Emma's First Day of Kindergarten!

Emma was pretty excited for her first day of kindergarten today.  We put her to bed at 8:15 last night and she didn't fall asleep until 10:30.  Then she woke up at 7:00 this morning, so I'm betting she will be tired tonight. :)  She had a hard time concentrating this morning.  I think I told her to eat her breakfast about 30 times today and she still wasn't done after 25 minutes and ended up taking her grapes in the car with her.  Thus, we were a little late for her first day today.  Fortunately, Daniel is awesome.  He went out this morning before he left for work and put gas in the van.  I totally forgot it was almost empty and would have been really late if he hadn't done that.  I was very grateful!

I thought we had to finish Emma's paper doll project this morning and that made us a little bit later.  Then I realized after the fact that it wasn't actually due today.  Oh well, at least it is done.  We rushed out the door and drove to the school.  Then I practically dragged the kids along with me as we rushed in.  We didn't take a picture in front of the school at that point because we were so late, but we did take one after school, so at least we got one. 

Emma was excited and a little nervous.  She was a little shy when we first got there, and took a picture with Mrs. Willis.  It is helpful though that Mrs. Willis is Annika's aunt so she kind of knows her.  Also, Annika is in her class, so that was good as well.  Anyway, here are some pics:

They invited parents to stay for the flag raising ceremony, so Matthew and I stuck around for that.  Unfortunately, despite the fact that Matthew went to bed early last night, he slept in today and I had to wake him up to get Emma to school.  Thus, he didn't get any breakfast and was pretty bugged by the time they got around to starting the flag raising ceremony.  Oh well, he did alright.

Emma was so cute, trying to sing 'The Star Spangled Banner"and say the pledge of allegiance.  They had these cute little boy scouts doing the flag.  Then, after they sang and said the pledge of allegiance, they shot of a great big old time cannon.  It was fun.  Then we got a picture of Emma's kindergarten class in front of the cannon with the guy in his army uniform.  She was so darling!  Here's some more pics:

She said that she had a fun time at her first day.  She told me she couldn't remember what they did at first, but after a while she told me a cookie came in the class.  I was picturing a chocolate chip cookie walking in and was a little confused until she explained that they read a story about a ginger bread man.  Then the ginger bread man came into the class room.  There was a giant cookie and they all got a piece of it.  She told me a lot about the story and animals chasing the ginger bread man, but that is about all I've been able to get her to tell me.  At least she had fun.  We are so excited for her to be starting kindergarten.  And, I didn't even cry, probably because we were late and in such a hurry!  :)

Aprons and Cookies

Emma found the apron that Granmda Sperry made for her for Christmas 2 years ago.  She decided she wanted to wear it and asked if we could make some cookies.  In unusual fashion for me, I agreed.  When I put the apron on Emma, Matthew decided that he needed one too.  Fortunately, Grandma Sperry had also made one for Daniel and I as well, and I was able to make one of them fit on Matthew.  They both looked darling, and you can't even tell in the picture that Matthew has no pants on.  :)  We had fun making cookies and they turned out tasting pretty good too!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Pretty well!  It's getting pretty large.  This was our garden on August 5th.

Here is Emma in front of the tomatoes, squash, and pumpkin plants.  I didn't know that tomatoes got so big!

And here she is in front of our giant pumpkins and corn.

This is a zucchini that I didn't see and it grew pretty enormous.  I gave some to Jenn and it still took several days of smoothies to get through the rest of it.

Unfortunately on August 4th we had this...

which led to this, (yes that is hail in Utah in August)...

which led to this!

Many of the leaves on our larger plants were shredded by the hail storm.  However, the garden has done alright despite the hail and some bugs that killed most of our smaller pumpkins.  We have had corn a couple of times and it is delicious.  We have a couple of bags of veggies in our fridge right now that need to be used and more growing in the garden.  Now I just need to learn to like veggies.  It has been a good trial year though.  I think it will take us a couple of tries to figure out how to get larger yields, and less leafage.  However, it has gone well for our first try.

Summer Field Trips 2010

We've been going on our Summer field trips again this year and we've been having a wonderful time!

First we went to Temple Square in Salt Lake.  In the collage below you can see the kids watching some movies (top and middle pictures)  There is a new area in the north visitors center basement with all kinds of new exhibits.  It is really cool.

The bottom right picture is of the girls touching the temple.  Matthew of course did not want to.  Two of the top pictures are from the top of the Administration building where Jen works.  We went there for lunch and then went to the top to see the view.

We also went to Moyle Park again this year.  The kids loved it just as much this year as they did last year.  Emma was very good at washing clothes and the lady there said that would have been her job if she had been a pioneer girl.  Matthew was not as excited about washing the clothes.  You can see in the picture where he is supposed to rinse them, he barely has a hold of it because he didn't want to get his fingers wet.

They also made candles and helped churn butter again this year.  This year they put a little sugar on top of the butter with the bread.  The kids liked that.

They also got to go inside the fort this year which they didn't get to do last year.  The bottom two right pictures are showing a little toy that helped the pioneer kids learn how to milk a cow correctly.  If you pulled the strings the right way then the little doll figure would go to the tops of the rope.   Emma got it and Matthew almost got it.

We went to Tracy Aviary again as well.  Daddy got to come on this one with us and we were so excited about that.

We were all so excited to feed the birds again, but for some reason there was a role reversal this year.  Emma was pretty scared, but Matthew wasn't scared at all.  Emma did finally let a bird sit on her arm, but not till the very end.  I love the top right picture of Matthew trying to feed the birds on the branch.  He wasn't holding the apple high enough, so the birds would go right to the end of the branch to try and get the apple, then they would fall off and fly away. 

We also let Emma ride some rides at the little fairgrounds they had right by the aviary.  She loved it!

We have had a lot of fun on these field trips.  Thanks for setting them up Melis!