1st Day of School!

Sydnee just left for school and she was soooo excited! She loves school and has missed seeing her friends everyday. I am happy to see her go because it will keep her busy and now I won't have to hear her tell me she is bored and wants to do something fun all the time. ;) Her teacher is Mrs. Cunningham, and she seems like a really sweet (& tiny, there has to be 5th graders bigger than her) lady. Getting up at 7am to get Syd ready for school seems a bit early for me, but I'm sure we will all adjust. I could go back to bed if Char and Justee weren't up. I have to drive up to Syd's school today before lunch because I forgot to give Syd her lunch money. I got it all ready and told Syd about it and then I forgot to put it in her backpack.
Hooray for 1st grade!

walking to the bus stop
getting on the bus

Pre- 1st day of 1st grade

Sydnee went to school for all of about 20 mins today. Her elementary was doing individual reading tests for all of the students so that the teachers know where to start them. Sydnee is exactly where she left off last year. No regression or progression either. I could have done more with her this summer, but I'm just glad that she didn't lose ground. Her first official day of 1st grade is tomorrow and she is really excited!

18 Months!

I have some catching up to do...I have several new posts that I just breezed over because there is too much to catch up on.

This past Saturday Justee turned 18 months old. Yippee, hooray! I love 18 months because it means nursery time at church! Justee loves nursery and has actually gone for the past 3 Sundays. She has wanted to go for a long time and always tried sneaking in with Charlee. Justee and I are both very happy with this new routine on Sundays.

Justee is a very energetic girl. She is either really happy and smiling and laughing or she is screaming and throwing a fit. She seems to have 2 personalities at times. She can throw a fit with the best of them and thinks she should get her way all the time. She gives great hugs and isn't very shy about who she warms up too. She loves animals and gets very excited every time she sees one. She likes to make people laugh and will repeat her actions if it got even the slightest chuckle from anyone. She is such a ham. She talks really well for her age, at least compared to my other two. I recently posted about all the things she says. The list has probably tripled. Her big sayings are "what?" (every time she hears her name she says "What?") and "K" (If you tell her to do something she says "K") and "Tank ew mommy." She loves to sing and tries to sing along with all kinds of songs. She also loves to dance. She copies she sisters and loves to play with them. They are really good about helping her and letting her play too, but sometimes Justee likes to take over and keep toys for herself. Everything is "mine!" and Justee freely uses that word too. She is quite the climber and is pretty strong and tough (strong as in she can pull herself up on things and hold onto things really tight, tough as in she takes some hard knocks and spills and doesn't make a fuss.) She's pretty resilient.

When Justee was born we thought she was going to be our "reddest" redhead yet, but her hair has become more blond than red...I guess we will have to see what happens to it in the future. I think it will darken up.

I took pictures of all of my girls on the day of their birth every month until they were a year old. I thought it would be fun to put Justee's up as a recap.

Justee 1 day old...................................... 1st day home

1 month old............................................ 2 months old

3 months.............................. 4 months

5 months............................................ 6 months

7 months..................................8 months

9 months..............................10 months

11 months..............................................12 months

18 months:

Renae's Shower

Since Robin and Jill were throwing Renae a shower in Lovell the Friday after Renae had been to see me, and Justin was gone for some dumb 2 week military class (everything to do with the military is dumb to me now-a-days), I thought why not make the trip to Lovell. The girls and I loaded up and headed up to Lovell on Tuesday night. On Friday we met up with Becky and her 3 girls and Jill and her baby girl Lauren. I can't believe how much more alike Becky's twins look. I used to be able to tell them apart easily...now it's a lot harder. I think the order of this picture is Hailey, Sydnee, Alyssa, Justee, FR Charlee, Kenadee, and Lauren. I wouldn't be surprised if I mixed Hailey and Alyssa up. I keep going back and forth on what they were wearing that day...I thought I had a better memory. hmmm Becky, let me know if I am wrong. :)Renae's shower was fun and we had some yummy food. Robin and Jill did a great job. Here is Renae with her new last name! hahaha ...we all had a good laugh. The tile was a gift from Brook Grant. I took some more pics, but I will get them to Renae so she can post them. Renae is lucky to have found Keith (her fiance') he is a really nice guy and makes Renae super happy. It's about time she settled down and I'm excited for her.

Weekend with Renae and Dana

Renae flew out to Denver to spend a little quality time with Dana and I. The lazy bum missed her early flight and had to hang around the airport and luckily she got on the next one. I'm sure she can give a better, more exciting account of the whole ordeal. After she finally arrived, Dana and I went to pick her up. She was standing outside in a cute little sundress...apparently someone forgot to tell her that it was going to be rainy all weekend...oops. It rained pretty much nonstop all weekend so we didn't get to go to Water World as planned, but we still had a lot of fun just 'hanging out.' We stayed at Dana's Friday night and then we came to my house on Saturday. Dana went home on Sun. and I took Renae to the airport bright and early Mon. morning. I always have fun with Dana and Renae and I'm glad that they took the time to hang out with me.

* One funny story I want to remember is that Sydnee said the family prayer on Sat. night and she said, "Please bless that Renae and Dana will have fun sleeping together." We all had to try not to laugh during the rest of the prayer.

enjoying our yummy cake:

Dana rockin out on the drums and Renae taking a break to text:

When I am a Camel...

This is a conversation I overheard by Charlee and Sydnee. They were watching "Growing up Camel" on Animal Planet. A baby camel just got his leg cut on a fence as he was being chased by his mother (the two had just been reunited.)

