Back in School

Brooklyn's first day of school was Wednesday, August 26th.  She was very excited to get back to school at Galileo.  Her 3rd grade teacher is Ms. Unger.  She wants to be a teacher when she grows up, she loves to read, especially books by Roald Dahl, and her favorite thing to eat is tacos.  She spent a lot of her summer reading tons of books and she was very good about doing her workbook everyday to keep up her skills.  She was very excited to start learning cursive and loves to work on her multiplication.  She is a great student and will have such a great year.

 Since McKay's birthday is so late in the summer, we decided to keep him in preschool for one more year.  He was more than ready socially, academically, and emotionally for kindergarten, but we figured that it wouldn't hurt to have him the oldest rather than the youngest in his class.  I think it was also a little bit of selfishness on my part, wanting to keep him around for another year.  He was very excited to start school up on Monday, August 30th.  His teacher is Mrs. Steele at Bright minds Preschool, which is in a cute old farmhouse that has cows, chickens, goats, dogs and cats.  He was all smiles heading to his first day and didn't even want me to walk him up to the door and when he got home from school he lost his 2nd tooth.  He says he wants to be a garbage man when he grows up, he loves to run and play sports, his favorite food is Ramen Noodles and his favorite book is Spiderman.  He is a great kid and I'm sure will be a pleasure to have in class.  I'm sure that both kids will have a great year and I am excited to see how much they learn and grow.

McKay's Big Day

 

I can't believe that our little guy is already 5 years old!!  He is such a fun, thoughtful, energetic, kind, athletic, crazy kiddo.  He brings so much joy and chaos to our family and we wouldn't have it any other way. He has grown and learned so much over the last year, he even lost his first tooth a couple of weeks before his birthday.  All McKay requested for his birthday was a piñata, which luckily Walmart has a pleathera of those.  About a week before his birthday he got to go with Grandma to pick out the fish that he asked for.  Luckily we still had the little aquarium from when Brooklyn had her fish, but Grandma got him set up with new pebbles and trees and filters.  He named the fish "Sharley" after the Lock Ness type of thing that "lives" in Payette Lake.  We celebrated with family on Friday the 13th with a swim party at Nana and Pop's house.  We grilled up brauts and hot dogs, swam a ton, smashed the piñata, and ate 2 kinds of cake.  This kid really is loved!

The next day we headed up to McCall and continued the celebrations up there.  His actual birthday was on Sunday, August 15th and we ate cinnamon rolls as per his request for breakfast.  I'm getting quite good at making cinnamon rolls, if I do say so myself.  After breakfast we opened his presents.  He got a new water bottle, a couple of games, a remote control car, slime, dinosaurs that you can build, and  few other small things.  I love how easy it is to please a 5 year old.  We spent the rest of the day playing with his new toys. I think he definitely had a good day.  We are so lucky that he is in our family and as much as he can drive me crazy, he makes me laugh and smile even more.  He is happy, helpful, confident, and as loveable as can be.

We also sandwiched his birthday with 2 hikes.  On Saturday on our way up to McCall we hiked into Shirts Lake and then on Monday we hiked into Lake Serene.  Both were beautiful.  We also of course had to make a stop at ice cream alley.  It was a great weekend and always fun to celebrate our sweet boy! Here's to 5 years old!

Family Reunions

 We had the opportunity to have both of our family reunions this summer on back to back weekends in July.  We had the Williams family reunion first starting on July 22.  We headed up to Spring Shores at Lucky Peak Reservoir to camp and boat for a few days.  Craig had to work so it was just me and the kids, but we had a blast.  We only stayed Thursday and Friday, so it was short and sweet.  My oldest sister Sunni pretty much did all of the planning and prepping for it so it made it pretty stress free for me.  We tubed, skied, knee boarded, ate, built sand castles, jumped off the dock, chatted, laughed, played with cousins and swam to our hearts content.  It was really fun to share this experience with the kids because my family did a camping/boating trip every summer at Spring Shores and it is one of my favorite memories.  It really was such a blast, well except for the part when Brooklyn got stung by a bee and her thumb swelled up like crazy and when McKay took a chunk out of his big toe on the metal edge of the dock.

The following weekend, July 30 and 31, we got together with the Moss side of the family for their annual reunion.  It was so good to have everyone together again since we missed last year because of Covid.  Lisa's family came in town from Florida and Brian's family came in from Texas and Stan's parents came up from Utah.  There was a lot of swimming, eating, games, chatting, water dodge ball, corn hole, bowling, picture taking and trying not to die from the heat.  As always the kids had a blast being all together and it was so great to catch up with everyone.  It was a quick few days, but it was really fantastic.