School Spirit

Each school in our district gets a designated night at the football game. Of course we can go anytime, but Rowan was so excited to make the pre-game tunnel and run across the field at halftime. She was so independent running around with the big kids.

Side note: Tate fell and hit his head on the sidewalk today. Yes, you can feel bad for him. Yes, it looks even worse in person.

Fall Family Fun

Apple picking, corn maze, pumpkin train, horse tire swings, hayride, zip line, and, of course, donuts. We've been packing in some fall family fun the past few weekends and we plan to continue the next few as well.

Art Prize

We love all things ArtPrize! Especially when it's sunny and 70. And we're with friends. And the kids are having fun.

Tate loves bugs...and they love him, too!

One of Tate's favorite things to do is catch bugs. All summer long, he has walked around with a screen house catching grasshoppers, moths, dragonflies, slugs and anything he is able to shove in. Here was one particular moth who seemed to love Tate. And Tate loved him back.

Saturday Afternoons

For the past few weeks, Rowan has been playing soccer on Saturdays. I use the term "playing" rather loosely here, as she does a little playing, a little wandering around, an occasional "Look, Mom! It's a butterfly!" But she is having fun. Lance is coaching. It's good daddy-daughter time. Unfortunately it's quite obvious that, despite having a soccer player for a dad, there hasn't been much playing soccer over at our house.

The first game actually went quite well and, while there's no official score-keeping, I think they may have won! The next game, when she played against three of her classmates, they lost. By about 15 goals. After the game she said "Mommy, I know we don't keep score, but I know we lost." The next game I think they only lost by about 5. There are two more games left in the season and I'm not sure any of us are too sad that it will be over until spring.

Before her first game, Rowan decided to really work the camera. Enjoy the pictures!

First Day of Preschool

When we were getting ready for Tate's first day of preschool, he started to cry a bit and tell me he wasn't going to go. Instead he wanted to stay home with me all day. And, while I didn't admit it to him, that's kind of what I wanted, too.

We had some days, last year, when Rowan was in preschool, that we could spend 2 hours playing just the two of us. Sometimes blocks, sometimes Toy Story. But a good portion of her preschool time was spent heading to my thrice-weekly skin therapy. And he was such a trooper for that, too!

But now he's three and, while I think preschool for 3-year-olds is completely optional, I knew it would be good for him to play with kids who aren't his sister. And to make connections with someone who isn't his mom.

Now that he's 3 weeks in, there are no more tears. He talks about preschool friends. He likes his teacher. He sings me songs from school and fights with Rowan about whose songs are better. He has a Spiderman backpack that he is quite pleased with. His school is in a gymnastics center and part of the curriculum is 30 minutes of gymnastics a day. This means he gets to wear "comfy pants" every day. This is fabulous. His teacher, Miss Jenny, is sweet. His class of 7 are all well-behaved. We're both pretty happy.

There She Goes!

The weeks (and let's be honest here--months) leading up to Rowan's first day of kindergarten have been full of tears (for me) and excitement (for her). I wasn't necessarily sad about her actually going to school. I knew she'd have fun, meet new friends, love her teacher. I was more sad that it's the end of an era. The end of hanging out with the kids all day. The end of knowing, for the most part, exactly what my child did during the day. The end of innocence, so to speak. Not that she'll come home from kindergarten knowing about everything bad in the world. But that, when sitting with her friends at lunch and playing on the playground, she'll learn about things. Things like crushes, naughty words, Justin Bieber.

Luckily I had Lance to remind me that I loved school. That I loved (and still love) learning. And that Rowan is so much like me. So when the fateful day came, I was surprisingly dry-eyed. I felt tears coming a few times, but I held it together. I drove her to school and took her to her classroom. The parents all stayed for a while to see how the classroom was set up, where the lockers were, etc. Rowan's teacher clearly missed the whole "check the gender" box on the kindergarten registration form because all of her nametags were blue (while the other girls had red) and she had a bat on her nametag which she just couldn't get over. After she asked me approximately 100 times about why there is a bat flying on her nametag, I embarrassingly had to ask the teacher if there was any way she could get a different animal on her nametag (as the other girls had butterflies and ladybugs). Ridiculous. But when I left, she was excited as could be. She blew me a kiss and went to play.

And, just as I thought she would, she loved school. She loved the bus, she made new friends. It was a long day and she even missed me a tiny bit. I think the all day, every other day schedule will be perfect for us. Still some lazy days mixed in there, but plenty of time for fun at school, too.