Kylie Graduates Pre-School!

On Wednesday, Kylie officially graduated from pre-school!  I can't believe this day has already come!!  She was so cute in her little graduation ceremony that her class put on.  She said her favorite thing about pre-school was playing at the playground for recess.  Of course!

They also sang a few songs and then got their certificates.

While I know Kylie was definitely one of the most spirited children in her class, she was also a great learner and learned so much!

This week there was more house hunting and packing.  We put in an offer on our fourth house now, and now we are under contract, so that must be a good thing!  Hopefully all goes well and we will have finally found our future home!

Happy 9th Anniversary!

Kylie didn't have school all this week.  She still has a few days left next week, but this week was reserved for testing.  Kylie, of course, did awesome on her test!  The only thing she really lacks is focus, which I am not too worried about at this age.  So we got a little taste of summer this week and had lots of fun going to parks, swimming, walks, and then holing up indoors because I got a head cold and couldn't get off the couch.

On Wednesday was our wedding anniversary (9 years!) and to celebrate we went and looked at some more houses and then went bowling as a family.  While we all like to bowl, apparently we all need bumpers!

Early Thursday morning Brandon left for a convention in Las Vegas and was gone until Saturday afternoon.  This was also the time that I was conveniently sick so the poor kids got an overload of television.  They did fairly well on Thursday, but on Friday they were ready to get out and about, so we had a playdate with Sophia and went to the splash pad.  Thankfully my kids are old enough now that I can just sit in the shade and watch them run around.  Then Angela offered to take Kylie to her house to play with Sophia some more while Hayden and I went home and crashed into our beds for several hours!  It was awesome.

Saturday was another sick day for me, but the kids didn't even care because Daddy was home!  So they were all over him for the rest of the day while I took a nap.  Hopefully next week will be better for me and no one else will catch what I had!

The Start of House Hunting!

Such a fun week filled with walks, errands, walks, library, swimming and more walks.  It was still kinda stormy this week - it bounced between super hot and pretty chilly.

We entertained ourselves on the cold days by making songs up.

We entertained ourselves on the hot days by exploring our new neighborhood park.  Which consists of three springy toys, a tetherball, and jungle gym.  The kids got bored within 15 minutes.

Also this week we were approved for a mortgage, so we got to start house hunting!  The kids and  I went out and saw a few on Thursday.  The kids just loved running around someone else's house and exploring.  We all know that is their favorite thing to do!  On Saturday we got to go see a few more, and this time Brandon was able to come with us.  The very last house we saw we all loved.  It had just come onto the market that day, and we decided to put in an offer.  Apparently it is an awesome house, because we weren't the first to put in an offer!  So we will see where it goes on that one... meanwhile, our hunt will continue!

Testing out Camping

This week was rather cold and blustery.  We only made it to a park once and it was too cold and rainy to even think about swimming!  So we had a lazy week indoors and did lots of coloring, cleaning, and playing.

We did get to celebrate Brandon's birthday on Thursday.  The kids stayed up late until Brandon came home from work and we had birthday blueberry muffins with ice cream.  On Friday Brandon took a half day from work, and he decided that Kylie could come in to work with him for a few hours.  She was so super excited.  I love seeing her pack her backpack and talk about how she gets to go to work with Daddy.  Hayden was, of course, terribly sad, but all he did was sleep when they were gone anyway.  Later that night we set up the family tent indoors and had a mini campout.  We have been wanting to take the family camping, so we wanted to see if we all fit in the tent.  Well, we do!  But not comfortably.  Especially when Brandon put the blow up mattress in there!  The kids loved it, though, and we stayed up late and watched a family movie, and we even tried to get the kids to sleep in the tent for the night, but they both opted to sleep in their beds instead.  (Much to my relief, actually!)

Saturday Brandon had a class all day, so me and the kids did a little shopping and made pizza and started our spring cleaning!  Such fun!  Our cleaning and packing is getting into full swing now that we have been approved for a housing loan and are now on the prowl for a new home!

Swim For Your Life!!

