First day of school. First day of school

Addie started Kindergarten on September 1st. She was beyond excited and as she told me, "just a little nervous".

There are three other girls her age in our ward and they all ended up in the same class. Two of them were at our house the morning before school started and they all wanted pictures taken.The little sisters couldn't be left out either.

The school mascot was there to greet the kindergartners.

Off we go

Here is the mandatory picture with the teacher

Find a book and... What? Mom you are still here? You can go, I'm fine. 

Lizzie was not fine though and really needed a picture with the cougar. After that she was fine.

The Gardens

We took a trip to the Thanksgiving Point gardens right before school started and they were beautiful. I don't know why I have never been there before.

I added this picture just because I love the look on Rachel's face. "Please get me out! This girl is crazy and keeps bothering me."

The secret garden was my favorite,

but the girls preferred the butterfly garden.

We explored the children's garden too and Addie thought the Noah's ark was pretty cool, but wasn't interested in playing in the water much. Their very favorite part was a maze made out of hedges, but of course, I didn't get any pictures of that.

Our Annual Cabin Trip

No summer is complete without a trip to the cabin.

Rachel's favorite thing was playing in the mud in the river and chewing on one rock. One specific rock. I actually took the rock away and put it back on the ground behind her. She turned around, found the exact same rock from among all of the others and started chewing on it again.

Lizzie liked shooting the BB gun.

Addie liked being in the mud. She lost a shoe to the muck after sinking in up to her waist and pulling herself out, hence the bare feet in the picture.

She was also really interested in making sure that we took a picture the back of her muddy pants. The picture above was the result. Yikes.

The Kings brought up their 4-wheelers which Lizzie enjoyed quite a bit from her nice little seat and Millie liked to chase.

And we all enjoyed the tire swing. What more could you ask for?

Rachel's Nine Months

Yes this was clear back in August. Yes I am posting it at the end of September.

She is still kind of tiny; at nine months she was just starting to crawl. She was really good at sitting up and is my first kid that has sat up before they have crawled.

Her eyes are still huge; her two bottom teeth were just breaking through; and she was, and is, starting to develop a funny little personality and just a little bit of attitude.

Cecret Lake

Our trip up to Cecret Lake had a couple of unplanned interruptions.

A summer thunder storm hit before we could even get on the trail and rained hard. The kids didn't seem to mind, but it was cold and being out in that much lightening didn't seem like the best idea so we all hung out under the alcove of the rest room.

Then we ran into these guys....

...and they were big. PS, notice the rain that had eased up at this point.

But we finally made it to the lake and had a great time.

We threw rocks and Nick tried to throw Lizzie but she didn't go very far. Weak.

 

Lizzie was somewhat unhappy about the throwing. In all actuality she was just "being a mean lion and scaring away the bugs."

Summer Fun

Other summer activities included...

A little hot hike to Battle Creek Falls. I love Lizzie's face in these pictures. It is bright red because she was so hot the whole time.

A camp out in the backyard that included a long story about a t-rex dragon, the hard ground (who knew grass was so hard and that I would want my sleeping pad so bad), a colder night than expected (again, who needs a sleeping bag. I'm in the backyard, my blanket will do, right?), and very little sleep ("Mom! Mom! The sun is up! The sun is up!"). The girls love the tent and wanted to sleep in it every night.

We also spent a great day swimming and playing up at Silver Lake. The kids didn't mind the cold water at all.

Lizzie spent a lot of the day floating away as happy as can be...

...then Katie would swim out and "save" her until she floated away again.

The Newport Beach Ride

The last thing to mention about our California trip in July, aside from the fun we had just hanging out with everybody, is that we took a ride with the girls. The plan was to have Lizzie and Rachel in the trailer and Addie on the Tag-A-Long. We had some issues with getting Addie to want to ride the Tag-a-Long which resulted in the following about halfway through the ride...

Notice that her little feet don't touch the pedals so she rested them on the down tube and balanced. Addie got into the trailer with Rachel. In her defense we were missing a part that made the Tag-A-Long more stable and kept it from rocking from side to side.



Addie finally found her bravery mostly due to "The Magic Flower of Courage." Yes, we did pick a flower for her and call it "The Magic Flower of Courage." Yes, it did work.

In the end we made it to the beach to meet everyone else and we all had a great time.

I'm a Horrible Person

I can't stop laughing every time I look at this picture.

I know the internet has a long memory so I would like to say sorry to Lizzie in advance. OK, now I am laughing again.

Disneyland

As part of our trip to CA we took our first venture into the Magic Kingdom with the kids. It went pretty well. Addie crashed with a fever in the middle of the day and took a nap in the stroller but as soon as she woke back up she was good to go.

Addie and the cousins looking forward to the day.



Lizzie was especially excited about... pretty much everything.



Believe it or not "It's a Small World" was a highlight. The girls lit up during this whole ride. Of all of the rides this was one of the best simply because of them.



Yup, Mickey Mouse pretzel. How do you pass that up?


The Teacup adventure went surprisingly well although shortly thereafter Addie started not feeling too well. Related??
I love this picture because it captures both girls together at the same time kind of looking at the camera. Not a common thing on the day.

I love the brooms in Fantasia. I always have. Kind of weird, I know.

The family with the big man. I'll be honest, I got kind of excited to see him when it was our turn.

One of the girls. I don't know if you can tell how excited they were. We waited in line and passed up playgrounds in Toon Town and other rides just to see Mickey. They thought it was a small price to pay.

Between getting the girls up there when no one else was around and getting them to look at the camera this was another major victory.

After this we went to see the fireworks. After every blast Lizzie would say "Here comes Tinkerbelle" When Dumbo came out on the zip line I thought she was going to hyperventilate with excitement.

After the fireworks we were walking out the gate and all of the sudden Minnie came running out of a gate right in front of us. The girls then promptly swarmed.

She stopped to talk to Lizzie for a second and gave her a long hug. That was kind of the perfect ending to the day.