School Days

Here I am fussing over Kalia before her "first day of school picture."

 Well, we ended our lazy summer days, it seemed to come so early, but sure enough, on Aug 6th, Kalia became a kindergartner. She was not worried at all, in fact, she has been looking forward to this for months. (We went to an open house night back in April and she's been super excited ever since.)

For her first day, she wanted to wear her sparkly skirt, her princess shirt, and she wanted her hair straightened with a flat iron. She is already one of the tallest kids in her class, but she wanted to wear these shoes that give her an extra inch.
SHE LOOKS SO TALL. AND SO GROWN UP. So strange!

 We drove the half mile to the school, luckily even Daddy got to be with us for the drop-off, although he waited in the car with Ella because it was so crowded and there was nowhere to park.

 We went into the classroom, and she found her desk,

 and immediately sat down and started coloring.

 I told Annie to go over and say good-bye (I love this picture.)

 And also, you can see Kalia's teacher in the picture above, she is in the yellow and brown striped shirt. She looks super young. I think this is her first year teaching (ever.)

 No glancing back from her! We left and it was really a simple process. Whew! She does have one friend from the neighborhood in her class and at her table, the other girl at the table, Mia Chamberlain. That's been great!

 This is the bulletin board outside her classroom. Her name is under the "i". She was happy to find that.

So meanwhile at home, Annie and Ella decided they like each other. This was a really cute thing to watch, and it was interesting how it just naturally happened once Kalia was gone.

 The next day, Annie decided she needed to wear Kalia's "first day outfit."

Kalia wore this outfit, and came home with a hole in the knee. And they didn't even have outdoor recess. (Still too hot for the kids to be outside, darn it.)  She is coming home FULL of energy. Full day kindergarten is NOT enough to tire her out, in fact, it bottles up her energy, and we have to find ways for her to get it all out when she gets home.

The next day,  Kalia got to be dropped off at school on the Motorcycle.

Here's a day later in the week, it was "rainbow" day at school, so she finally wore this dress that she never, ever would wear before.

 Annie has since taken over the role of "older sister." I was taking picture of Ella eating an Oreo when Annie saw the need for a hand wipe, and started cleaning Ella's hands for me.

 I really love this computer picture, because this is almost exactly what Kalia and Annie used to do. Now Annie runs all the controls and plays the games while Ella watches.

 Two weeks after Kalia started kindergarten, Annie started Joy School.

 She loves it! It's probably most suited to her personality than any of my other girls, so I'm glad we got invited to do this.

 And here's Kalia with a bandaid on her face....sad, sad, story...

I was trying to get Kalia to school extra fast, so I just put her in the bike trailer, and started pulling her (really fast) to school. On the second corner that I had to turn, the bike hitch broke and the momentum sent the trailer flying, it roller over itself once, and threw her out. She landed on her face. We were in the middle of the road, so I am really thankful there were no cars coming. I felt so bad. Her face looked pretty awful for about a week. Here I had to bring her home, change her shirt, bandage her up, and drive her to school half an hour late. That's why she's in this picture with Annie.

My friends assure me that we will laugh about this someday. I'm not quite there yet. :)

Anyway, it sure is nice to only have 1 kid, twice a week, for almost 3 hours!
School is awesome!

Kalia is doing great and comes home with so much work completed. I love that we don't have to do it at home, because she tries much harder to impress her teacher than she would ever try for me. She also has time for music, art, library time, PE and other things that wouldn't be possible with half-day, so I am glad that she ended up going full-day, although initially I was pretty worried about it.

Anyway, back to Annie, here's the other kids in her Joy School. The tall one in the back is (apparently) a special friend or a crush, because I was informed that they held hands the entire time, even during rest time.

GREAT.

Beautiful Sedona

 Our family took a late-summer mini-vacation to Sedona. I had never been there before, and my mother-in-law gifted us with a 2-night stay at the cutest little place. We all slept in a studio...we put Ella in the bathroom in her pack and play, Kalia and Annie slept on the pull-out couch, and Samuel and I of course had the nice bed. The only hiccups were from #1 anyone having to pee in the middle of the night had to squeeze into the bathroom and try not to wake up Ella, OR pee in the sink. (GROSS. Kalia told me the next morning how Daddy helped her pee in the sink. I was appalled at the thought. Boys...)  Also, Samuel was 3 days into a course of antibiotics and went off without them.  So we spent most of one day trying to get a new prescription. A HUGE thank you to our Dr friend who came through for us when our own Dr wouldn't call us back.

We hiked a fun trail called "Cow Pies", tried to feel the spiritual energy of Sedona (a.k.a. "Vortex") that we kept hearing about, and admired the variety of churches on every corner. And one up on a rock.

So here's the rest of our trip in pictures. The ones at the bottom are Slide Rock State Park. SO much fun. Although my kids were definitely the youngest ones there. It's a little better for older kids. The water was icy cold but so refreshing on a 100 degree day. :)