Western Day

Last week was Western Day at Tori's preschool. As I stated in an earlier post, Tori has been learning several songs that they were going to sing to the parents. The morning of Western Day came, and I got Tori all dressed and ready to go. She wore a jean skirt, white shirt, cowgirl boots, and a purple bandana tied aroung her neck. She was excited and happy all morning long. Then...the nerves hit. As we got into the car, to drive to school she suddenly developed a stomach ache."mommy, I can't sing, I just need to stay home", is what I heard over and over as we drove. I tried to reasure her that everything would be ok, but nothing I said seemed to calm her nerves. The bandanna around her neck started to itch her so she ripped it off. I thought for sure we were doomed. I gave her a pep talk, and told her, that when she was up there, to just look at me, and just sing to me, and pretend like no one else was there. By the time we got there she was feeling better, and she even let me put the bandanna back on. The little program wasn't until the end, sp I left her there and returned early for the program. She was so cute sitting on the end of the bench. Miss Patti had a fake campfire and they pretended to roast marshmallow over it. Then came time for the songs. The music started, and I could see the fear set in on Tori's face. I just smiled big at her, and she looked right at me the whole time. She may have only gotten a few words out, but I was so proud of her, and I could see that she was proud of herself too. It has been so fun to see her slowly start to come out of her shell. She brings such happiness to our life =)

Pictures, Pictures, Everywhere

Latley I have been realizing that I am so far behind on my scrapbooking that I may never get caught up. I have Alexis's first two years perfectly documented and scrapbooked. Then comes Tori. I have her birth, and a few other events done, and then for Levi, I have his birth done and that is all. I have been feeling really bad about this, and while talking to a friend the other night she told me of http://picaboo.com/. It is a website where you can download all of your pictures and create a cute book that is bound together and then mailed to you. I know it isn't the traditional handmade kind, but at the rate I am going that will never happen. So For the past few days I have been dowloading pictures and creating pages for my book. I debated what kind of book I would do, but then settled on a whole book about our family in 2007. So I am going to to pages of all the main events in 2007. Kind of like a family yearbook. I am really excited about it. If all goes well, hopefully I can create a Family Yearbook every year from here on out. I still have plans to finish scrapbooks for Tori and Levi for the first two years. That seems a lot less overwhelming to me. I will let you all know how the finished project turns out. In the mean time, has anyone else heard of any websites that do this? I found http://www.shutterfly.com/ as well, but they didn't have as much of a variety of page layouts and designs.

Some New Additions

We have a few new additions to our family. A couple of weeks ago, Brandon called me and said that he had a surprise for the girls. I thought maybe he had gotten them candy or something. Boy was I wrong. One of his customers gave him two , six week old baby kittens. We had talked about getting the girls a cat when we moved into this house, but then we were started talking about maybe getting a dog. So I was a little reluctant at first. But it didn't take long for these cute little kitten to wriggle their way into my heart. The kids love them so much. It is so fun to see them play with them and take care of them. We originally thought that they were both girls (I guess it is harder to tell of kittens), Tori named hers Sarah and Alexis named hers Molly. Well we took them to the vet and it was confirmed that "Sarah" was in fact a boy. Poor little Tori burst into tears right there in the office. She came around though, and we decided to name him Ash. Alexis then decided (with a little persuasion from Dad, since he used to have a little cat names Sarah) to change Molly's name to Sarah. My biggest concern when we got these Kittnes, was that my house was going to smell like Cats. In our last house, the previous owners must have had a cat and locked it in the basement or something, because the smell of Cat Urine down there was so strong it was almost unbearable. We didn't think anything of it when we moved it. We thought a few airfresheners would do the trick. We were SOOO wrong. The smell never ever went away. So, I am determined that my house will not smell like that ever again. It has worked so far, as long as they keep using the litter box. So anyways, it has been pretty exciting over at our house. =)

MYSTERY

Last night Alexis woke up in the middle of the night, really scared because she had a bad dream about some foxes. This morning all she could talk about was her scary dream about foxes chasing us all around our house. So imagine my shock when I opened the front door this morning to see a misterious brown paper bag sitting there. Written in black marker on the outside of it was "DOUGHNUT FOX". Inside the bad was a box of doughnuts. Talk about wierd! I thought maybe some company was going around for advertising or something and putting one on everyones doorstep, but as I drove her to school, I looked at the other houses, and there were none. So that is the mystery at our house. Who would leave us these doughnuts, and who would write "DOUGHNUT FOX" on the outside of it. How ironic that it was on the same night that our daughter had her nightmare about foxes......

