Junior Kindergarten

Xavier started Junior Kindergarten at the end of August. He goes 4 afternoons a week for 3 hours. It's basically preschool with a more kindergarten readiness emphasis. It's at the same place he went last year, but he's in a different room with different teachers this year. His teachers are wonderful too!!

To say Xavier loves school is an understatement. He's always excited to go, is making friends, and is already learning soooo many new things!!!

I've been enjoying this time as well because after lunch we drop X at school and then the other boys come home to nap. I usually get at least an hour to myself which is heavenly. And then we all feel refreshed to resume playing after we pick up X. Most days Wesley runs into X's classroom and greets him with a hug at pickup -- it's pretty cute!

This new school schedule has pretty much wiped out the nap for X during the week. It's tiring though. He goes to bed around 7pm and often times needs a nap on at least one of his non-school days to catch up a little.

First day cuteness:

X's favorite things seem to be working on writing letters and getting to bring the Sharing Bag (show and tell). His first class party of the year is a couple weeks away and I can't wait to be there to watch him interacting with his classmates.

Xavier can write his name now which is just AWESOME to me. He's learning some sight words and is starting to ask me how you spell certain words so he can try to write them. I'm thrilled because prior to this school year he had very little interest in learning to write. I think he's starting to understand a little the whole new world that opens up when you can write things.

A Trip to Remember

The fam and I drove down to Atlanta last month for my uncle's memorial service. Chuck passed away after many years of illness and struggle. He was a man who loved his family and friends very much. The weekend was a celebration of his life more than a focus on his death. I liked that and I think he would have too.

 

 Xavier meeting Uncle Chuck for the first time -- 2008

I'll remember that weekend not only for the opportunity to celebrate Chuck's life, spend time with family and meet new people, but also for the interesting occurrences during our trip.


Such as:

Wes and I drinking milk and eating popcorn in the hotel lobby bar at 10pm.

Sneaking in Chuck's niece and family to our hotel pool so their 4 boys could burn off some energy before the memorial service.

Elliott throwing up everywhere in his car seat just as we pulled into the church for the service.

X constantly saying he wanted to go home. He just couldn't understand why we were not staying at Aunt Donna's house this trip.

LOSING MY IPHONE.....ahhhh!!!!!! (more on that later)

Our bad decision to drive home during the day that resulted in lots of crying and crabby kids...oh and then driving in a big old rain storm too.

No matter the "traveling challenges" we are so glad we went. It was amazing to see the support that my aunt and cousin have as they try to adjust to the new normal now. 

Tennis Lesson and a Baptism

No, they have nothing to do with each other, (except they were both in August), but I'm trying to save time by combining posts as I still catch up.

My brother teaches tennis for a living. He gave Xavier his first little lesson at our house one afternoon. It was spur of the moment while Wesley was napping. Xavier LOVED it. Within just a few minutes he was saying things like "look at me hit a forehand" and "now I want to do a backhand". It was hot that day so after about 30 minutes in mid day sun I told X we had to stop the lesson and go back inside. He was not thrilled. X would have continued hitting balls all afternoon. Thanks Uncle Brett!!!

Our ball boy was pretty cute too!!

Maybe just a little too early for Elliott to learn, 

Speaking of Elliott, our baby boy was baptized in August. He did great and was very cute. The boys were excited and kept telling everyone "we are going to church to baptize Elliott today". It was a special day and we are so thankful for the wonderful church family that we have.

Wordless Wednesday - Just Being Goofy

Then and Now

My good friend since age 4, Sara, had her first baby just 4 days after Elliott was born. The boys sure have changed in a year.

 

At the playground recently we got the boys to pose in the same spot as they did around this time last year. (Disregard the clothing on the "now" picture -- it was a beautiful morning so we just loaded the boys up in whatever they were wearing and headed out)

Trouble

My mom and dad brought these t-shirts back from New Orleans for the boys a few months back. This pretty much sums up my life with these three!!!!

