Coming this April....

Cora is a kindergartner!

Cora started school on September 6th. She was so excited for school to start, and had been counting down the days. Here she is on her first day of school!

Kevin and I walked her to school the first week and a half, now she rides her scooter to school with our next door neighbors. I love living a 5 minute walk from school! Another neighbor also has morning kindergarten, so we take turns picking the kids up from kindergarten, which is so convenient. I often pick her up in the car because pick-up is at the end of my 1 hour and 45 minutes twice a week I have with just Luke-- prime errand running time! Plus Violet gets done with preschool 15 minutes after Cora is done on those days, so we are in the car anyway. Walking is a great option though!

I love that they wear uniforms! It's so easy to pick out what to wear each day, and they really weren't very expensive.

Cora's first day of school was also special because she had had a loose tooth for a few days before that was getting looser and looser! She's been wanting to lose a tooth for about a year now, and has been sure that just about every one of her teeth has been loose at one point or another. You can see her new tooth growing in behind the baby tooth, it made the baby tooth stick out into her lip, which bugged her. She was so ready to get it out!

I walked Cora to school the first day. For the first day parents were invited to walk the kids to their classrooms, they usually meet in the gym and their teacher walks them to class as a group. Cora was happy to pick a book and start reading after I said goodbye!

That night we got this nice email from her teacher about her first day.

I just wanted to let you know that Cora had a wonderful first day of school today! She is such a sweet girl and I am so glad I get to be her teacher. Today we had a friend in our class who was having a hard time and really wanted to sit in the green row of our rug. Cora was such a good friend and she, on her own, offered to let this friend sit in her spot and she found a new place to sit. I was so thankful that she was willing to be such a good friend to someone she doesn't even know yet! Thank you, Cora!

Her teacher seems great! Luckily I'll get to go into the classroom and help a few times a month. Another neighbor mom and I are switching off babysitting younger siblings so we can go. It's worked out great so far.

Cora's tooth was bugging and hurting her so much, after school the first day we took a trip to the dentist. He took it out fast and painlessly (with some numbing cream). In fact, Cora was so busy watching Tangled, she didn't even know when the tooth came out. He said it might have come out on its own in a week if she would be good about doing lots of wiggling, but this was a better option for us. He said it would likely move forward on its own (we hope!) and the x-ray showed that the other adult teeth are more under the baby teeth, instead of behind, so hopefully it won't happen again.

Cora is so proud of her holey mouth!
And proud of her pink treasure chest too. We did have a few tears when she lost her lost tooth. She tried to be brave and said the Tooth Fairy could just come get her next tooth (she didn't listen when I asked her to keep it safe on the kitchen counter). Thankfully it showed up about an hour later. She wrote a note to the Tooth Fairy asking to keep her tooth. But the Tooth Fairy in her wisdom (and desire to not have to search for that tooth again!) just left a note and a dollar. Cora got a trip to the dollar store to pick out a toy. She was thrilled!

So life is suddenly busier with preschool, gymnastics, volunteering at school, and kindergarten. I'm part of three different carpools, which is wonderful! But makes me a little nervous that I'm going to forget to pick up at the right people at the right place and time! It makes me want a smart phone. Oh well. We're getting used to the new schedule, and it's working well. I especially like having quiet time after lunch for us to work on reading and homework while Luke naps. And then we can go out to play afterward!

Lukey in the pool

Luke is such a little fish, he makes me laugh! I finally got a video of his pool circuit training at our last pool day of the summer. What a cutie!

Our latest adventures

We squeezed in a last trip to the zoo before school started for Cora. Luke loved the carousel this time! And the giraffes were really active and fun to watch. We also caught the elephant show, which we hadn't for a while.

We made our own volcano and watched it erupt... over and over and over again!

We did our annual outing to Silver Lake with friends. It was actually a bit on the cool side--fun! We had fun visiting with old friends, enjoying the walk around the lake, and especially duck watching. I think I even heard Luke say the word duck a few times! The kids loved watching the ducks at several points around the lake.

We did a family hike up to Ensign Peak. Violet wasn't excited at all, that was the only picture she'd let me take of her, but at least she made it! (barely)
And lastly, we had a night of family fun at the State Fair and rodeo. Elephant ears and corndogs for dinner, Luke mooing for the first time, cute baby pigs, a tiny four year old girl winning the mutton busting contest, sky divers coming down with the American flag waving behind them.... it was a fun night. The kids did really well too, and had a great time.

We did a pretty good job with our summer fun list this summer. We did most, but not all of the items, and that's ok. In retrospect, it was pretty heavy on the hiking, and we just didn't have that many free good weather Saturdays. We'll keep it up and maybe cross off a few more items this fall!