Singing in the Car

I just had to sit down for a sec and write about something funny that happened in the car today. I had just picked Tori up from preschool and I was asking her what they did today. She told me that they were learining cowboy songs for cowboy day. I told her that I remembered when Alexis has cowboy day and I told her a little bit about it. I then remembered one of the songs that Alexis had learned and began to sing it to Tori. That happened to be one of the ones that they had started learning, so she began to correct me when I sang it wrong and so forth. Well after a few minutes of me singing the song, she said, "Mommy, does your mouth hurt?", and I said, "no, why?", she then said, "well maybe you should stop singing if it does", I was a little puzzled at first, but then I realized that she was just trying to think of a polite way to ask me to stop singing! I thought it was so hilarious, and I had to share it with you all. Tori cracks me up more everyday, and I am sure everyone who knows her can just imagine her little voice saying that, lol =)

Bad Dream

So as I stated in my last post, Alexis started first grade last week. It has been a little bit of a transition for her, and I was thrilled when this morning she didn't complain to have some sort of ailment that would keep her from going to school such as a stomach ache, headache, elbow ache, lol. One thing that has taken some getting used to is homework (yes already) I guess her school is known for giving quite a bit of homework. Well last night she had a paper that she didn't quite finish in class that she needed to finish for homework. It had a bunch of words that you had to sound out up at the top and then put into different categories having to do with the five senses. They were pretty hard words to sound out, and it took a while to complete. She was so tired and ready for bed by the end, that I didn't even have to tell her to head up to bed. By the time I got up there she was already in bed with her eyes starting to close. As I was setting out their clothes for the next day she said, "mommy? I just know that I am going to have a bad dream tonight I can already see it in my head" I answered by asking her what she was seeing, thinking that it would be a monster, bear or spider, because those seem to be the themes to her dreams latley. But I had to hide a smile when her reply was, "I just keep seeing all of these words floating around and around and I have to sound them all out and I don't know what they say!" She was totally serious and quite distraught about this. Not even a minute later she was ound asleep. Poor little thing!

Our Little First Grader!

Today is Alexis's first day of 1st grade. I can not believe how fast time has flown. It seems like yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital. She was a little nervous. She had a lot of great friends in Kindergarten last year, and was afraid that no one would want to be her friend this year (we moved so she is at a new school this year) I assured her that as long as she was friendly to everyone, that everyone would want to be her friend. I told her the story of when I was in First grade, and I was in Art class and this little girl with dark brown hair , named Mary Sue was sitting next to me. She turned to me and asked if I wanted to be her friend and I said yes. We were best friends from then on, and are still friends to this day. She loved that story and said that she was going to ask people if they wanted to be her friend just like Mary Sue did to me. I took her to back to school night last night to meet her teacher and drop off her school supplies. When I saw her very own little desk with her name on it, I started to get a little teary. I thought I was going to be doomed when I dropped her off this morning. It went well though. It was only when a friend from church asked me how Alexis did, that I felt my eyes start to well up a little. I just can't believe she is going to be gone all day long. You parents out there reading this, cherish the moments that you have with you kids at home with you all day. I know it can be stressful at times, but I can't describe the feeling of knowing that those days are over for me with Alexis. When we got to school this morning Alexis was thrilled to learn that her friend Skylar that we have not seen for a while was in her class. I am so glad that she will have a familiar face in there with her. I hae been counting down until I get to go get her. Only 1 hour and 35 minutes to go. I told Alexis that her first day might feel really long to her, but she would get used to it. I had no idea how long it would seem to me! I may be being a big baby about this whole this but it is a big milestone! I can't even imagine having to take her to college. Well I better go try and get some things done before I get to go and get her. Now there is only 1 hour and 33 minutes left. =)