playoff basketball game (and is, of course playing basketball while simultaneously singing about playing basketball), when suddenly time freezes and the lights all dim as the female lead (Gabriella!) stands up in the crowd, looks adoringly at Troy and breaks into song about how much she belieeeeves in yooou, and he sings back to her that is aaaall that matters and then the game restarts and I think I just thew up in my mouth a little bit.  You get the idea.

During the commercials of each and every one of HSM's (High School Musicals, duh), they kept playing a preview for "Teen Beach Movie," yet another Disney musical starring teenagers.  Arden had been waiting rather impatiently for the promised day of happiness when she could finally watch it.  She even made me set the DVR ahead of time to be sure not to miss it (aren't I a nice mom?).  

To this day, I am smack in the middle of Teen Beach Movie pandemonium.  Just today, Arden gave me 12 quarters (representing 85% of her earthly wealth) so that I would download to her MP3 player the following songs:  "Surf Crazy," "Cruisin' for a Bruisin'," and "Falling for Ya."  As soon as they were downloaded, her and Cora took turns wearing her headphones and dancing around the kitchen to them.  (I kind of loved it when Cora was listening, because she only knows a few of the words, but sings the whole song.  It sounds something like this:  "Now I'm Faaaaaling for Ya!  Faaaaling for Ya!  mmmameeebaat I, caaamlaaaow I'm, Faaaaaaling for Ya!  Faaaaaaling for Ya!  laaaaamaaalonger now I'm Falling fooor yooou!"  Should have got her on video!  Next time.)

Then we went outside so I could work on the yard, and the kids said they were going to act out the movie. They all sat down on the grass and spent the next 10 minutes trying to figure out who was going to be Tanner, since Arden was going to be MacKenzie and Cora was going to be Layla and Dax was going to be Brady.  After thinking about that for a while and not coming to a satisfactory conclusion, they lost interest and just squirted each other with the hose.  While singing, of course.

Luckily, today was a busy day and we didn't get a chance to watch the actual movie, but here are some pictures of Cora and Arden dancing along with the finale that I got the other day:

I will say that I don't hate Teen Beach Movie nearly as much as High School Musical (but I guess give me a few weeks and check back).  The worst part TBM is that some of the songs are sneaky little ear worms! They crawl up inside your brain and then you can't get them out again!  So help me, I have been singing this song at the store, pulling weeds, etc.: "Surf Surf Sand!  It's a bikini wonderlaaand!  Summer's on, and we've gone surf surf CRAZY!"  It's true.  Surf Surf Crazy.

Help me.

Help me please.

Boy vs. Girl

When Dax first came to our family, I remember someone telling me that boys and girls weren't really that different.  She told me that boys and girls are just the same.  The only reason that boys seem to like trucks and girls seem to like dolls is because we give baby boys trucks and baby girls dolls to play with.

When Arden was very little, she got a stroller for her one and only doll.  She put her doll in it and pushed it around.  When Dax first learned to walk, one day he made his way over to this stroller.  He grabbed his frog stuffed animal and put it carefully in the stroller.  He then walked around behind it and pushed it over to the couch.  Huh, I thought.  Maybe boys and girls are not so different.  

As I was thinking this, Dax used all of his baby strength to lift the stroller, frog still inside, over his head.  He then slammed it repeatedly against the couch as hard as he could.  WHAM!  WHAM!  WHAM!

Boys and girls are the same.  Whatever.

As yet another example:  Cora and Dax have been taking an art class together this summer (SAME!).  They both love it equally (SAME!)  Last week they both got to draw a Panda (SAME!)  Here are the finished products:

Who can guess which one is Dax's and which one is Cora's?  Hmmmmmmm....