Update

We went to the neighborhood pool last week and were surprised to be there by ourselves! It's fun to find friends there, but it was a nice bit a quiet time for a family swim this time. Luke just loves his lifejacket-- it gives him so much mobility and control, way more than the regular lifejackets. We were hanging out in the corner by the stairs, and Luke figured out that he could paddle to the stairs, get out of the pool. jump off the side, and paddle to the stairs again all by himself. No more whining to get my attention to lift him out for another jump! He did that little circuit about 15 times in a row, no exaggeration! He's a little fish!

Miss Violet had her first day of preschool last week. She loves going to Miss Amanda's (where Cora went last year). I think she loves having her own activity to do herself, instead of being carted around to Cora's activities.

My cousin Danni stayed with us for a night last weekend. She has always wanted to do a session at the Salt Lake Temple and have dinner at the Melting Pot-- items on her bucket list. Since she doesn't drive and lives in Idaho, they have been tricky for her to check off. Everything worked out for her to come and we sure squeezed a lot into the 27 hours we were together! We took the tour of the Lion House, went to the top of the COB, saw the diorama of the Salt Lake Temple in the visitors center, walked through the JSMB, saw a free concert of VoiceMale at the Brigham Young park, ate dinner with my parents, went to Cora's soccer game, and watched the Joseph Smith movie.

It's such a great view of the valley from the top of the COB!

Sunday was my birthday, and Monday was Kevin's. We used our Temple Square birthday club freebie (B1G1F) at The Roof for a fun dinner out while Kissie and Pata watched the kids. Yummy food! We came out stuffed! Ah, happy 33rd birthday to us! Cora and Violet took pictures of us before we left.

Luke's new words

Luke has finally added a few words to his vocabulary! He's been saying 'dada' for a long time, a while ago he added on 'I want that'. He added 'mama' about a month ago. At first it was just the sounds, now he'll say it when he sees me. Luke calls any kind of food 'banana', and recently picked up 'hat' and 'ball'. Here's a video of him the morning I heard him say ball for the first time. He's so delighted with himself!

Slaying Goliath

Check out what we did last night at my mom's blog here . Pretty fun! The girls were only familiar with the Veggie Tales version of the story, so it was a great lesson.

Juniper Point Fun Run

Cora loves doing Fun Runs, and I love that she's excited about being active! But they are a little pricey. So I decided to do one for our little neighborhood! We had 43 kids sign up for a .8 mile loop around the neighborhood. Other than some sign-up issues due to Facebook messaging, it turned out great and was a lot of fun.

Here's Cora at the starting line before the race....

And with her age group...

Coming to the finish line...

And crossing it! Cora is a fast runner! She ran quite a bit faster than most of the kids in her age group-- I was surprised.

The HOA provided ribbon and drinks for the kids at the end. It was a great neighborhood activity, I think I might have to organize one again next year!

Black Ridge Reservoir

We were lucky and got to meet up with some of our Stansbury friends at the beach this week. Violet was in a bit of a mood, but the rest of us had fun (you can see her in the back of this picture, determined to not be in the photo!). Playing in the sand is always a hit. Luke discovered the joys of throwing sand (unfortunately), but he didn't mind too much when I redirected him to aim for the water instead of friends, so it was okay... this week at least. The last 20 minutes he had his lifejacket on and loved swimming with Cora in the water. He thought it was so fun and had no fear following her out way further than I would have liked. At least I had my swimsuit on too! He had the biggest grin on his face, just loving swimming by himself in the water. So cute.

Swimming Lessons

We loved our swim lessons with Bobi this year! Cora and Violet were in the very own class and had a fantastic time. I was amazed at how much they trusted Bobi right off the bat, and they learned so much!

Violet is still working on putting her face in the water, but she worked with the kickboard, practiced her dean man's float, and some of the arm movements for swimming. Hopefully next year she'll be ready to be a bit braver. She loved practicing her kicks while holding onto the stairs.

Cora learned a basic crawl stroke, and could hold her breath and swim the width of the pool! She also floated on her back,

and learned some stroked for on her back, and learned to tread water. She jumped off the diving board with floaties on Tuesday,

and with no floaties on Wednesday and Thursday!

She also started knee diving from the side of the pool. I was amazed at how much she picked up in 6 lessons, she really was ready to learn.

And this is what Luke did most of the time at the pool

Slide, eat goldfish, act like he was going to run into the pool, and walk his toy alligator around. He was a handful! Maybe he'll be able to start lessons in a year or two!