Kindergarten Open House

Eve had her kindergarten Open House on Thursday. I’m a few days behind on the blog but I figured I should get this posted BEFORE the back-to-school posts in two days! The event was the usual chaotic mix of nervous new parents and kids, and old hands like me and Eve. :) She didn’t even really care to go. I said, “You’ll get to see the classroom and meet the teacher,” and she replied with, “I know the classroom and the teacher.” I tried several things, finally just resorting to “Well, we have to go.” She went happily enough.

She did a great job sitting quietly while the teacher, nurse, counsellor, bus driver, and principal all spoke. By the end of the nearly 45m of talking most of the kids were bouncing and chattering, but Eve and her friend/neighbor both did a great job being still and quiet. I commended her on it later and she said, “You’re supposed to be still and quiet and listen to the teacher in school.” Like I said, she’s an old hand at this. :)

crowd

A crowd of kindergarteners. I wasn’t at a good angle for pictures of Eve, but that little girl in the pink hammed it up for me, thinking I was taking pictures of her. :)

on the bus

On the bus, taking a ride around town with a lovie tucked under her arm.

friends

Eve knows a few people starting kindergarten this year, but only one other kid in her class (there are three kindergarten classes this year!). This little girl is our neighbor and Eve’s new classmate. Eve showed her all around the classroom. :)

One thing I did learn is that her class only has 13 kids this year! Lex’s K had 19 kids, mostly boys. With three classrooms now the class sizes are much smaller. I love that.

Toys

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My least favorite new thing. Browsing the toy dept while trying to spend every penny of their allowance. It’s boring for me! If it were 20 years ago I’d just leave them and browse the rest of the store on my own. No dice in this day and age!

A few pictures…

These are the laziest posts ever! Just some pictures. Enjoy. :)

drawing

A drawing Eve made for Lex. It is a tree and a flower and a person climbing a mountain. Even Eve wasn’t sure about the stuff in the middle. :)

mudroom

My mudroom. Easy (NOT!) come, easy go.

shoppers

This might be my last time shopping with these two for awhile. I think that’s probably a good thing.

runners

The store was pretty empty today so I let them be a little wild. They are full of wild these days!

on the bench

Waiting patiently while I check out at the grocery store. They wore themselves out.. for a minute or two!

flowers

We had many errands to run this morning, ending at the farm for our CSA pickup. The kids ran around (more wild!) and picked flowers from the pick-your-own flower patch they have. When we got home Eve took the job of arranging all the flowers in vases and watering them.

piano

While Eve did the flowers Lex checked out in the office for awhile. I went in to find that he was praticing the piano (the piano has become a saga for another post!) and he even wrote a song.

Canning Tomatoes

With the help of this great website I “put up” my first batch of tomatoes ever today. It was… umm… messier than I expected! They are setting and cooling now so I don’t know if they taste any good, but they look right. That counts, right?! :) I’m looking forward to lots of yummy soups with CSA veggies this winter!

peeling

Peeling tomatoes is easy, but messy! I even got tomato juice in my tea!

jarring

Jarring up the tomatoes. I used red, yellow, and orange ones, so they look very pretty. :)

done

All done. There is some separation, but the website says that’s normal. The one that looks like barely any tomatoes actually has just tomato juice in it. I figured I’d can the extra juice and see what happened!

Diamonds

Eve was telling Alan about small, tiny things at dinner tonight. She said, “as small as a diamond!”  Alan tells her that diamonds come in all different sizes so Eve grabs my hand and says, “See, as tiny as a diamond!” and points to my engagement ring!  We all had a good laugh, though I don’t think the kids really knew what we were laughing about. 

Quiet time love notes

Lex has taken to using the tablet in place of books at quiet time.  At first he used it for Starfall or Khan Academy, but then we discovered a cool note taking app called SuperNote and now I get love notes most days.  Here was his first one.  He made it one day while I was at work and he was home with a babysitter.

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Here is the picture on page 8.

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Here is his next note.

