Aly's drawings and her schoolwork

I just had to scan in the picture Aly drew of herself holding a balloon. Isn't it cute? I love how she put toes on her feet and made her hair. I also thought it would be fun to show some of the worksheets she has been doing lately. If you click on the pictures you can see it bigger. Look how she writes her name. Also on the bottom right picture she spelled the first three words on her own. She is so motivated to do school work. She sits at the table for hours on end asking for more school work to do and asking me to tell her the directions. I am such a proud Mommy!

A Childhood Memory

My brother sent me some pics today of one of our favorite places to go when we were children. Our grandparents own a small parcel in Long Beach, WA and would let us visit there as often as we would like. One of our favorite things to do was to scour the beach and find sand dollars. As you can see on the picture on the right there are a bunch of sand dollars that we collected the last time we were there as children nearly 20 years ago. That was the last time I ever went. My brother has been there numorous times since because he still lives in WA. I am hoping next summer to take a trip to WA and it would mean a lot to me to be able to go back and stay a night or two here.

Finally KK strikes a pose!

I finally was able to capture a few photos of KK. She even said smile and posed. Here are her posed shots:

Aly the Alien

Yesterday Daddy let Aly have some new washable markers to color with. When she was doing coloring in her coloring books, she decided to color on herself. This isn't the first time she has colored herself. Last time she did the exact same thing and colored her face. We took the markers away but I guess it didn't make an impression.

When Daddy asked Aly why she colored on herself she said she was pretending she was an alien. When Daddy asked her why she used green she said, "Because aliens are green Daddy."

Let's hope KK doesn't start to get any ideas from this! Good thing the markers are washable. Our nightime bath and some extra soap took care of it all!

Aly likes to look pretty

Well Aly had her second day of school. I asked her if she wanted to wear capri pants, shorts, or a dress and she choose her favorite frog dress. I put her hair up in a pony tail so she could look

pretty. Lately she has been more interested in her looks and has wanted to dress nice so she can look pretty. Yes, Daddy, our little girl is growing up and very much wants to be a girlie girl, at least for the moment. Don't worry though, she loves the outdoors and getting dirty so we might just get the best of both worlds.

I try to take pictures of little KK but she does not like the camera. She looks away and runs off. Whenever I do get a good picture it usually took me like 20 tries.

Strawberry Shortcake, Frogs, and Pigs

KK has recently really gotten into Strawberry Shortcake. All because a friend gave us a hand me down VHS and gave Aly two Strawberry Shortcake dolls for her birthday. Since KK has been so into it, I found some Strawberry Shortcake socks at Sears on sale for a dollar so I bought her a package of two. When we got home she really wanted to wear them. The funny part is she wanted to wear both pairs at the same time. I tried taking one pair off before bed and she cried because she wanted both pair on. So I left them on. The next morning I wanted to take them off and give her a clean pair of socks. She was upset so I compromised to letting her wear one pair. That day I found a Strawberry Shortcake pillow case on clearance for $3 so I bought her and Aly each one. They have been carrying their pillows all around the house. You know what will be on our Christmas list in this house.

Aly's current favorite things are pigs and frogs. The frogs she has loved since she was two but the pig thing is recent. It is really cute though. She carries her pig stuffed animal with her everywhere. I will have to take a picture of the two of them and post it. She has plenty of frog stuff. Anytime we see a shirt with a frog on it we buy it. I guess now we will have to do the same thing with pigs. Although, I think it is pretty hard to find pig shirts. It will be cute to see how long the pig thing lasts.

So guess how lucky I was tonight? For the first time ever I had both girls in bed by 8:45. Yeah, I finally get some Mommy time. Hubby is playing volleyball so I get time all alone. So weird but so needed!

Aly's first day of school

Today Aly started her second year of preschool with Mrs. Gilinda. Last year she was in the 3 year old class and this year she is in the 4 year old class. Doesn't she look so cute in her new dress? She even let me put her hair in pigtails and left them in until we came home after preschool.