And after about 35 attempts at a picture these are the best I got. Which makes the shirts even more accurate.

Flour Play

This seemed like a great idea at the time. And the boys loved it.

What I didn't anticipate was how hard it would be to clean up...even outside. I swept up what I could then sprayed down the driveway FOREVER. I picked up clumps of wet flour and dried hard flour. Scrubbed out a rain book that someone filled with flour. And ultimately it took WEEKS, and several rain storms for all the flour to work it's way out of the nooks and crannies of our aggregate driveway.

Never again....but it was fun while it lasted :)

A Wesley Picture Update

For a while Wes had a habit of coming out of his room about 20 minutes after we put him to bed. On this particular night I was sitting at the kitchen table working on something. I heard him come out of his room but was determined to just ignore him to see if he would get bored and go back in. Instead he climbed up on the couch and went to sleep.

I like to go to the full service gas stations - ha! He was so excited to help .

Wes is an excellent barista. He and X are OBSESSED with my mom's Keurig. They like to organize the little K cups and make coffee for everyone. 

I just like taking pictures of him sleeping apparently. And we are starting to formulate a plan for getting rid of the bink-bink. He's soooo attached for sleeping though that I know it's gonna be a struggle.

We went to family bingo night at church. This piece of pizza was about the size of Wes' head. 

He enjoyed playing bingo for about 5 minutes. Then he just wanted to open and close all the little doors on the bingo card. 

 Sleeping again! Love how he's just snuggled right up in there with daddy. 

Silly boy decided to eat a PB&J snack sitting in a basket of laundry that was waiting to be folded. 

This one CRACKS.ME.UP! He's "Fireman Sam". Looks like a chip n dale dancer to me.

 Sassy boy in a Cozy Coupe.

Sweet boy in a Cozy Coupe.

Little stinker using the Cozy Coupe to get to the garage keypad.

Wesley insisted of delivering his pizza to his plate at the table himself.

I'm amazed at how he's picked up on the bike riding thing so well!

Good thing Wes remembers who his favorite person is :)

Good to the Last Drop

Wesley and I had a little ice cream date one night back in July when Xavier was staying with Grandma. I love spending one on one time with my boys. Wes was a delight. And this boy LOVES him some ice cream!!

Guess I should have waited until AFTER the ice cream to give him a bath - ha!

MOPS Mania

The poor blog has suffered another stint of neglect. Maybe in my gut I'm just not into it anymore. But then I get spurts when I am. And it's the boy's baby book of sorts so there's some mommy guilt thrown into the mix. But most of the time lately I'm too tired to post and too lazy to download my pictures in a timely manor. Although when I get going, I do enjoy it and like the writing outlet. Hmmmm....

Oh the struggles of my life :)

Anyway, one of the main reasons the blog has taken a back seat since August is that I joined the Steering Team of my MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group this year. AND ITS BEEN MORE WORK THAN I WAS LEAD TO BELIEVE. I am the MOPPETS Coordinator for the year which means that I'm in charge of organizing things for 125 kids  that are cared for at our 2x month meetings. This includes securing 20+ caregivers, assigning kids to childcare rooms (which is extra challenging this year because our church is in the midst of a renovation/expansion), creating cirriculum and activities for each room to keep kids going for 2 hours, and a list of other stuff. Oh, and I still have my 3 kids to take care of all day.

Needless to say this has given way to some LATE nights for me quite often in the past 2 months. My main working hours for this gig have been 7pm-12am because that's when I can get my biggest chunk of alone time. I'm loving it, but it's been a lot. We've had 2 meetings so far and things are quite busy, but going well. And I'm meeting some great new people in the process. I really feel God is calling me that it's my time to serve other mothers through this MOPS ministry and I'm trying to step up to that challenge.

So, I'm going to attempt another massive round of catch-up (AGAIN) because there has been quite a bit of other stuff (AGAIN) going on around here too that I want to document before I forget (AGAIN).