Super fun week this week getting back into the groove of things after last weekend's trip.  Monday we started off with a bang by painting!  I used to paint all the time with Kylie when she was little, and I have hardly done it with Hayden.  So Hayden was SUPER excited to paint, even though it only lasted 5 minutes before we had to rush him to the bath.

Besides getting our craft on this week, we did a lot of swimming.  A LOT of swimming.   It was pretty hot all week!  But that didn't stop Hayden, who had just recently found the snow things, going swimming in his snow boots and snow hat.

On Friday we even invited our friends over to go swimming with us and we all had a blast!  Swimming is seriously the best entertainment!

Kylie is getting really good at swimming and can nearly swim the whole length of the pool without touching the wall!  Little fish!  Hayden still loves the hot tub, but he also is good at kicking himself around.

On Saturday we decided to get out as a family and went to the Kite Festival.  There were so many kites and the weather was perfect for it!  So windy and warm!  Kylie loved flying her butterfly and Hayden liked trying toss his in the sky after it had fallen.

Also, this week, Kylie discovered how well she balances things on her nose.

The Start of Swimming!

The week started off beautiful with lots of time spent outside on walks, bike riding, and playing with our toys.  On Tuesday, when we were playing in and out of the garage, a stray cat just came up to me, meowed, and bolted into the garage!  Well, that was a surprise!  The kids were completely interested in it (of course), and kept trying to drag it out of our cat house tower where it had decided to curl up in.  It was a friendly cat, thank goodness, so Kylie kept trying to bring our cat out to "make friends".  Uhh... no.  Our cat was already growling at the garage door and while he was bigger than the stray cat, I didn't really want them getting into a fight.

Eventually I lured the stray cat out and gave it a handful of food and a little water.  It gobbled it up like it hadn't eaten in days, poor thing!  Afterwards we went inside and the cat went away and we haven't seen it since!

Well, it was getting so warm outside in the afternoons, that I was getting the itch to go swimming!  And Kylie had been doing so well at school, that on Tuesday when I dropped her off I just said in passing while she was getting out of the car "If you get a happy face today we can go swimming!"  Of course she was excited, but I didn't mention it again.  Turns out she only got an OK face today (she bugged her neighbors a lot that day), and I didn't even say anything after school, just showed her the paper from her teacher with an OK face, and, man!, did she just die.  Full on tantrum in less than a second!  She really wanted to go swimming!!  Well, her bad attitude persisted the rest of the day, so we tried again on Wednesday.  That day she only got an OK face again, but she took it in stride and when we were home she earned going swimming by helping me clean up and being happy.  Both kids were super excited and had so much fun!

On Thursday Kylie managed to get a happy face, so she immediately thought we were going swimming!  Uh oh...  is this turning into an everyday thing?!?  We did end up going swimming because it was super hot anyway!

Our weekend was fairly quiet.  It rained all weekend, plus Brandon had to work, so on Saturday we went to visit him and have Italian Ice together.  On our way out the door we ran into Grandpa Pete!!  What a surprise!  He was down here for work again this weekend and had quickly dropped by to say hi before heading back home.  We loved seeing him (and the kids loved playing in the puddles while I talked to him).

In other news, Hayden can say 'Yeah' now, instead of just grunting his yeses!  His vocabulary is really widening.  The other day while I was cooking he came up to me and asked "Mom, what doing?"  It was really surprising and super cute.  He is really good at holding conversations now and loves trying to say new phrases.

It's Already Been A Week?

This seemed like the quickest week ever!  It was mostly cold all week, so we didn't go out much except to run errands.  On Monday we went to the doctor's to get Kylie's physical for Kindergarten.  She brought her doctor set that she got for Easter and was very interested in how everything works, but not how everything works oh her.  She threw the biggest fit when the doctor wanted to look in her ear.  Glad we don't have to visit the doctor very often!

By Friday the days had finally warmed up enough that we went to the park. Apparently it was super warm because the kids just wanted to play in the water.  In fact, Hayden stripped off all his clothes to play in the water, and it took much convincing on my part so that Kylie wouldn't take off all her clothes too.

Aaaannnndddd... that was about our week.  Super exciting, I know.