I stayed the first half hour of preschool and was able to take a few photos. Here she is on the left playing with playdoh. On the right she is playing at the art easle.



When I picked her up she seamed very sad. I don't know if she was tired or just overwhelmed. Her preschool class changed from 20 students last year to 25 students this year and she had 8 new students in her class. She was very happy that she got to see her friend Maya though. The first thing she asked me was if we could have Maya over for a playdate.



What was even funnier was when I asked her how her day went. She told me that Isaac threw sand in her eyes and that he pushed another student down so they sent him home. (Lately we have been telling Aly that if she bit another student at preschool or did something really bad they would send her home). I wasn't sure whether to believe Aly or not because last May Isaac threw sand in her eyes. I asked her an hour later if she was tricking me and she told me she was. Isaac didn't do anything to anyone today and some new boy was being naughty.

I think Aly is happy to be back at preschool. She loves her teacher and was excited that this year she gets to spend three days a week with her.

Labor Day weekend visit to Burney

Well the girls and I took a trip to Burney to visit my step mom. Hubby was home working on the deck repairs all weekend and we wanted to give him some space and time to do it. We drove up Saturday morning to avoid the traffic. KK was perfect in the car. She spent the whole drive watching movies. I never heard a sound from her. Aly on the other hand was so excited to go see sticker grandma that every ten mintues she would ask, "Are we there yet?"

While at sticker grandma's house Aly discovered dominos. We don't have any at our house so she had a blast building towers and cages for her Littlest Pet Shop toys. KK enjoyed it too although her favorite part was knocking them down.

On Monday we decided to go to the local intermountain fair. This fair was a favorite for my father and he always did their electrical troubleshooting free during the intermountain fair. We went and visited the bricks that were purchased in his memory. Here are the bricks and a picture of Aly and sticker grandma sitting next to the bricks.

The hardest part about going to my Dad's house is oddly enough the drive on Clark Creek Rd. Every single time I drove down Clark Creek I remembered my father teaching me how to drive down that road. I even went slow everytime-probably less than 20 miles just so I could think about my dad and remember some of the good memories I had with him.

State Fair pics

On Tuesday, August 28th we went to the state fair after hubby got off from work. It was my brilliant idea to go on Kids day when all rides were $1.00 each. This turned out to be the biggest mistake ever! Not only was it 100+ degrees, but it was soo crowded it was not even worth the money we saved. The fair was fun for the kids though. Here are two pics from the petting zoo. Can you believe they had baby deer, baby kangaroo, as well as goats and llamas?

After we were done at the petting zoo we went over to the corn box to play for awhile. Yes, you read correctly, they filled a big sandbox with corn. The kids had a blast and must have spent 1/2 hour here.

After the cornbox we went on to see some exhibits and spent some time cooling off indoors. Around 8 p.m. we headed to the rides and purchased 15 rides. I really should have checked out the lines first. The girls only went on 3 rides each. We ended up giving the rest of our rides to teenagers. In two hours can you believe the girls only made it on 3 rides. It was worse than our wait at disneyland.

We finally went home at 10 and I promised hubby to never be cheap and go on kids night again. It would be worth $2 a ride not to stand in such horribly long lines.

Aly's shopping trip

Well, I am officially 10 days behind on blogging. Sorry for such a delay but these past 10 days have been busy, busy.

On sunday, August 26th, Aly and I went on a shopping trip to pick out an outfit for Aly's first day of school. We went with my friend Kristi and her son Nick. Neither Nick or Aly cared about what outfit they would wear for their first day of school. I guess they are too young. We had to pick a few choices out for them and let them decide what they liked best. I will be posting a picture of Aly's choice on her first day of school blog on September 5th.

When we were done shopping we went to Baskin Robins for an icecream. Oddly enough we ran into our friend Annette, her husband and two boys. We sat with them and let Nathan, Nick , and Aly eat their icecreams together. Here are two cute pics: