Michelle's 7th Birthday

Michelle was born on me and Trevor's wedding anniversary. This year we decided to celebrate the festivities down at my parents' house. My dad made all of us a great french toast breakfast (french toast that Caleb insists is even better than IHOP's).

Of all the cakes, pies, brownies, ice cream, etc that Michelle could have chosen for her birthday she chose pumpkin pie.

My mom also arranged for Michelle to have a pony ride.

My parents gave Michelle a hulu girl outfit from their trip to Hawaii.

Michelle even wanted to join the guys on their fishing trip. Good thing too because she caught 3 fish within 15 minutes of getting to the lake.

After all the fun things for Michelle's birthday, Trevor and I were able to leave our kids with my parents so we could go out to dinner for our 11th wedding anniversary.

Megan's First Day of School

I've been kind of worried about how well Megan would do at school. Socially I think she'll do fine, academically she'll do fine, I'm worried about when she gets upset or frustrated. One of Megan's favorite phrases that she spouts off at people when they don't do as she wants is "You're Fired!" Trevor tells me she learned this phrase from the movie "Bugs Life". She's also been known to call people "evil" which she's picked up from Disney's "Phineas and Ferb".

I'm quite pleased to report that I never got a phone call from her teacher today so I'm going to assume Megan refrained from using either one of those phrases. However, she probably came close. As reported by Megan when I asked how she liked her teacher she said "Fine, except she interrupted me!" She then told me how she had just found a book about the 3 little bears when the teacher told her to put it back on the shelf. Hopefully she'll learn that there's a time and for everything and sometimes it's not when she wants it to be.

Back to School

As ridiculous as it sounds, beings as it's only the 17th of August, the kids started school today. Half of me is jumping for joy to have some quiet time for myself, but the other half is groaning because I'm not ready to face the morning rush OR the nagging homework time after school.

Michelle is starting second grade this year. So far she has had all the same teachers as Caleb has had. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing since Michelle and Caleb have such different personalities.


Caleb is starting 3rd grade this year which means he's already made it through half of elementary school since our school only goes through 5th grade. In some ways it's like time goes too slowly but then other times I realize how quickly he's growing up.

Megan is starting kindergarten this year. Her first day was actually today instead of Monday like the Caleb and Michelle. She was really excited and I don't think very nervous which is a good thing. I just spoke with Trevor, who took the kids to school and walked Megan into class, and he said that she shed no tears of separation which is a relief.

Movies

The kids start school next week so we thought we'd treat them to a movie today. Trevor has taken the kids to 2 movies this summer each time was when I was out of town running a race. So today was our first ever FAMILY trip to the movies. We saw Ice Age 3 and had a great time. We even splurged and bought popcorn and a drink (it was only water but I'm sure Trevor paid too much for it - I actually made him buy the snacks since I promised myself long ago after working at a movie theater that I'd never buy food at a theater).

County Fair

Several months ago I got the notion that our family should participate in the County Fair. So on Monday the kids and I took our submissions to be checked in at the fair.

I could hardly wait for Thursday night so I could see how we did. I truly wasn't expecting us to win anything so I was pleasantly surprised with all the ribbons we won.

Caleb and Michelle each entered a Lego creation but unfortunately they were in the same age category so Michelle's "Shadow Ship" took second and Caleb's "Mars Miner" took first place.

Megan's drawing of a boat took second place.

Michelle's drawing of her and her dad took first place.

Trevor's star shaped chocolate chip cookies took first place.

I entered 2 photographs that took 3rd place but the biggest surprise of all was my loaf of braided bread. It not only won first place but was one of only 25 overall items that won Best of Show! And to think that a year and a half ago I had never made a loaf of bread in my life.

Along with the ribbons came prize money too which greatly surprised the kids and made them really excited to submit something next year too. First place earned us $3, second place $2, third place $1 and Best of Show was $25.

We had a great experience and hope to make this County Fair thing a summer family tradition.