Anna back to school (Finally!)

My last back to school post of 2013, at long last, Anna!  She started school on Monday of last week.  She was thrilled.  She's in the blue room this year.  Big highlights will include learning to write her name (at the moment she goes with AANN, she's got all the ingredients!), taking turns, music with Jingle Jeff, lots of art projects and Science School on Mondays at the Lawrence Hall.  Being in pre-school is pretty good. 

 

In the blue room, they divide into teams for the year and the teams get to name themselves.  Anna is on the Tiger team.  The other team went with Butterfly.  Anna came home the first day quite upset - she wanted to be a butterfly.  We talked about it a lot.  She was bummed.  Then the next morning I was getting ready for work and she ran into the bathroom, "Mom, I'm a TIGER, Rarghrghhhh! (with hand motions) I gonna get clean for my team!!!!" and she whipped off her clothes and jumped into the shower.  She was equally enthusiastic at school.  Dave pointed out that Anna's statue of limitations on lack of enthusiasm is quite short.

Sarah Jane had a hard time sharing the spot light.

 The boys enjoyed the photo shoot more but at this point the whole back to school thing had definitely lost it's novelty factor.

 

We have a lot of lunches to make...



Birthday Party - 6 and 4!

Last weekend we had a blowout birthday party for the girls.  It was not intended to be a blowout birthday, rather I meant to have a small quiet get together with 2-3 friends each for the girls.  I am very bad at invite list management however and we ended up with 21 kids, three invitations sent for three separate days and as usual, total chaos.  I DID manage to secure a face painter though.  Lifesaver!  Dave and I manned the beer and wine stations (respectively) and she handled the rest.  Clearly we have our priorities in order.

 



I decided that I would ONE TIME in my life make something inspired by Pintrest.  So after a full afternoon spent perusing a mind blowing array of birthday party crafts, I settled on individual jelly bean bags filled with pink and green jelly beans and "Calm Jars" which are plastic jars, filled with colored water and glitter.  If you get mad or sad you shake it up, stare at it and by the time the glitter settles you feel better (and it really works!)  One shopping trip to Amazon later I had all my supplies and week's worth of evening projects.   Glad I did it.  Glad I checked it off the list...

 





 

 

I also had some fun with the cake.  I went with watermelon theme and despite some glitches on creating properly watermelonish green frosting, it came out pretty well.  The "seeds" on top are chocolate chips.  I also learned that the expression "the icing on the cake" is totally misleading.  The icing on the cake is not the "last touch" or "the little thing that makes it lovely" it is 95% of the work...

 

Sarah Jane did some careful counting to make sure I'd gotten the candles right. 

 

 

They are good sisters and took turns blowing the candles out.

 

 

Neither pictures, nor words, can properly describe the level of chaos involved in 21 kids waiting for cake.

 

Despite the chaos, everyone was happy.  Success!

Eli and Roby start school!

Eli and Roby started school last week!  Big deal; for them, for me, for everyone!!  They are going to Teacher Bari's Mon, Wed and Fri and will still be at home with Elizabeth on Tues and Thurs. 

The first day went swimmingly.  They jumped in and never looked back.  Not going to lie, I felt a little superfluous.  Roby seems to have adjusted entirely.  Eli seems happy about it but gets very tired and has had a lot more accidents (which so far he has been very philosophical about.)  Yesterday we had an accident free day so hopefully we're headed to a good place.  Teacher Bari and Teacher Alison are big fans. So are we!

 

 

 

Sarah Jane's first day of first grade

 Sarah Jane started first grade today.  First we had our annual photo shoot.  She was pretty goofy in the pictures by herself.  Her smile was much more genuine after she got all the other kids to join her.

On the way up to school the fun of her new outfit wore off and she got pretty quite.  By the time we got to playground she was gripping my hand and I was having flashbacks to Kindergarten trauma.

Despite having several wonderful friends in her class (including Sophie, phew!) she was pretty shut down as we waited for the bell to ring.  She has Ms. Rosen this year who I've heard is absolutely amazing.  (Whoohoo!)  When the bell finally rang, Ms. Rosen took one look at Sarah Jane (who was in tears at that point) took her hand and marched off to the classroom with Sarah Jane leading the line.  By the time we got from the basketball courts to the door, she assigned Sarah Jane the job of holding open the door which of course made Sarah Jane feel very important and she was ready to let go of the hand and proudly hold the door open and then fall in at the back of the line.  Total magic. 

