August & September....Whew!

August and September have been quite a whirlwind. At the end of July we closed on our house, therefore the greatest part of August was spent covered in paint and a wardrobe consisting of "work clothes." We repainted and carpeted the entire house. We replaced our family room light fixtures with can lights and wired for a new television. While all that was going on, we had several guys come bid to do stucco work. Thankfully, it is all done and we moved in the last weekend in August. The first morning in our new house, we were woken up by two kids with the biggest smiles on their faces. They were loving their new rooms (no more stuffing into one bedroom for them).

A huge

THANKS!!

goes out to all who helped us.

We still have some things to do to the house before I post any pictures. In the middle of August, we packed up with my family and headed to East Canyon. My sis-in-law got a cabin for everyone to stay in, which by the way, was incredible. (I'll post more later). We spent our time playing games, and most of all, on the lake. It has been quite a while since I have waterskied like this. Loved it!

Well, onto September....the week we moved in, lil' K started Kindergarten! I still can't believe it. She rides the bus to and from school, which was quite an adjustment. Here is how the first week went.

*First day to school: Fabulous.

*From school: Call from teacher saying she wouldn't get on the bus, please pick her up from school today, which I did.

*Second day to school: (after labor day weekend) Fabulous.

*From school: Get off at wrong bus stop because she and the bus driver didn't know her stop, she got off with a friend from school who gets on at the same stop, but was getting off at a different stop. Friend and her mom walk her, filled with tears, to our bus stop. Thank goodness for good people!

*Third day to school: Anxious about riding bus (b/c of yesterday's incident). Took too long to get her out of the house, miss the bus, I drive her to school.

*From school: Right bus stop, still crying.

Now, she has made more friends on the bus and really likes it. No more tears or anxiety!

She has, in fact, loved school.

For labor day weekend, we made our (nearly) annual pilgrimage to Yellowstone National Park.

This year, my sister and her brood tagged along, which was fun. We hiked a little here and there. We saw Old Faithful a few times, went to Canyon and several geyser basins. This year we went to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center. The have rescued grizzly bears and wolves. They have an activity in which children ages 5-12 can go into the bears enclosure (without bears) and hide food for the bears. lil' K didn't want to do it, but her older cousins did. One of our big highlights... Sunday night as we were heading to the cars from Old Faithful to head back to town, I checked on lil' K's loose tooth. It was so loose!! We went back to the car and she let me pull it out! I think it is a cool story to lose a tooth in the parking lot at Old Faithful. The tooth fairy did not visit her until we got back home.

We went to the zoo last week as a family, which was not busy when we got there, but was when we left. Our favorite was to see all of the new babies: elephant (my personal favorite), a snow leopard, three tiger cubs (sleeping, didn't get a great view), and a crocodile. We had not been for a few months and had a great time. We love the zoo!

Yesterday, lil' K had a fun run at school as a fundraiser. She was such a trooper! She ran or walked with determination the whole time (20 min!) lil' L would not do anything but sit in the stroller, so I ran a few laps, sat with him, walked another lap with lil' K. Back and forth. They had a dj playing music and keeping everyone up on the time. He mentioned that 14 laps around the track was 1 mile. I kept track of lil' K's laps, I think I counted about 15-16ish. Over a mile. Pretty good for a 5 year old. Everyone who participated got a t-shirt and after the run, they had apples donated by McDonald's and water, not to mention a raffle. lil' K got two prizes, a $5 gift card to Wendy's and a free kid's meal at Applebee's. Looks like dinner is on her! Seriously, we are so proud of how hard she worked on this fun run.

Life is great, it has been busy, but we are finally finding routine.