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Here is the picture from page 9.  I can’t find the pictures he took of himself (that time, we have plenty others!) and the sound on the video is very quiet but you can just barely hear him saying “I love you.”

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Lately he is working on a long note that has taken him many quiet times.  Each day he works on it but refuses to let me see.  I try hard not to peak. :-)  However, while exporting those images I happened to see this one too.

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I think he loves me!

Company picnic

Some other kids (that we know) brought these floats. They let us borrow them when they went up for lunch. There were a ton of awesome photo ops when I was out swimming with the kids in the deep part of the pond, but when we got back to shore and I got the camera the ops just didn’t happen. Oh well.

We swam while everyone else ate, and by the time we came up for food the catering company had left! Good thing the menu was all steak and lobster so I came prepared with pb&j. Also good thing they left the iced tea and lemonade beverages (and beer, of course!) and the cookies. We were all set.

Then back to the fun in the sun! Lex wanted to play volleyball with these boys but he wasn’t brave enough to speak up (and he doesn’t know how to play!) so he hovered and watched until they left, then he asked me to play with him. :)

Just playing with the camera. It’s like a superhero shot!

We got home in time for showers, a few minutes of quiet time, and family meeting, now we’re all crashed in the living room watching Colbchella ‘012 Rocktaugustfest. Colbert entertains our whole family. I think we’re having cereal for dinner. Happy Saturday.

Painting

We like to paint in this house. Mostly Eve and I like to paint, but Lex gets involved sometimes too. Recently for a girls night out, some friends and I went to a pottery studio and painted. I made this birthday plate and a little pink bunny.

birthday plate

Yes, I know it looks like a child’s work, but really it was all me! I’ve always wanted a family birthday plate. :) Lucky for me MY birthday comes next!

When you finish painting you leave your piece there and they put the glaze on and then fire it in the kiln. A week later they call and you go pick it up. When I went to pick them up the kids were SO excited and talked me in to staying to let them paint too. Actually it is something I’ve always wanted to do with them. The timing wasn’t the best, but we stayed and had a pretty good time. Eve painted a unicorn, Lex picked a heart shaped box, and I did a cool tea mug! I’ll post pictures next week when we pick them up.

painting

Hard at work, painting unicorns and heart shaped boxes.

The kids have already decided what they want to paint next, when we go back to pick up these pieces, but the place isn’t cheap so things may “happen” such that I pick up our finished pieces without them! School is starting soon, right? ;)

Blanket blobs… and a few other pics from the day

This one is for you, Mema! This is why I was giggling through our phone call.

The video is long and boring and of course I turned it off two seconds too soon. Moments after I turned it off Eve hopped her way directly into the wall! I fell over laughing so, of course, she did it again! Funny girl. Funny kids!!

We had a slow, but productive on my part, day today.

quiet

Chillin’ together in the office. They spent a lot of time hanging out together today. It was sweet.

mail

New school supplies! I love these bento boxes. I bought them years ago when the kids were going to daycare. Lex has used his for lunches the past two years. This year they each got new boxes (so I could have the old ones for spares/backups!) and Eve got a carrier. Lex has a good one still from last year. They were SUPER excited when the mail lady arrived today!

texting

Texting with daddy. She sent a message to him for me and then decided to send her own as well. Mine was a grocery list, hers was “I love you. Love Eve.”

painting

Eve and I painted some clay objects we made earlier in the week. She has a butterfly and a bear cave, I have a flower. Lex spent much of the afternoon working on a secret message on the tablet. I have another blog post coming someday about his tablet messages. (they are blog worthy because they are all love notes to me!)

baking

Here’s what I did with most of the day. Eve was very helpful in the beginning, while Lex worked on his paper Transformer, then they both went off and played together while I finished up. We made two loaves of bread, Pineapple Sunshine muffins, oatmeal raisin cookies with dark chocolate covered raisins, and chicken parm (no cheese) for Alan.

blanket blobs

Blanket blobs creeping (not so) quietly through the kitchen while I was on the phone.