Rose Begins Preschool

The day is finally here!  Rose has been dying to go to preschool ever since Clara started at John Knox two years ago!  Rose was so pumped for her first day of school and was just thrilled to finally be old enough to go.  

We had a meet-and-greet with the teachers (there are 3 full-time teachers for Rose's class - Mrs. James, Mrs. Richards, and Mrs. Harper) a few days before school started.  Rose went right in and made herself at home playing with a big wooden castle and loads of princess figurines.  There was a big conversation between Belle and Gaston about something I couldn't quite follow.  

While there, Mrs. Harper told me that even though Rose was enrolled in the TTh class for 3 year olds (since she has a January birthday) there was a chance that since the teachers all know Rose already and she was SO CLOSE to the December cut-off that we could get an exception for her to attend the MWF class to give her one extra day of preschool each week.  Lucky for us, Mrs. James (the head teacher) told me when I asked that they had just had a girl cancel her spot for the MWF class because her family was moving and we were given that spot even though there was a waitlist since Rose had a sibling who went to JKCP and family members always get the first spot on the waitlist.  

It's been perfect for Rose since three of her friends from church (who will all start Kindergarten the same year as Rose anyway) are also in the MWF 4 year old class.  So we know lots of friends and all the teachers this year and it's just been such a great transition!  I get to volunteer there in a couple of weeks and can't wait to see how she interacts in the classroom!

Rose's favorite things to do at preschool are dress-up and playing with the princesses.  But she has also come home with art projects that she has been so excited to show to me and Paul and Clara and always tells us "it's for youuuuuuuu!!!"

Their first day of school was actually the day of the solar eclipse and the teachers took the kids out 2 at a time with solar eclipse glasses so they could look at the sun with one-to-one supervision just to make sure none of them pulled the glasses off.  

Rose's extracurriculars include speech therapy (which we FINALLY have set up with the elementary school!), swimming (she's doing AMAZING and can totally swim in the deep end without any fear or hesitation and is working on her arm and leg coordination), and a tap/ballet dance combo class.  More informally, I kept our schedule open so that we can also do Music Makers each week which is a free song/story/playtime thing with a bunch of other moms and toddler/preschool aged kids from the stake.

Speech Therapy is going well so far - we really like Miss Penelope, her new teacher, and it's very apparent that Rose really needs the help.  She's super smart (we have zero worries there) and doing excellent with language skills as far as vocabulary and ability to tell a story.  The only problem she has is with articulating and she drops consonants all over the place.  It's going to be a lot of work getting her speech where it should be since she has almost every issue in the book as far pronunciation goes, but when she focuses, she can actually make a lot of the sounds.

It's more like her brain just isn't connecting the sound with the word and the necessity of saying the word exactly right.  Like she can make the "sssss" sound of a snake, but when it comes to saying "SNACK", Rose asks for "nack" and drops the "s".  When I tell her to make the "ssss" sound and model "ssss-nack" she always flips them and says "nack-sssss" about 7 or 8 times before she FINALLY puts the "ssss" in front of the "nack" sound like she is supposed to.  It's definitely a work in progress but I'm glad to have support and structure to start moving forward.

Rose is still a feisty little thing who is incredibly happy and hilarious as long as she is well-rested and fed but man-oh-man, if that girl is tired or hungry her crankiness is off the charts.  We love her so much though, even when she is being a grump!  I'm so excited to see how she grows this year at preschool!

Clara Begins First Grade

Summer seemed to flash by in a blur!  I will have to go back and play catch-up, but wanted to share some back-to-school pictures I took of Clara for her first day of school first.  

Clara was so, so, so excited for the start of First Grade.  She loved Kindergarten and really thrived in the social and academic environment of elementary school.  There were no tears or nerves or hesitations the morning of her first day - she was up and getting dressed and all smiles on our way to school and lining up outside her classroom.  

Clara actually has two teachers this year - Mrs. Cartmell and Mrs. Gonzales.  They are a mother-daughter duo and they take turns teaching the first and second half of each week.  Both seem very nice and Clara likes them a lot.  There are 15 girls and 10 boys in her classroom and Clara knew three of them going into it - a girl named Bella from her Kindergarten class, Jacob from swim team and preschool, and Wilson who was also in her Kindergarten class although she didn't know him very well.   

We did our traditional Back-to-School Feast for both girls the night before school started.  Clara requested grilled lamb chops this year (last year she wanted whole grilled fish - I like her menu choices).  We had an apple pecan salad, fresh homemade sour dough bread (my sour dough skills are a work in progress but it sure tasted good), and a berry pie a la mode for dessert.  

Afterwards, both girls received Father's Blessings in preparation for the new school year.

I had to wake Clara up in the morning but she popped right out of bed and got dressed in the clothes we had laid out the night before.  Drop-off was crazy with all the parents trying to park and walk their kids to their new classrooms.  Fortunately, we had left plenty early so we had enough time to park and walk with the crowds of kids touting shiny new sneakers and bright backpacks.

Clara got right to work coloring and hardly seemed to notice when it was time for Rose and me to leave.  Rose had the hardest time of anyone, asking all morning when we could go back and get Clara and telling me that she missed her.

I did the same thing as last year and took the girls' back-to-school pics the day before school actually started so that we didn't have worry about it that first morning when I knew we would be rushing to get out the door or after school when hair was messy and girls were tired and possibly not as cooperative.  Incidentally, if you click through to that link, it is frightening to me how much the girls have both grown in the past year!  I miss my little Kindergartener!

Clara LOVED taking pictures this year.  She hammed it up for the camera and kept coming up with new poses that she wanted me to be sure to get pictures of.  She wore her cute new dress from Gap Kids that I found on clearance for something like $12, her sparkly shoes (also a clearance find at Gap Kids - Rose has matching ones and they are the favorite shoes for both girls).  I got the chalkboard sign at the Target dollar section and I love it!  Hopefully I can find some place to keep it so that I remember to bring it back out again next year.  

When we were getting school supplies, Clara told me with so much enthusiasm, "Mom, I don't need a backpack or lunchbox this year because I have my purple ones from last year!"  I ran with it and was excited with her because I'm not going to be a new lunchbox or backpack if I don't have to and she doesn't care!  And hers were in perfectly good shape anyway.

I was going to include this little run-down in Clara's 6-year old update, but seeing as how her birthday was in MAY and it is now AUGUST, I think I had better just include it here.  These are some of the milestones Clara experienced in Kindergarten/as a 5 year old.  

• Lost her first tooth.  She has actually lost 4 of them now.
• Learned to ride a bike without training wheels.  She still needs practice but we've gone on bike trails and she does pretty well.  
• Learned to swim.  And not only learned how, but discovered a love for it and really excels at that sport!
• Learned to love skiing.  We took her when she was 4 but she didn't love it like she did this past year once she was 5.  
• Learned to read.  She can actually read super simple chapter books even like Junie B. Jones and Princess in Black and she has started doing it without prompting even!
• Learned to make scrambled eggs.  She still needs direction but she's loves doing it and we are working on pancakes and chocolate chip cookies next.  You know, the important stuff.

The rest of the year is already shaping up to be a busy one for Clara.  She has a bunch of extracurricular activities that she is involved in (to the point that I worry we are overextending, but so far she loves them all).  She's still doing gymnastics, which she continues to love, swimming lessons (once a week at a new swim school that is focused more on competitive swimming - it's more intense and great for helping her with her technique), piano (we've met her teacher and she starts lessons on Tuesday), and soccer.  

I was going to pull her from swimming, but after Clara told me that she loved swimming more than anything in the whole entire world except for me, Paul and Rose, I just couldn't bring myself to take her out of swimming until next summer.  And while she is a strong, fast swimmer, she definitely needs to correct some bad habits and improve her technique.  

The one thing we did drop this year was Spanish class.  She enjoyed it last year, but didn't love, love it, and her friend who was taking it with her can't do it this year either.  It also conflicted with our gymnastics time and I didn't want to rearrange the schedule that was such a pain to construct.  

Soccer is going great so far.  Clara's coaches are super nice and great with the girls.  So far she has just been doing practices and doesn't start games until September 9th.  It's a girls only league and they don't keep score at this age so it's not super competitive or intense, but I think that's perfect for what we want Clara to get out of this.  Her team is the T-Birds.  

I think Clara was more excited about her new gear - turquoise running shorts, socks, and cleats with shin guards and a new ball - than anything else.  Her only complaint has been that her shins get sweaty with the shin guards.  

And that's pretty much the update on how things are going for our First Grader so far!

Mammoth Lakes 2017

We got home late yesterday afternoon from a weekend camping trip to Mammoth Lakes with friends and after the girls were in bed I ignored all of the stuff that needed to be put away and just developed pictures of something other than food.  When Paul saw what I was doing he immediately and gleefully squealed "are you finally doing a blog post on our family blog?!?!"  Okay, it wasn't really a squeal, but I know he checks that blog hoping for me to post and I haven't in oh, um, 2 MONTHS.  I'm the worst.  So much for that New Year's Resolution about posting 1x/week.  

But seriously, this summer is kind of killing me and I cannot believe we only have two weeks left until school starts.  We have a bucketlist of summer activities that we need to check off and not enough time to do it!

In fairness, we have a short summer break compared to what I remember growing up, and most of it was spent at the pool every day with swim team stuff, or visiting family.  This Mammoth trip was our 3rd camping trip of the summer.  So we've been doing lots of fun things.  I just haven't had time to blog about any of it!

Anyway, I will be trying to catch up (maybe) but thought I would quickly post about this most recent trip.

We planned a camping trip with our friends, the Ball family, months ago so we could reserve sites in Mammoth.  We stayed at the Sherwin Lakes campground in sites 11 & 12, which just happened to be the only two sites in the campground that had zero trees since they had all been felled by bark beetles a couple of years ago.  Only we didn't realize that until we got there.  So it was pretty hot and dusty with very little shade, but we didn't spend a lot of time there during the day so it wasn't too bad.  

We loved that it was right next to a good-sized creek though and the kids literally spent hours there playing.  Clara made dozens of teepees, boats to float down the creek, and braided the long grasses into bracelets, necklaces, crowns and rings which she gifted to me and Paul and then checked on us regularly to make sure we were still wearing them.  Even when the other kids got bored playing by the creek, Clara stayed, totally happy and focused with her work.  

We took turns making meals using the Ball's dutch ovens and I definitely want to get some now!  I made a bbq chicken and sausage thing, which wasn't so great, and these cheesy garlic rolls, which were delicious.

On Friday after dinner, we drove to Convict Lake to go for a little hike/walk and just take in the scenery.  It's such a beautiful spot but it was very windy.

The kids did what they do best and threw rocks into the lake for a good half an hour before it started getting too late and we decided we needed to get back to camp in order to do a 9:30 p.m. bedtime.  I took portraits for my portrait project (which I've been awful about) while everybody was skipping rocks because the lighting was so pretty.

Rose, who is our early riser, made sure we were up and at 'em with the sun each morning before 6.  But at least she was happy about it and other than a couple little things the second night of camping, the girls did awesome sleeping in the tent.  After a summer with quite a bit of camping, they are getting to be pretty good at it.  Both girls were super bummed when our time camping was over and Clara demanded that we camp for 10 days next time instead of 2.  We were all pretty filthy after 2 days of camping, so I'm pretty certain we won't be doing 10 days any time soon, but I'm glad that both girls love it so much.

On Saturday morning, we headed to Devil's Postpile to hike.  It's such a National Monument (so basically a national park except created by the President instead of by Congress) and a very interesting spot.  And it's a good hike for the kids distance and difficulty wise.  We didn't realize that there were campsites down in by Devil's Postpile that are first come first serve, but next time we go here I think we want to try and camp in the park, if possible, since there is a lot of hiking down around Devil's Postpile that we have never done.

On the bus ride down into the Devil's Postpile Trailhead, Paul pulled up my blog post from our first (and only other) trip to Mammoth two years ago when Clara was 4 and Rose was 1.  I can't believe how much they've grown!

The kids were told to pretend to be stone columns.  Really we were trying to get them to stand up straight in a row, but they all put their hands over their heads like this.

There is a loop around Devil's Postpile so you get to see it from all angles - bottom, sides, and top.  I thought this perspective of columns jutting out at an angle was so fascinating.

This may be my new favorite pic of us as a family.  We are TERRIBLE about getting pictures of all four of us together and really need to be better about that.  It was nice having our friends with us because we could trade off cameras.

I can't believe I don't have any photos from our afternoon, but we stopped in Mammoth Lakes for lunch at Schat's Bakery, then did a really fun hike around Horseshoe Lake.  The kids weren't super jazzed about that hike at the beginning.  Our girls were really tired and hot, but once we got them going there were probably 10 bridges to cross over streams and Paul and the girls all dunked their heads in the snow run off (Paul held the girls upside down and dunked the tips of the heads in and they thought it was hilarious).

Really though, I think the kids just wanted to be back at camp with freedom to roam around and explore.  So after our Horseshoe Lake Trail hike we went back and they played their little hearts out while we prepped dinner, then cleaned up, and we still ended up with another 9:00 p.m. bedtime even though we had said we would try for earlier.

Rose and Owen had quite the conversation over by one of the coolers during dinner prep.  I love that all the kids got along so well.

Clara decorated a piece of bark with wildflowers that she tied on with a long piece of grass, then sailed it down the stream.  Over and over again.

Then on Sunday morning we made a big breakfast and packed up to head for home.  Except our car wouldn't start.  We were able to get it jumped, but when we stopped for gas it wouldn't start again and then it was really hard to jump it a second time.  Once it was finally running again, we didn't turn the car off until we got home, even filling the van with it running.  At home, we unloaded quickly, without turning the van off, then drove it down to the dealership to drop it off so it can be looked at today and we could all go home in the little car.  Sure enough, as soon as we turned it off at the repair place, it wouldn't turn back on.  So that's kind of a bummer.

But all in all, it was a wonderful camping trip and probably the last of this summer, unless we can squeeze in one more sometime in September.