First Day of School

Well, the kids have been going to school for two months now and here I am just blogging about their first day. :)

Maggie--6th grade this year. Her last year in the elementary school and then she'll go to middle school next year.

Lydia is a 3rd grader this year!
And Paige is in 1st grade. Gets to be at school all day long! She loves it!

I made them hold up on their fingers what grade they were in. I'm sure they thought that was pretty lame.

Maggie wanted to ride the bus this year on the first day instead of having me take her. I guess she's getting too old for that! Maggie got Mrs. Kolstad this year. She had her for reading last year and really liked her.

Paige at her desk in Mrs. Nakonsky's class.

Lydia is in Mrs. Scott's class, who Paige had last year for kindergarten.

Bella had her first day of ballet on the same day the girls started school. She was SO excited to go and had a fun time.

She participated more than I thought she would. Those of you who know her know that she is REALLY shy; kind of like me when I was young. A lot of the time, she just stared at the teacher while she played with her hair--which is what she does when she gets really shy. Maggie used to do the same thing.

She tells me everyday how much she loves going though!

Lydia started taking piano lessons this year and has been doing a fabulous job. She loves practicing everyday and has caught on really fast.

Bella started preschool a week after the other girls started. She goes twice a week, but she would love to go everyday if she could.

This is outside of her school. Doesn't she have the most adorable smile?

Labor Day Camping

Since we hadn't really done much camping over the summer, we wanted to go on at least one trip before school started. So, over Labor day weekend, we made plans to head down to Lincoln City/Newport area for a few days. We headed down that direction because Garrett had purchased a groupon for the Newport Aquarium and we thought that would be a good time to use it. We camped at a place called Chinook Bend. We've been there before and liked it enough. This time it was really crowded though and I think we all felt a little clausterphobic.

The first full day that we were there, we decided to go to the aquarium. It's been a few years since we've been there. Garrett and I weren't as impressed with it this time. Maybe because we'd already seen it a couple of times. The kids had fun though.

I don't ever think I've seen a real sea horse until this day. These were so cute!

Cute little Bella who didn't want her picture taken

Forcing our kids to touch the sea creatures.

Noah LOVED watching the fish

This picture is so funny and so sad at the same time. His face is hilarious, but I'm sure he's thinking, "Why are you making me get so close to this scary looking thing dad? It's gonna GET ME!!"

Noah's still staring at the shark!

Captain Garrett

Back at our campground that night; Bella playing around with the harmonica that we keep in the trailer.

Love this face of his. He is so funny!

The next day, we decided to go to the outlet mall since school was starting in a few days and we still needed to find shoes for the girls. We figured we could go to the beach the following day, since we needed to do our shopping on Saturday.

Having lunch before shopping.

Bella the cowgirl at the outlet mall.

Back at the campground; playing.

Lydia desperately wanted to buy this rubber snake at the aquarium. I think she wanted it so badly because she knows that I HATE snakes and thought she could torment me with it. I told her straight up that if she came anywhere near me with it, it would be chopped up and thrown in the garbage. Luckily, she listened very well. She played with this thing non-stop and didn't bother me at all with it! She put it in the dirt and played with it around camp and so many people thought it was real. She had a great time with it.

Cooking dinner with my girls

Doing the manly thing and chopping some wood for the fire

Playing the harmonica--she's really quite good for not knowing what she's doing! :)

The next day, we had big plans for going to the beach in the afternoon. Right around late morning, Maggie started complaining about a headache and that her eyes were blurry. Turns out it was the beginning of a migraine. This is the second one she has had and they are miserable. So the whole afternoon, we were helping her deal with that. I cleaned up vomit numerous times and I sent Garrett to a store with all the kids to get some migraine medicine, so that she could try to rest a little. (Which is fairly hard in a trailer with 7 people.) Finally around 4ish, was when it finally started going away and she was able to get up and talk and move around without wanting to throw-up or be in serious pain. By that time, our nice, sunny fall day had turned cold and cloudy. We went for a short walk, but it had really gotten cold, so we stayed in for the rest of the night. We had to come back the next day because school was starting the following day. We still had a good time and it was nice to get out.