Young Party of Four

As of the end of today, we will have a first grader! There is a number in her elementary school placement! No longer just a letter ("K"). That is insane. Kenzie has seriously rocked her year in kindergarten this year. She is a learning superstar, for sure. She continues to love school. From the very first day we dropped her off, she went right into her classroom and made herself at home. She still lacks any sort of social anxiety. She is also still quite a rule follower (which teachers seem to really appreciate LOL) so she gets along well in a structured setting. When she is told to do something, she does it. Now, if we could just figure out how to get her to do the same thing all the time for us... that would be great. She made a ton of new friends this year and is so looking forward to next year. She knows a lot of her friends probably won't be in her class, but she has met a ton of kids in other ways, like Girl Scouts, dance, or outside on the playground or in PE ...

I haven't done a Friday Favorites post in a few weeks. We have been super busy with the end of school rolling around which is also the end of Girl Scouts (sort of - as the main things coincide with the school year) and dance is wrapping up here in the next month so other things have gotten in the way of this weekly post. BUT, I wanted to do a quick post about some teacher gifts that we put together this year because I have been asked about them. This won't be a long one but may be a fun idea for a teacher gift if you need one. This is something I first saw a few years ago. Probably even before we had kids and I have since seen a few variations of it. We tend to go with the "Bucket of Sunshine" option, though I have seen boxes and bags as an option. We like buckets because sand buckets are super common around here. Especially in the summer. The idea is basically this... grab a yellow bucket. Fill it with yellow items. Write a personalized thank you note. Give te...

And just like that... Will has officially finished his first year of school. This year he attended the same school that Kenzie attended for 3-year-olds and VPK. He was enrolled in the 2-year-old class. He started school a year earlier than Kenzie but at almost the same age. His birthday is in October so he misses the cut off for the year and consequently ends up being one of the oldest kids in his class. This year he may have even been the oldest. As a boy, we don't mind that necessarily and we think it was definitely beneficial for him this year. (Side note: Kenzie is typically one of the youngest so it is the opposite with her and we definitely see the "typical" girls being younger and boys being older argument playing out.) Will's end of the year picture sort of cracked me up. He looks so very sure of himself. This is such a change from the beginning of the year when he wasn't sure of what school would be like and although he knew he wanted to go, he was ...

I just realized that it has been almost a month since our last blog. We have been so busy in the last couple of weeks, that blogging definitely took a backseat to everything else we have going on. I can't believe we are almost to Christmas. Christmas!! Eek! Ever have one of those weeks when it seems like the week was so very long and yet flew by in the blink of an eye all at once? That was this last week for us. Monday of this week seems like it was forever ago when we think about the fact that Kenzie was in school, yet when we think that my parents were in town for 5 days, it seems like they weren't here for more than a few hours. Crazy. This last week we celebrated Thanksgiving. This is always one of my favorite holidays. I like it for many reasons. One of which is the time we get to spend together as a family. Steven usually takes off for the week of Thanksgiving. We have our families over for dinner on Thanksgiving Day. My parents usually get a timeshare for the long week...

One of my favorite things about the start of fall isn't the cool weather (we don't have any so I'm not allowed to like that the best), but rather the fact that shortly after it starts, we hit full-on Halloween mode. This is definitely one of those holidays that is even better with kiddos around. It lasts almost a full month around here with all we have going on. Here is some of what we have been up to this Halloween season: We started with a trip to Disney just before Will's birthday. While we didn't do Mickey's Not So Scary or anything, we did get to see all the fun Halloween/Fall decorations at Hollywood Studios. And we were able to meet up with some friends at the park so that made for a fun evening. The Chick Fil A Kids' Club is in full swing for the school year and in the month of October they do a fun Halloween night. They let the kids "carve" styrofoam pumpkins and decorate them. They loved it. We let the kids dress up too sinc...