Charlee: "What happened to his foot Ninny?"
Sydnee: "The mommy camel wanted the baby camel to do something and she was chasing and biting him, and he got his leg cut in the fence."
C: "Oh. I don't want that to happen to me when I'm a camel."
S: "Charlee, you aren't going to be a camel."
C: "Uh huh Ninny. (pause) I would be a good camel."

Just Life

Things seem to have slowed down a bit here as summer is winding down. We've just been at home enjoying the Olympics. Justin has been going to Cheyenne everyday for more deployment preparations. He has been getting to do all kinds of fun things like making out his will and answering questions about his death and getting tons of shots. The other night we put together this globe puzzle. It was really easy because the pieces were numbered. The girls loved that about it because they helped sort out the pieces and knew which one came next. Then we showed the girls where we live compared to where Mark was going to serve his mission (Japan) and where Daddy was going to be (Afghanistan.) Sydnee asked if that was where Daddy was going to be when he was going to miss every one's birthdays. She seemed happy to see that "It's not that far away." as she put it.


*random* Justee ate Marshmallow Mateys for breakfast; well, at least she ate the marshmallows.


We had a fun FHE last night. (We missed on Mon. so we had it on Tues.) We played Book of Mormon memory. I made matching pics of the different stories in the B of M. When someone gets a match, you tell the story that goes along with the picture. Then we all wrote letters and drew pictures for Mark. Of course we finished off with a yummy dessert of Oreo cake.
Justee was more interested in cuddling with Dozer than anything.

Justin was gone for drill this weekend, but is on his way home from Cheyenne as I type. I figured yesterday was a good day to get Sydnee's school shopping done. The four of us headed out and bought Sydnee some new clothes (she already has quite a few clothes and didn't need too many.) Charlee was so cute because she kept grabbing clothes and saying, "Mommy, Mommy, this would be coot for Ninny! We found some great deals on shoes and got Sydnee 3 pairs, Charlee 2, and Justee 1. Charlee loved her new church shoes so much that she slept in them last night. When I got them up for church this morning she already had them on. ;) By the time we got to Wal-Mart for the supplies, Justee had had enough and proceeded to bawl-no, scream (drawing much unwanted attention our way) through most of the store. I was very glad when we were done.

Whenever the girls get new clothes they model them for Justin and me. Since Justin was gone Syd only got to model for me, but she is really excited to model for Daddy when he gets home tonight. ...*a trip down memory lane*... When I was little I remember every time I got home from school shopping, my Dad would ask what I got and I would model all my clothes for him. I would show him what shirts I could wear with what pants and he would act very impressed. He would whistle and tell me how pretty I was in my new clothes. I loved that tradition and it is neat to see my girls enjoy it too.

Justin likes me to send him pics of the girls on his phone when he is away. The girls usual cooperate really well for pics they know are going to their dad. These are the pics I sent him this weekend. The girls are ready for bed in their I love New York T's we brought home for them. Sydnee just ate a blue sucker and has a very blue mouth. She did a great job brushing her teeth after the pics and got all the blue out...hmmm I should have had her brush before the pics.

"Let me see the map."

So Justin and I went to New York to soak up some dirty, crowded, city living...I can still smell the "fresh air." It was my 3rd time in the city, but Justin's 1st; so I got to show him around a bit. I really shocked myself at how well I remembered where things were- being that I have very poor navigational skills. We stayed at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, so we braved the subway for a good hour to get into Manhattan every day. There is nothing like the NY subway...the smell, the filth, the rats (we only saw 2), the HEAT, the drugged out people, and the performers (at least that is what they think they are.) Justin must have the subway map memorized by now. He was constantly asking me to give him the map. He checked and double checked to make sure we were getting on the right train... I seriously thought I would strangle him.

We arrived in NY on Thursday and went to a game at Yankee Stadium. We are not Yankee fans in the slightest and our visit there only increases our dislike for them, but the stadium is legendary and this is the "Final Season" as they are building a new stadium. (It is one of Justin's goals to go to a game at every ball park.) I would never take my kids to a game there with the F bombs that were dropping left and right. I didn't even enjoy the game because we sat behind some people who weren't in their seats and refused to move, but insisted on asking other people to scoot down so they could fit one more illegitimate person next to them. Justin got into it with them and finally by the 6th inning they moved down the 10 seats to their real seats. In my opinion "The House that Ruth Built" is a HOLE! ...glad we got to experience it though We did all the usual sight-seeing: Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Ground Zero, Central Park, FAO Swartz... We went to The Phantom of the Opera and it was excellent. We witnessed an anti-war protest march down the streets...some of the things they were saying don't even make sense-where do people come up with these things? We also got tickets to the Late Show with David Letterman. That was a lot of fun even if Dave and the Donald (Trump was the guest) and I don't see eye to eye when it comes to politics...The show we were at is tonight's (Friday night) show, so we are going to watch it and see if we can spot ourselves in the audience. (Why is it such a big deal to see yourself on TV? I don't understand it.)I love this picture of Ground Zero because you can see Justin's reflection in the glass.

Being that we were so close to Boston (a 4 hour bus ride close) we headed to a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. Now that is what I call a ball park. We had a great time there and it was such a great atmosphere....total old fashioned family ball park. After the game we hopped back on a bus, for 5 hours this time, back to NY.

The Green Monster.

The only thing better than going on vacation, is getting home. I'm going to have to go along with the cliche NY might be a fun place to visit, but I could never live there...I don't like people that much.
We had a great time and I'm so glad that my parents kept our kids so we could take this trip. Thanks Mom and Dad!