Grace's First Day of Kindergarten!

Grace started Kindergarten today! She attends at Bay Leaf Baptist Church about 4 miles from our house. It is a half-day Kindergarten taught by a teacher with 32 years experience. Her teacher taught at a much larger Christian school in our area for 25 years. There is also an assistant and a total of 12 kids in her class.

Grace has been waiting for this day since summer began. And she is ready. However, it has been a little hard on me the last few days. I am thrilled for her and so happy that we made the decision to enroll her in this program, but sad for me. Grace and I have been together constantly over the last 5 years. Kindergarten marks a new time of school and friends and, well, separation. :-) Hard to let go.

We all went to school today to see her off. We had to do a little hair redo in the parking lot. Daddy had the baby and took pictures and Isaac was probably off peeing and saying "poop."

Here she is at the front door. Smile bigger than that ridiculously large backpack!

And here she is outside of her classroom. She went right in and found her name. She was so excited I was afraid she was going to kiss a boy. Fortunately a little boy named Isaac sits at her table, so hopefully he reminds her too much of her brother.

Yesterday she got to meet her teachers. This is her classroom. Her teacher is the one in the turquoise in the back.

When I picked her up today she had the biggest twinkle in her eye. She said she had so much fun but it was a lot of work! I was relieved that she was not exhausted and overwhelmed as so many of our friends' kids have experienced after being in school for over 7 hours as Kindergartners! However, she did throw out all of the Tupperware I put in her lunch today. That was the only bummer.

I am so proud of my daughter and the little person God is molding her to become. She is brave and smart, sweet and thoughtful.

Our New Wheels

Please note we did NOT buy a minivan as foretold by lots of friends! :-) This is our new Yukon and we love it! I can fit all 3 carseats in the second row so we don't even need the 3rd row. However, the 3rd row is huge and also seats 3 people. And even when using the 3rd row there is lots of storage behind it. The kids love the car for only one reason...it has a DVD player in it. They were really bummed when they first found out we were not getting a minivan. I couldn't figure out why...then I discovered it was because they thought that only minivans have DVD players. Pitiful. Anyway, they love the big truck now and how high they sit up. I love that we are super safe (I think only a semi-truck rivals this thing) and that I have Onstar! So wonderful. I highly recommend GMC cars if only for this option. My kids will never be locked in the car and I can never get lost! This car has already blessed us in many ways. Isaac now sits up close instead of the very back. We have fun conversations in the car and everything including strollers, groceries, and pool toys all fit at the same time. This is my very funny little boy wearing Strawberry Shortcake. Grace and I were in stitches over this one.

What a big week for Leah!

Leah had a big week. Lots of milestones. Her 7 mos birthday was on Sunday, please keep that in mind. First, she learned how to go from the crawling position to the sitting position. The first couple of times she did it she wasn't exactly sure what she had done- but we all cheered her on and she was extremely pleased with herself. However, the excitement was short lived as her new skill kept her up much the following few nights. She would constantly sit up through the night and just cry. No matter how many times we laid her down she would sit up again. After my 3rd night of severe sleep deprivation I was not thinking that this skill was so cool after all. Then, during this "new skill" phase she cut two teeth on the bottom front. They are very cute. Those also caused some night time disturbances.

At this point I haven't slept in 3 months, and things are not looking good. For whatever reason, Leah just likes to be up at night and has a hard time soothing herself. She recently began to stuff her blankie in her mouth and that was worrying me. So we tried the paci again. I tried to give it to her a couple of weeks ago and she wanted nothing to do with it. She took it! Praise the Lord! The child really does need to suck on something to sleep, and the paci has helped the last few nights, but she still has a love/hate with it. Sometimes she wants it and sometimes she doesn't. I cannot figure it out. So she is sleeping a little better at night, but when she does wake up, she still sticks her blankie in her mouth, rather than the paci, and I still have to go in her room to get her back to sleep. So the sleep deprivation looks like it may continue for a while.

