First Day of School 2010

Caroline and William started school on the same day this year, July 15th. 

William gets on the bus first at 7:50am.  He was ready to go!!

It was so different than last year…

 

He was excited and so was I.  He was all strapped in and off they went…

Then Caroline got on the bus at 8:50am.  She was all kinds of excited!!

Caroline with her friends at the bus stop…

 

And then she was off…

Then Will came home at 12:10pm.  The bus dropped him off…

And he was happy to see me…

I didn’t get pictures of Caroline when she got off of the bus at 4:30pm because we were running late for swim lessons!!

That was their first day, as witnessed by me, the Mom of these two amazing kids!

The St Louis Gateway Arch

Caroline has been asking to go up in the arch for a long time.  We decided it was time to take her and William to the wonderful monument that is right in their backyard.

Riding the tram up to the top…

Can I just tell ya, I am not a fan of the “tram”.  It’s a little car the size of an egg and they cram 5 people in it, with no air flow.  Let’s just say, I was glad to finally get to the top…which takes 4 minutes.

Caroline looking down onto the Mississippi River…

And of course, we had to take a picture of the best place on earth…

William, I believe is afraid of heights…I can’t blame him.  I tried to put him up by a window to look down.  He looked one time then shook his head no when I tried to do it again.  He didn’t want to look.

We stayed at the top for about 20 minutes and then came down.  Caroline thought it was pretty cool.

Hanging out under the arch…

Our Summer

Okay, so I have been MIA for awhile.  The kids only have 6 weeks of summer vacation and I feel like we have been busy the entire time.  So I will give you a re-cap of our summer vacation (school starts on Thursday!).

Caroline played softball this summer.  She loved it.  Josh also got to do a little coaching, which I think he enjoyed too.

We had a bit of nature in our backyard.  The kids and I found a turtle in the yard…

And we also had some baby birds…

  

I went on my annual RTS Momma’s weekend with my friends, Kelly and Jessica!  I had a fabulous time, I love these girls!  We went to Kelly’s family mountain house in NC.  It was beautiful and relaxing.  We hiked down to this waterfall one morning…

And us standing with the mountain view behind us…

Until  next year my friends!

Caroline did 2 weeks of VBS.  She loved it and had a great time.  She did one week at Grammy’s church and one week at our church here in town.  I think she could have done VBS every week if it were possible!  She loved it that much!

We have also been swimming A LOT!  The kids are little water bugs…William for sure.  I have no pictures of them at the pool because I am usually too busy keeping one little boy safe (not running, staying off of the steps, etc).  But hopefully soon I will be able to get some pictures. 

On the 4th of July we went to my Sister’s house and the kids played on the slip-n-slide.  They had a blast!  Will was actually trying to slide on it.  Caroline was a pro!

I am sure there are some other things that I have forgot to mention.  But for the most part…that was our summer, in a nutshell.

Softball

We have a future softball star in our family!

Sweet Kids

These are some recent pictures that I took of the kids…they will be framed and put on the wall!

 

Caroline’s Kindergarten Program

Caroline’s class had their end of the year program today.   They sang a bunch of songs (all of them had movements!) and it was just the cutest!  Here are a bunch of pictures of them singing…

(Caroline is wearing the white t-shirt and jean shorts)

Here is a video of them singing…

 

The program was cute as a button and kids had worked so hard preparing for it.  The kids also gave their awesome teacher (Mrs. Crawford) a gift, a necklace with her monogram on the front and the year on the back and also a gift card to a spa.  She cried and thanked them all.  Every single child had a smile of pride on their faces when she opened her gifts…so cute.

Oh, I almost forgot…each child stood up and introduced themselves and told us what they wanted to be when they grew up.  Caroline stood up and said, “My name is Caroline and I want to be a scientist when I grow up”.  Aww, she makes her Momma and Daddy proud!!

William’s End of the Year Celebration

Today Josh and I went to William’s school for the end of the year celebration.  There were 4 students in William’s class that graduated and are going to Kindergarten next school year.  The beginning of the program was a video of all the pictures that the teachers took throughout the year of all the activities the class did.  It was really cute and the pictures were put to music so it was very nice.  It was neat to see how much the kids had grown since the beginning of the school year. 

After the video we had a snack.  William ate Cheetos.

Then the students walked over the ‘bridge’, which represented them graduating to Kindergarten.  William thought it was fun to smile for the camera!

And finally, the kids sang their favorite songs.  One song identified body parts…"put your finger on your head, on your head.  put your finger on your nose, on your nose”.  And William was able to identify all the body parts that were in the song!

 

His teachers put together a bag for the kids to take home filled with CD’s of the favorite songs that they sing during circle time, pictures and bubbles.  It was very nice and I am feeling very blessed to have these wonderful teachers in William’s life.