Brandon's First Day of Kindergarten

Here are the troops right before we loaded up and sent Brandon off for his first day at school. He was so excited-not the least bit nervous!

He's on the far right going down the hall with the other "yellow shirts". I told him to make sure he was always next to kids with other yellow shirts today. He seemed just a little bit nervous as he walked away from me, but that didn't last for long. He did totally fine.

And here he is at pick up (behind the teacher). He seemed to have a fine day. He told me that he already knew everything she talked about, including how to use the sink! I thought that was pretty funny. Once he got home though he started getting mad that he has to go EVERYDAY. So she must have emphasised that. He said he was going to miss us all so much and he said he started to forget what our house looked like.

After being home for an hour or so he started not to be grumpy about it anymore and got excited about tomorrow being red day! So we'll see how this year goes.

Brandon said he stuck with Carter most of the day. I asked him if he met any new friends and he said, "No way!". He's decided he's never going to meet new friends because he's afraid they might trick him and be a bully to him. So that's great he feels so safe with Carter, but we might need to have some more conversations about the importance of meeting new people even if they do turn out to trick him. Too cute. I just love these kind of conversations with him.

Go Hawks!

We signed Brandon up for soccer. The season had already started and missed a few practices and a game. But this Saturday he had his first game. Too cute. He didn't get his uniform yet and was slightly embarrassed because of it, but he proudly wore his orange shirt that happen to have a hawk (eagle) on it.

Watch the opponant score!

Kicking the ball to start. He really liked this part of the game.

Coming off the field after another goal. He scored 4 that day if you can believe that! He's off to a good start. His team consists of 4 and 5 year olds. Can't wait to see what next Saturday has in store.

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Today we tried a fun little experiment/craft project. We put shaving cream on a plate and added some food coloring. Then we swirled it around, trying to not to stir too much.

Then we pressed our paper onto the shaving cream. And we carefully pulled it out of the shaving cream and let it sit for 5 minutes or so.

Then I wiped all the extra shaving cream off and let it dry in the sun for a bit.

Everyone got their own pieces of papers with their special swirl. It kinda made a tie-dye look.

Summer of Fun

I know I haven't updated in awhile. Summer has been very full of craziness as always. I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures from that last month or so. They may or may not be in order..

but we'll start with the most important!

Happy 10th anniversary us!!

This actually turned out to be a miserable trip to Steak & Shake. We event ended up leaving without getting steaks or shakes, which was quite traumatic. But I'll save the drama for another day. The picture sure is cute!

Cousin Ben came to visit for about 45 minutes. He's looking good and is funny as always!!

Nothing says summer like ice cream!

We went out with Aunt Katie when she came for a visit. She's still trying to make sure she has the status of "favorite aunt". I think ice cream is a good strategy to seal the deal!

Our first fire in our completed fireplace.

This is just the ultimate Pete picture.

Minus the unfinished house in the background!

(notice the escaping mostly-naked Gideon)

Kacy and friends from small group. We surprised a friend and took her out to lunch for her birthday. What crazy fun a bunch of moms can pull together in order to get an ounce of sanity in the middle of the day. It was great to spend some time with these girls and actually finish a conversation that is started and not eat peanut butter and jelly together!

This day we attempted a fun little craft project. We were going to decorate our own shirts. Brandon was super excited about it; however, he was not willing to use one of his shirts as our tester. And since we are good at starting things and not really good at finishing things, Jordon's is the only shirt that we ended up doing. Oh well. It was a lot of fun and just as easy as I've heard.

We picked this shirt because it had a funny little stain on it and so I thought we could try to cover that up with our creativity. First we chose our design. Jordon liked this fighter jet image.

I printed it out on freezer paper and then exactoed (I know that's not a real word.) it out to create a stencil. We ironed it on the shirt so that it would stay put. Then everyone took turns painting. We had to be so patient and let it dry. But thankfully the hair dryer really hurried the process.

Here's the proud owner of his "new" shirt. You may notice that the design didn't end up covering the stain. So my great idea didn't really work, but alas it was fun and we have a successful finished product. And now we've experimented on Jordon's shirt so Brandon might be ready to do one of his shirts soon!

Happy 5th Birthday, Brandon!

Carter came over and brought Brandon the best gift ever-construction dress up clothes. So they played all morning and then I packed them up some lunches and put them in bags, just like workers eat on the job. They thought it was so cool. Carter's reflective patches sure picked up the camera's flash.

Nothing says birthday like donuts for breakfast!!

I just can't believe how old he looks in this picture. We had a family party in the evening and he had an attempt at a Spiderman cake. But because we were running short on time, the cake had to be rushed and therefore didn't turn out that good. Oh well, he still thought it was amazing that's what really matters. I just don't get to show off any cool cake pix.

Mr. Hilarious

Brandon and Jordon got some goggles and of course Gideon isn't happy until he gets a chance to hang with the big boys. So with a little help he put these goggles on and left them on for quite awhile. I took a million pictures because he also happened to have just taken off his suit. Unfortunately for you, I'm not going to post any the "full body" shots on the internet, but they are super cute. Maybe someday I'll take the time to blur it out and then post a few!

Brandon tied his shoe

Brandon asked me to tie his shoe this morning. I told him I would as soon as I finished vacuuming. After waiting for a bit, he decided to go ahead and try it himself. And he did it!!!! Way to go B. He's growing up so fast. A few days ago we went to the doctor and he had to get his Kindergarten shots-4 shots total. He was ready for it though. When he walked into the office he asked if he could have his shots first. They've never had somebody ask that before! In fact, they weren't sure how to respond and they ended up distracting him and went ahead with the rest of the check up b/c they weren't sure how he'd respond to the shots and were afraid that he wouldn't allow them to do the rest of the check up. It was pretty fun to see how proud he was to be brave.

And then of course fun to see how he needed some extra snuggle time and attention later in the day because his arms hurt a little bit!!!

500 Festival Parade

Today we got to go to the 500 Festival Parade. Pete finally had a chance to work on the deck and do some finishing touches. I knew I had to take the kids away so that we'd be out of his way. My dad suggested going to the parade and he went with us or else I never would have been brave enough to go. It was so much fun. I had a blast and I think the boys like it too!

The was the first balloon that we saw and the boys were so impressed.

Jordon liked waving.

We got to see the Purdue band and I proudly showed the world's largest drum. They weren't as impressed as I thought they should be, but it was still fun for me to be able to point it out and feel proud about the school I attended. It's funny that that big drum stirred up such feelings!

Happy Birthday Sesame Street.

They got to experience it all!

A tribute to the tradition of the race winner drinking a bottle of buttermilk!

I missed the explanation of the tradition and when it started, but it's still a cute float.

The highlight for us was getting to see the Butler Bulldogs. When we went down there we did not know that the Bulldogs would be part of the parade. Even though my picture didn't turn out that great, we did get to see Cousin Andrew and he waved at us. The boys thought it was great!!

On the way home we asked the boys what their favorite things were. Brandon said seeing Butler and the Chinese dragon. Jordon's favorite was Mickey Mouse. That is such a classic response because there was no Mickey Mouse in the parade. We had a great time!