September Weekday Busyness

These photos were actually taken on Ethan's very first day of school. Isaac and Miles helped me drop him off and then we came home. Miles went down for his morning nap and Isaac disappeared. I was drilling holes into cupboards to attach baby proofing knobs so I didn't really notice until my house was eerily quiet- and at 9:30 in the morning no less!
This is what I found in Isaac's bedroom doorway. He's started to line up cars...
And then he gave up, climbed in his crib and mourned the loss of his older brother and playmate. Luckily binkies are an acceptable alternative to Ethan. He stayed there almost an hour and then finally decided to come out and play on his own. Poor thing, he wants to be grown up so badly.
Luckily for him he only had to wait until the next morning to have his own school friends to entertain him. These are his Joyschool classmates. L to R: Jesse, Cole, Connor, and Eli. Seriously how cute are they? Isaac loves joyschool and I love both teaching and having free days.
Okay this picture doesn't really have anything to do with anything but I love it. I mean come on, look at the look on Miles' face. Taylor's cutting his nails and poor thing looks like he's petrified.
We all miss Ethan when he's at school. He really is a good older brother. Miles ADORES him. Ethan frequently lays down on the ground and lets Miles crawl all over him.
They make funny faces and blow kisses to each other.
And Miles uses him as a road for his cars. And when Ethan inevitably laughs, this makes Miles do it even more. These two are really cute to watch together.
Someone might need a haircut very soon- or maybe I should use more dryer sheets.
Ethan gets out early on Fridays- 10:35 in the morning and he doesn't have Spanish school that day either so I have dubbed Fridays our "Fun" day. So we've been picking up Ethan from school and heading off to fun activities- the zoo, the Children's museum, or just having friends over for play dates. It's been great and even though Miles misses his nap, we all love Fridays.
Now if I could just convince Miles to NOT put all the toys in his mouth!!!

September Weekend Busyness

Okay besides the obvious things like work, church, cooking, cleaning, KIDS. Most of our weekends and weeknights have been full this fall and my blogging has suffered because of it. I won't complain. There are certainly some fabulous perks that go along with Taylor's crazy work hours. One being free football tickets! For the first game of the season, BYU got together almost all of their past champion quarterbacks. They had a fundraising dinner Friday night (which Taylor got to go to) so I jumped at the chance to take his tickets to the real game on Saturday. Taylor stayed behind with Isaac and Miles and I took Ethan and my brother and his new wife. It was really cool to see Steve Young, Jim McMahon, and about 10 others all laughing and joking and they raised over $1million for scholarships.
Ethan LOVES football games. He jumps around and cheers and yells at the players and sings along with the fight song. It doesn't hurt that his little cousins join in on with the antics.
Okay and banana splits in the 3rd quarter don't hurt either.
BYU was the first weekend of the month and then we took the term "Labor" day to heart and truly performed lots of labor. When we moved into this house, we moved in on top of lots of Taylor's parent's stuff. This has been both positive and negative. Positive because we didn't even own our own couches or kids beds so we got to use all their stuff. (thank you again) Negative because we and they weren't sure what to do with some of the stuff that we didn't want to use. So much of it has been put in sheds and storage rooms and even the garage. So finally a year later we decided to have a yard sale. We spent all of Labor day cleaning out the shed and storage rooms and getting everything into the garage. And then the rest of the week was spent organizing, cleaning, and pricing.
Does it look like we have enough stuff? Bright and early Saturday morning we were up setting things out and our first customer came at 6:45 while it was still pitch black. The rest of the day went well and we made a good chunk of change. 2 trips to the DI were made and we finally feel like we have some more space to live in. Of course we have enough stuff left for another garage sale next year but who really wants to think about that now?
These boys kind of enjoyed the garage sale- they got to eat off of their chairs and watch lots of cartoons. What's not to love?
After sacrificing one weekend to the garage sale (Taylor was heartbroken to have to give up his U of U tickets poor baby) we spent last weekend up at Utah State for their football game. Are you noticing a theme here? Taylor's company doesn't actually have tickets to the Utah State games but since they do lots of business with them, we got invited up to one of their games.
The drive up to Logan was great and then the President's box was AMAZING! It's on the end zone instead of in the middle and the perspective was really neat to watch the game from. They literally lower the net right in front of you so the field goals don't get kicked into you.
Normally I like watching the game but it gets a little long for me to be truly entertained. That wasn't the case with this one. It was really neat to see the plays up close and it's amazing how violent the sport really is.
Taylor with their mascot (the bull?) They're the Aggies so maybe it's just a cow. I don't know but I'm sure I'm offending some Aggie right now by being so clueless. Really fun though and kinda sorta makes up for Taylor's long hours.

