School is back in session

Well... this is so crazy! I now have a 3rd grader and a 1st grader, which means that they are in school ALL day! It is so strange not to be surrounded by my little ones all day. Talen starts preschool next week so then I will have a whole FOUR hours to myself a week. That will be weird! I haven't been alone during the day for almost 9 years. I won't know what to do with myself. But enough about that... my kids had a great first day of school.
Tegen has Mrs. Anderson and she seems so nice. Traysen has a first time teacher named Mrs. Hirtle. This is our 3rd experience with a first year teacher. Our first experience was not so good but the second time was awesome. I am hoping for a repeat of that second time. We woke up early on Thursday (who starts school on a Thursday anyway?) and they were ready to go. We picked out outfits the night before and they chose pancakes and bacon as their breakfast. Pretty soon they were ready to head out the door. The only problem was that Talen thought that he got to go to school too. We walked the boys down to the bus at 8:00 a.m. Talen was very... I mean VERY upset that he did not get to get on the school bus with the boys. He bawled the whole way home from the bus stop and kept crying "The school bus left me- I can't believe it left me!" It was so heartbreaking. I assured him that he will get to go to preschool in a couple of weeks. Hurray! These are pictures of them getting off the bus. I didn't get great pictures of getting on the bus or off the bus. The kids are always in a huge hurry! They practically all push each other out of the way so that they can be the first one on the bus. Who knew that buses were so awesome?
I am excited to start another year. Will someone remind me of that when I am complaining about homework and schedules in a month? It's so strange when your kids get big enough to go out in the big scary world all on their own. It really makes me wish that I could be a fly on the wall in their classes because I would love to see how they act when mom and dad aren't around. Well that's two down now I just have to get Talen off to preschool. This ought to be very interesting because he is NEVER away from me. He wouldn't even go to nursery until they put his Aunt Meisha in as his leader. We'll see what happens... in the meantime we will enjoy the rest of our warm summer days!

Summer is winding down...

Can anyone else believe how fast this summer has flown by? It seems as if we were just waiting for it to get warm and then bam! it's over! CRAZY!!! I love summertime so much that I will be sad when... you can't open your windows at night time anymore, there are no more fresh vegetables in the garden, camping trips are over, it's not hot anymore, we now have to settle into a routine, we have to start doing homework! Blah- I know that the end of all of this means that another wonderful summer has come to a close- sad, but true! It is now time to look forward to those wonderful days of school and fall activities. I wouldn't be so sad, but I just LOVE summertime. I do think that it is time for the kids to head back to school though. Three months of constant playing and bickering and eating a million popsicles must end sometime. The school clothes are bought, the school supplies are in the backpacks, we have been going to bed early every night trying to get back into the routine so I say....... fall/school bring it on!

Yea... No More Training Wheels!

We are officially a house of two wheelers, no more training wheels! Today (August 9) Talen learned how to ride without training wheels. He got a new bike last Christmas and was so excited to learn how to ride, but it definitely took him a while to get the hang of things (even with the training wheels). He didn't really like to ride his bike until around the beginning of July. Once he started riding he never looked back. He started cruising around the cul-de-sac like a crazy man so today we decided to take off the training wheels.

He was amazing! He learned so fast I couldn't believe it. It was such a hot day today so I don't think that Ed was too thrilled that I volunteered him for the job of running behind Talen, but he was a willing volunteer. And anyway, someone had to take the pictures right? After chasing him around the cul-de-sac for about ten minutes he pretty much had the hang of things. I still don't think he totally has the starting and stopping down yet, but he's close. I think it's like a rule or something at our house. You HAVE to learn to ride a bike by the time you're three! Tegen and Tray learned to ride without training wheels when they were three so I'm sure they had a lot to do with the fact that Talen wanted to try so badly. Gee... I wonder where Talen gets it from? A few minutes after he started riding he thought that he was ready to go off the jump. Yikes! It took some convincing but I think we've talked him into waiting on that one... until tomorrow that is!
I have a little family of dare devils. They just love to do wild and crazy things. I prefer to keep the two wheels on the ground at all times myself, but I guess that's what I get with a houseful of boys!

I feel so blessed that I have such a great life. I truly love my husband. He is such a caring person and he is such a good dad. I also feel so lucky to have 3 perfect little boys. No... I don't mean perfect in attitude, but they are such bright, loving, thoughtful, smart boys. I feel so lucky that I get to be their mom. They teach me so much each day - number one being patience. Sometimes I feel that I live a fairytale life... MY fairytale life. Life isn't perfect every day, but the good days outnumber the bad ones so we must be doing something right. I guess as the saying goes: "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain." I want to try to enjoy every moment of my little ones because I know that I will blink and wonder where the years went. Sorry about my rambling... I guess I'm just feeling very blessed today.

Anderson Family Reunion

We went to Bear Lake at the end of July for my mom's side family reunion. We stayed at a private R.V. resort that was SO nice. We camped on grass with hook-ups for our trailers (so nice!). The resort had a playground, swimming pool, hot tub, laundry room, they rented water craft and had a private beach. We had so much fun. We played on the beach for two days, unfortunately I forgot my camera so I didn't get any pictures at the beach. We went boating and played in the sand and soaked up the sun! What could possibly be better than that? My family is into cooking. When I say "into" I mean they love it! They are all gourmet cooks so we had lots of good food too. We played a game called Wah-Shoe's which is a game played kind of like horse shoes, but you use giant washers instead- sounds weird, but it's way fun. We stayed up until 2:00 in the morning having Wah-Shoe tournaments. My brother Kris and I did pretty good, but Thomas and Becky are the reigning champs... until next year... there will be a re-match! We had so much fun and it was sad to leave. Some of my family we only see once a year so it's really fun when we get together. I didn't do a very good job of taking pictures because I was having too much fun. I guess there's always next year!

My brother Kris served in Iraq from April 2007 to June 2008. He will get out of the army in 2012. I am so proud of him and for serving our country so willingly. He will now be stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. He saw some scary things and some amazing things.