1st Day of School

I wrote about this a little bit in this post but wanted to give a few more details about Gabe's school this year. Gabe has a late June birthday. More obviously Gabe is a boy. Gabe is a perfectionist much like his Daddy. Because of all the above reasons we decided to send Gabe to Early Kindergarten this year instead of regular full day Kindergarten. For those who don't know Early Kindergarten is a program for young 5 year olds who may not be quite ready for all day regular Kindergarten. He goes every day in the afternoon. Gabe's preschool teacher last year told us at conferences that she always recommends summer birthday kids go to Early Kindergarten instead of regular. In my teaching experience I also could tell the summer birthdays as compared to the school year birthdays, those kids were just a tiny bit behind and seemed to struggle for much of the year. Also with him being a boy I didn't want him to always be the youngest in the class, the last to drive, the last voice to change, etc. Early Kindergarten covers material that regular Kindergarten does but at a slower pace more suited to younger kids. They use the same curriculum that the regular Kindergarten does just different activities. They assured us at the parent orientation that the kids don't get bored the following year in regular kindergarten because while they do use the same curriculum there are so many different lessons that come from it seldom are they the same. I've been second guessing our decision of course, when I see people I know whose kids are younger going to regular Kindergarten, when Gabe is driving me crazy that half day he is home:) but I don't think we will regret the decision to let him have that little bit of time advantage. So without further adiou here is my Early Kindergartner on the first day of school. He was getting in some Callie love before school as well. He was sooooo excited to ride the bus, I was a little teary but held it together until he was out of sight. So far he has loved school and is very happy to be riding the bus!

One Last Weekend

One last weekend before school starts and we have to get back on a schedule. I am actually looking forward to that but am also sad to bid farewell to more laid back summer days. Gabe will start Early Kindergarten on Monday(half day, every day for young 5 year olds and yes he will still do regular Kdg. next fall) and he is going to ride the bus! He is so excited! It ended up working out much better for us for him to ride the bus since he is in afternoon session and with the younger two needing to take naps it is so much easier for me to walk him up the street to get on the bus then to have to try and get the little ones down and back up from nap in time to go and get him when he is done with school. I am having some major doubts and fears, not because I don't think he can handle it but more just because he is my baby and I would worry whether he was 5 or 15 with him riding the bus for the first time:) Anyway I am getting way of track of what I was going to blog about so anyway one last weekend to fit in some summer fun. Friday I decided to take the boys to the state fair. Andrea and Alan got us a free admission ticket and parking pass so even better! We arrived and finally found a parking spot and made our way to the tractors and combines. Gabe thought this old tractor was pretty cool, he kept saying how it was part train part tractor. They also posed in front of this old IH just for Daddy. The boys then discovered that they could climb up the ladders on the back of the combines. They loved looking over the fair from the top. As soon as they started climbing the ladder on the red combine it started to rain. It was raining pretty good by the time we made it to the new show ring to watch a little bit of the horse show. That wasn't on the schedule of activities for the day but it was good to get out of the rain for a bit. It seemed to let up so we made our way to our most important stop, the mini-donuts! My favorite fair food, I could pretty much leave everything else but the mini-donuts are a must. The boys seem to share my love for them. After we ate our donuts we made our way to the rides. Grandma gave the boys a little money to go on a few rides so we bought our tickets and figured out which rides to go on. Gabe really wanted to go on the little roller coaster so we went there first where we discovered Ty was too short, bummer but he did pretty well just sitting in the stroller waiting for Gabe to ride. After the roller coaster they went on the helicopters. Ty was able to go on that one. By the time the ride was over it was raining pretty good again so we made our way to get our Iowa State tattoos. The boys each got one on their arm. We saw the PBS kids booth with Clifford but it was very busy so we kept moving. On our way back down to see the butter cow we stopped and ate some lunch and tried out a new fair food this year a frozen twinkie log. Basically a frozen twinkie dipped in white chocolate and then sprinkled with cashews on a stick of course. I was very unimpressed, it was kind of dry for my liking and Ty wasn't a huge fan either but Gabe seemed to like it. When we were done we went back for one last ride and they choose to ride the motorcycles, this may be one of the only rides I was actually a little fearful of letting them ride. They didn't have seatbelts they just used rope to tie around the kid's waists so they didn't fall off, they did have handle bars but when the ride started it jerked them pretty good. I was a little concerned that would scare Ty but as you can see he seemed to enjoy himself. After the ride we made our way to the agriculture building and tried to see the butter cow but the line was insane, probably because it was raining again and everyone wanted to be inside. We decided not to wait and made our way out the back door to the plaza with the sprinklers. Gabe loved it, he didn't care at all that he was getting absolutely soaked in his clothes, plus it was raining and we were already getting wet so who cares. He had a great time running through the water. Ty wasn't quite so brave but he did get pretty close to the water. I did bring them extra clothes so it worked out fine. Since Gabe was pretty much soaked we decided to make our way to the van since I had to work Friday evening and the rain just kept coming. On our way down the street we found the cookie booth and since we had heard how good they were we stopped and got a cup and kept a couple to share with Daddy. After cookies we did finally make it to the van and the boys put on some dry clothes and we headed home.

