flower girl

Did you hear?  Aunt Zoe is getting married!

Charlotte has been practicing in case she gets called in from the bench for flower girl duties (I am actively trying to talk Zoe out of doing this).  Girl is a natural though :) 

"too much wildlife"

We knew that moving from a packed in subdivision (which was on old farmland and had its own fair share of wildlife, such as the time a coyote murdered a bird on our patio) to a house next to woods and a giant open field, would probably result in having more critters around.  Well.  Since we moved in a month ago, we have experienced the following:  Tons of deer wandering through the back yard, helping trim our trees (and tomatoes).  (In fact – yesterday at the tail end of our 10 mile bike ride two of them were happily munching along the side of the trail about 6 feet away from us as we stopped and watched, and didn’t care a bit about us.  Mike counted six on his run a day earlier).  We had a hummingbird stuck in our garage for the better part of a day.  Mice who got a little too bold in venturing out of the basement resulting in me seriously considering getting a cat.  A lizard who lives under our steps and suns himself on the patio.  A mutant giant squirrel the size of a cat who likes to chill on the front step of our porch.  And last night – an owl who chose 430 am to announce his presence by hooting for an hour and waking us all up.   To sum all of this up, Colin has announced:  “There is TOO MUCH WILDLIFE at this house!” 

First Day of Kindergarten!!!

I can't believe this day finally came.  The first day of Kindergarten!  Just look at this BIG BOY.

I feel like it was just yesterday I was sobbing in the parking lot leaving my little 3 month old baby at daycare for the first time.  Today he woke up approximately 3 1/2 hours before school started and couldn't wait to leave for school.

I took the whole day off so that I could take him to school and pick him up.  Because he's no longer 3 months old, but I am still crazy like that.

(this is about when he was getting tired of pictures and bright sun in his face and he made a break for it when we got inside). 

We had orientation last week so he knew exactly where to go.  

He went down the row of lockers until he saw his name.  He is SO excited to have a "big cubby" now.  He had to run into his room first to show his teacher his brand new big boy backpack.  

ARE YOU DONE TAKING PICTURES YET MOM. 

I walked him in and we found his desk.  He wanted to play with blocks and was more than ready for me to leave at this point.  I wasn't sure if he'd get clingy, but I'll take no tears shed on either of our parts! 

When I picked him up, he was all smiles.  He had a great day!  We had to go pick Charlotte up, so he went to tell his old teachers all about his first day of school and how much fun he had.  I'm so proud of him!

criterium fun

Saturday night we took the kids to the criterium in downtown Eville for some high-speed bike racing.  They were enthralled. 

Here is Colin cheering the racers on with his cowbell... 

Between races they also hold a kids race down Main Street.  It is the cutest trainwreck you could imagine. 

Here you see that despite the bodies falling around him, Colin keeps his game face on and pedals at what he later described as "wind speed" to get around the crowd.  

"Did I win?"

Charlotte also got a medal, despite not participating in the race.  Kids today. 

Graduation Day!

Old news now, but this guy graduated from pre-K on Friday!

The school put on a super cute little graduation, complete with caps and gowns and a string quartet playing pomp and circumstance... sniff sniff

SO serious in a slightly big mortarboard...

They did a little slideshow of the kids and the teachers' memories of the class....

Colin was the only kid to get a shout out by name - for creating the vicious cubs/cards rivalry in the class this year... haha

The class of 2015! 

So proud of our little guy!  He's grown up so much and learned so much in the past year.  

Drive-in night!

Friday night we had drive-in movie night at the kids' school.  Mike worked very hard to turn these moving boxes into cars for the kids... Orange and Pink respectively OF COURSE....

(Charlotte was having more fun than her face indicates)

Colin was SO excited about his orange car (with #68 on the side for his favorite baseball player...)

Such a cute idea!

Of course, about 10 minutes in, most of the kids fled to the playground.  But not my buddy.  He was engrossed in the movie (which he has seen about 4 times already).  This kid LOVES movies.  

He was later joined by his favorite teacher Ms. Alicia.  She's going to miss him :(

Soon both of his teachers had joined him.  Popular guy ;)

Such a fun night!

playing princess

In the course of further unpacking our life this weekend, we came across the rubbermaid tub in which I have very carefully preserved my wedding dress (ha!).  Charlotte very enthusiastically pulled out the "pretty dress" and climbed right into it!!  

Cheesing it up in white satin...

a born model... sigh

such a pretty girl!  

I guess I've already got the wedding slideshow half done :)