The parents weren’t sure if we were supposed to follow along so we all sort of meandered after their line and up the stairs to room 207 where we hovered outside the door.  Ms. Rosen looked out and told us we "all looked sad standing out there, so come on in!"  So in we all shuffled.  She had the kids sit on the rug, then she blew a soft whistle and they all moved to the outside of the rug on queue and then they all introduced themselves (Ms. Rosen started) passing around a rock and then she announced that the parents would leave, so we all did!  It was all extremely organized!!! DOUBLE PHEW!!!

Cousins! (and last Myrtle Beach post)

We had a great time seeing cousins Blake and Juliet at MB.

 

Juliet (6 months) is a big hit.  The boys love to hold her - they get all set up on the couch with a pillow in their laps, locate Aunt Kiki and yell "Hold Bebe Hold Bebe!."  Sarah Jane loved feeding Juliet her mushed up bananas and Anna just put her face 2 inches from Juliet's and made cooing noices.  Both Juliet and Aunt Kiki were very accomodating for all of this! 

Blake was also accomodating and shared his little sister (and the attention of his cousins.) 

For the record, I did a terrible job taking pictures of the adults this time around.  We were there with Aunt Laurie, Uncle Matt, Uncle Geoff, Aunt Kiki, Nana and Papa.  I've included the one picture I got of Aunt Laurie below.  Next time I'll get more!

Playing at Myrte Beach

 

While nothing can match the pure glee that the kids experienced the first evening we took them out to the beach, they had a great time playing in the sand and the waves every day.  Eli is in orange shorts below (backwards I know.)

 

Finding sand flees was a big hit.

It wasn't this hazy - everytime I took my camera out the humidity fogged it up.  I loved this picture anyway.

Eli loved sitting in his beach chair and having his snacks.  Snacks were a big theme of the week for the kids, they had lots of them; meals, not so much.

The girls have been doing a lot of ballet thanks to Teacher Paula.  They both just finished a week of ballet camp, Anna was a mouse in Cinderella (performance attended by Uncle Mike & Aunt Julia!) and Sara Jane was the evil fairy's helper in Sleeping Beauty.

 Roby had a tough wake up from his nap our last day but got some nice cuddle time wth dad.



Sarah Jane turns 6

Sarah Jane is six.  Headed in to first grade.  She counted to 100 this morning, no problem.  She is well on her way (though not all the way there) to reading.  She can swim accross the pool and isn't scared of waves anymore.  She is almost not scared of dogs.  She is a terrific big sister.  She's also great at pushing her parent's buttons.  She can drive us batty but when she's good, she's very, very good.

 

We started off the morning with French Toast (a la Dave) and hand made aprons (a la Aunt Whitney.)  Everyone got an apron.  These pictures don't do them justice.  Aunt Ellie and I suggested she go in to business and sell them on Etsy.  Whitney claims she's sticking with medicine.

 

After breakfast Sara Jane got to open her presents.  But first she had to wait while everyone got their coffee. Here is Zeke and all his helper baristas.

 This is how much she wanted to open her presents: She brushed her hair without me asking.

Sarah Jane is not as effusive as Anna when she receives her gifts.  However, she still scores high in the graciousness department as she let her siblings "help" her open all her presents.  What followed was a complete melee of tissue paper destruction as well as four very satisfied kiddos.

Sarah Jane's favorite present was a CD player and some "Children's Favorites" CDs.  This is the dance party that ensued.  Huge hit.  I don't think I've ever given such a successful present (with the possible exception of the Kegorator.)  On the flip side, we have all listened to "If you're happy and you know it..." on repeat since 10am this morning.  So far no one has a) killed me or b) destroyed the CD player but I can't vouch for tomorrow.

During quiet time, Sarah Jane helped me make her cake which was actually a bunch of cupcakes stuck together frosted with blue (aka green) frosting with a rainbow, some clouds and a giant "S" (all her request.)  The picture below makes it look like Sarah Jane decorated the cake.  Sadly, it was me.  Sarah Jane took one look and said, "Mom, is that the best you can do."  I replied yes.  She said, "I guess it's not so bad..."



Post cake, SJ and Anna had a long Face Time conversation with Nana and Papa.  Here they are showing Nana and Papa Anna's new hair band from GG.

 They also spun some tunes on the boom box.

Finally, after a long day of waiting, she had her birthday party; party favors purchased during "Camp Pickle" earlier in the summer, mac n' cheese and bbq chicken.  Momentary glitch when Eli blew out all the candles on the cake but they were re-lit and we re-sung and all was well. 

 Happy birthday big girl.