But the really big news is that Leah started standing yesterday! She actually did it in her crib on Sunday night when I put her down. She was fussing and I looked on the monitor and she was crying because she had stood up and couldn't figure out how to get down! Needless to say, we have dropped her mattress to the low position so she cannot topple out of the crib. So yesterday she spent most of the day finding things to pull-up on. She was absolutely thrilled with her accomplishment and was screaming with joy. Of course Grace and Isaac were also thrilled and screamed with her too. I was hoping that she was so tired that she would have a good night of sleep, but she didn't. Ugh. Maybe she just got Grace's night sleeping gene.

Anyway, good times here. My little baby is right on track with her big brother to be walking at 10 months old. I cannot even imagine what kind of toll that will take on the Christmas tree this year.

This is Leah standing with big brother nearby to catch her if she falls.

And here is the action live!

Isaac is still 2!

My handsome little prince is slightly lacking in the etiquette of a prince. No matter- he is adorable and hilarious most of the time. Lately he throws out the word poopy like Obama throws out tax dollars. My only request is that he refrain from using his favorite word at the dinner table. This is challenging at times as the word poopy goes well with food words. See video at the bottom for a good laugh. Of course Nana was egging it on. I was filming on the deck of our beach house.

Grace is 5 years old!

Some photos I took on the boat dock behind the beach house on Ocean Isle.
I am flattered that I look like my daughter. :-)

Well, actually she was five on July 13th...but as I mentioned earlier, when you have 3 small kids, everything is a little delayed.

Leah is 6 months old!

Well, actually she was 6 months old on July 22nd...but with the 3rd sometimes things are a little delayed. Our little Leah wins awards for being the easiest baby ever...from 8am until 8pm. For the hours following we have no comment. :-)
One of her favorite things to do is to play on the floor. She is rolling everywhere and crawling...yes crawling. Hasn't mastered the hands and knees yet, but the army crawl is extremely efficient.
I took the following 3 photos while on the dock at our beach house.

This is my cutie playing on the floor at home.

Her little head with ears sticking out just kills me.

Big old blue eyes.

" Hi Mommy!"

"I Love you Mommy!"

Ocean Isle and Sunset Beaches

Last week we went on vacation. We stayed on Ocean Isle Beach and spent a few mornings on Sunset Beach with the Kizakevich family. This was our 4th summer vacationing with them- they are like family to us. The weather was perfect. It only stormed one day and it was in the afternoon. We all had fun sitting on the upper deck watching the storm...not sure how safe that is. Nana drove to meet us and we all had a wonderful time together. I enjoyed having all of the extra hands and the kids loved all of the attention. Sid got to ride his bike and go fishing on the dock behind the house. We rented the same house last year. Leah wasn't the best sleeper, but she isn't winning any awards at home either...so might as well be tired on vacation I guess. We rented a bike for Nana and a special bike for Sid so that Leah could ride too. She loved it!


Here is Sid fishing off of the dock behind the house. The big kids loved fishing too.

Nana and her grandbabies.

Me and my babies.

The rugrats.

One morning on the deck.

Grace and Leah playing cars together. And yes, my six month old is starting to crawl.

Daddy working hard.

Leah LOVING the surf!

But not her hat.

Grace befriended some young adults playing a game with water balls. None of this was surprising to Sid and me. Grace loves to meet new people and she loves games. What was surprising is that the people she met loved having her play because she was really good. In fact they let her play two days in a row!

Isaac and Daddy, meanwhile, dug a trench around our umbrella to protect us from the incoming tide.

Sid, Leah, and Isaac sand off in the water.

Grace catches some waves.

And finally a big wave fills the trench and Isaac was thrilled! He protected his turf!

I am so proud that my kids love key lime pie. Some parents pride themselves in broccoli and green beans. Not in our home. Key lime pie will take you further in life.

Here is our Leah riding with her daddy.

Isaac in a tide pool on Sunset Beach. Grace and Hayden on Sunset together.