Ethan and the Soccer Sharks

Along with school starting, Ethan also started soccer- and in a real league this time. The benefits of that are that he has actually practices each week as well as games. There are also only 8 players on each time and 4 play at a time so everyone gets lots of playing time and there aren't millions of little kids all fighting for the ball at the same time.
Ethan is really funny to watch play. He spends more of his time and energy jumping up and down and cheering for his teammates than he does actually running after or kicking the ball. Don't get me wrong, he gets in there and takes his turn, but then he stops and bounces for a while before he remembers to chase after the ball. Oh well, he's just 5 and it's hilarious to watch how happy he is. That's his cute coach in the background- she has earned serious brownie points in my opinion for being 5 months pregnant and volunteering to coach.
After they got slaughtered 13-0 in their first match, they worked on defense a little more. I'm not sure this red-rover line thing works but they sure do love it and they're working as a team.
One of the best parts of his team is that all but one of the kids go to his same morning kindergarten and 5 of those 7 are in his class with him so he's been able to make friends easily at school recess and at soccer.
Isaac spends most of the games eating snacks and then running around on the playground. They play the games at local elementary schools so everything is fenced in and I can just let Isaac run off without worrying about him. Fabulous!
It took until his third game but Ethan finally scored a goal! He was so excited and ran right off the field to get a high five. It's been interesting to watch him play with the others and see how the team evolves. Ethan really loves defense and spends most of the game angled towards his own goal and he runs back full steam to play goalie anytime the other team comes his way.
Miles isn't so lucky. He doesn't get to crawl off and play but there's plenty of grandparents to hold him and lots of toys to drop in cup holders and pull out- over and over again- he's slightly obsessed with this activity.

Off to Kindergarten

September 1st was a much anticipated day for Ethan. He had his first day of Kindergarten! Real school! The week before we went to an open house at the school and he got to meet his teacher and see his classroom. Ethan's one question to me as we were driving there was "Do we have to speak Spanish at Kindergarten?" Now that's a worry I can handle.
Several of my neighbors have told us we hit the teacher jackpot with his teacher Mrs. Bitner. Apparently she taught 1st grade for years at Dillworth Elementary and then retired. She was so good though that they begged her to come back and so now she works just half days in the Kindergarten. Ethan LOVES her! And that makes me love her.
Kindergarten is only 3 hours each day so he's also doing his Spanish preschool 3 afternoons a week. It makes for lots of driving but he loves both his schools and seems very happy making new friends and having new experiences.
I get little snippets here and there of what is going on in their classroom "it was C day today because it was Clait's birthday and we got to have treats" or "there are only 2 caterpillars left in our aquarium all the rest have turned into Chrysalises". It sounds like they're having fun. My favorite was when he came home to tell me that they'd had music that day "and we sang this B-I-N-G-O song! Do you know that one? It's awesome! And then you have to clap instead of saying the letter!" So cute to hear about his fun days.
Isaac couldn't help jumping in the picture too and since he started Joyschool the day before Ethan went off to Kindergarten I guess he deserves a first day of school picture too. I love his expression in this on though!