Today we went to Fan Fest which is also becoming a summer tradition. We went with the Krugers and it was hot! We waited in line to see Cy. Ty would go close as long as Daddy was holding him! We also got Callie's picture with a few cheerleaders and then Gabe decided he wanted in on the action as well. We also waited to see Coach Hoiberg and then of course the boys decided to look everywhere but at the camera, oh-well. Here is Callie with Coach Fennelly. They were both hot! After that we decided to find some cool air so made our way to the Jacobson building and looked around for a little bit and found a much needed water fountain! You couldn't get into the stadium but we looked down at the field a little bit and then went to ring the victory bell. It was a good weekend and I almost forgot we also played with Daddy's new toy. Story on this to come later this post is long enough:)

Happy Birthday Ty

We celebrated Ty's 3rd birthday this past Saturday. Things were made a little more complicated due to no usable water in town but we made it work. Friday night we went to the Kruger's, who graciously let us use their kitchen to make cakes while they were gone on vacation. Ty wanted a Buzz Lightyear cake so Wilton just came out with a Buzz pan this year and I found the last one at Hobby Lobby. Decorating a character cake was much, much, much more complicated then I thought it would be. The details did not come out very well at all and it was almost impossible to tell where to start and stop with the icing. After much fussing I decided this cake was not going to work. I got the aliens done and called it a night. Saturday Ty woke up a great big 3 year old and we had birthday pancakes to start the day. He loved blowing out his candles. After that I went to work making a new square cake that I was going to put Buzz and Woody on the top of since my other idea did not work. After consulting with my designer husband he said he could write out the words Happy Birthday to look like the Toy Story font and we could use the 3 since Ty is 3. We made the frosting the light blue color like Andy's room from the movie and put fondant clouds on the side as well. It turned out pretty cute! We were pretty busy with the cake so Gabe helped us out and fed Callie:) We did manage to sneak in his picture in the big chair too. Since we had the water issue my mom called the Godfathers in Boone to see if we could get space there for his party. Fortunately they had some room so we moved Ty's party from Mom and Dad's house to Godfathers and had a pizza party! It was actually a good thing for all of us Ames people to not have to figure out a meal with minimal dishes for the night:) Ty loved his cake and kept wanting to look at it. He had lots of fun playing the games at Godfathers and eating his breadsticks. He got to blow out even more candles and open his presents. He was in Toy Story heaven. He got several new Toy Story toys, a few Cars toys, a tractor, a nerf dart gun, and lots of other cool stuff, he wanted to open everything right away, the only disadvantage to having a party not at home:) Sunday we went to Hickory Park for his birthday ice cream. It was interesting to go while their was no water use, they used paper plates, silverware and used bottled drinks. Ty didn't care he got to blow out a candle again and eat ice cream! Even though the weekend wasn't quite what we had planned Ty had a great time(and so did his little sister). It's hard to believe my little red head is 3 already!

When it Rains...

Wow did it rain. We have had some major rain here over the past few nights and last night put us over the top. This was the scene at the Iowa State Center this morning. This is looking out over the Hilton/Jack Trice Parking lot. Looking at the Scheman Building from Center St. Here is Hilton, I saw a video of the inside today from cyclones.com and the basketball court is flooded. The walkways going from the parking lot to Hilton are now river rapids. This is the intersection of Center St and University Blvd.Looking from the new Alumni Center back down to the parking lot/bus stop. It is crazy, when we were out we saw the football team sandbagging around Jack Trice, and to think the football season starts in just 3 weeks. I wasn't in Ames in '93 but we have heard this is exceeding flood levels from then. Gabe was awed by the sight of all the water and kept saying he didn't know water could be so powerful. Last night at some point one of the big tree's near our backyard was damaged as well and at 2:30 am Carl and I were awakened by the sounds of a tree hitting our bedroom window. This is what we found. As far as we can tell the house is okay but we will have to see what it looks like when we get the tree off. All of this technically happened on the August 11th so the day after our anniversary but still a memorable one for sure!