Livy is 4 months old

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Apple Witches

Tonight for our Family Home Evening activity we carved Apple Witches.

We each carved a witch face into an apple and now we will let them shrivel up. By the time Halloween comes they will be perfect little witches.

(Cody is wearing a bat hat that he made at school today)

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And Livy is wearing a "Poupon U" shirt from the mustard factory! :)  (Thanks Nana and Bob)

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Kylee's a Preschooler!

Kylee started Preschool today!

We are doing a little preschool with three of her friends. All of the moms take a turn teaching one week out of the month. It should be lots of fun for Kylee after watching Cody get on the bus each day.

Here are Cody and Kylee before school started this morning. Kylee's school doesn't start until 45 minutes after Cody's but she just could not wait to put on her backpack.

Waiting for Cody's bus

While I was taking these pictures there was a little boy running around in the background. But lucky for me he run behind Kylee so I could get a few shots without him in the picture.

That little boy is still back there :) Keep smilin' Kylee!!

And then it was finally time for Kylee to go. She didn't really want to take any pictures so each and every one of these pictures is a miracle. Actually, the real miracle is that any time we let the kids sit by Olivia for a picture they'll do it. That little Livy is the peacemaker in this family for sure.

And I love this picture of Kylee in the car. We are just about to get out after pulling up to Adam's house. She looks so excited and brave.

And here she is after we picked her up. Happy as ever and had a great time, but still didn't want any pictures taken. So I might have mentioned that she could have a cinnamon roll as soon as we got inside the house if she smiled for a few pictures. She tried to compromise with me on that. She said, "you can take a picture, but I'm not going to smile." Look who won! :)

And let's just take a break from our cute Kylee to document the size of this beastly spider on our house. YUCK!

Now back to Kylee who was needing some motivation at this point. She was not feeling the smiley-ness until I reminded her about that cinnamon roll....

Oh wow! Cinnamon rolls have a lot of power in this family. Not only did she smile, she held up her Orange Octopus (they learned about the letter O today) for the picture.

And let me just mention that while Kylee was at preschool I took Cody to the dentist to take care of his first little cavity. And he was so incredibly brave! The dentist asked me if I thought he would need laughing gas. I told her that he would do great without it and the dentist said they would try it, but they might have to use it if he couldn't handle the procedure. He did awesome (and saved us $60 while he was at it!)

Today was just one of those great days...

National ZOO

Our first official family-only outing since Livy was born was back in September:

to the NATIONAL ZOO!

Here's the play by play:

Walking out of the metro tunnel to find that it is pouring rain and walking the 3 or 4 blocks to the zoo entrance

Kylee telling us she needs to go to the bathroom with one block to go

Kylee having an accident at the entrance to the zoo while standing in the never-ending line to the girls bathroom (poor girl!)

Steve keeping the kids happy with snacks while I feed Olivia in a back hallway.

Checking out the Giant Pandas eating bamboo (totally cool!)

Trying to take a picture of the kids with the Giant Panda with no luck since the kids won't look at the camera at the same time

Steve backtracks with Kylee to the bathroom (again) and misses out on a close-up of the pandas

Seeing the lion and tiger and hearing them roar!! (totally cool!)

Cody and Kylee completely falling apart at the farthest point from the entrance and fighting over who gets to ride in the stroller for the long ride out.

Cody and Kylee surfing in the middle of the metro car aisle

Kylee falling apart again between the metro and our car adding an extra 15 minutes to our trek home.

Grabbing a pizza to go from Costco on the way home to feed our hungry and exhausted selves ASAP

Sitting around our table at home devouring pizza and laughing our heads off when Cody said, "That was so fun! Why didn't we stay longer?"

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And here are the 5 lovely pictures to prove that we had a grand old time with our arms full of kids, snacks, and gear. Cody and Kylee are the only ones pictured, but BELIEVE ME, we were ALL there.

Smile!

No Brains Needed

While getting ready to start his homework yesterday Cody said to me: 

"Do you know how easy this is? It's so easy that I don't even need to use my brain."

I said, "What will you use if you don't use your brain then?"

"A pencil!"

First Grade Fake Out

Cody was so excited for his first day of school! He asked for a sliced apple for breakfast (and nothing else) because he wanted to be healthy.  We had a great morning getting ready for school and had everything ready an hour before the bus comes.

"Put your ones up for First Grade!"

During breakfast Steve called from work to say that school was cancelled. WHAT?! A lady at work had told him about it. Apparently she hadn't had power all weekend because of the hurricane (and still didn't have power) and about 1/2 the county was that way. We were oblivious because we had been fine.

Cody. was. so. sad.

But then he got over it and we had a lot of fun together.

And now for the REAL first day of first grade....

Kylee just had to wear her backpack too.

a walk/run to the bus stop only pausing for one second so I could get a quick photo

and as soon as they saw the bus stop they took off running (I couldn't keep up very well with Livy in one arm spitting up down the front of both of us and a camera in the other hand) 

and then...

Cody hopped on the bus as soon as he could without even looking back.

(He was so excited to ride the bus this year!)

Kylee would have hopped on too if I would have let her.

But instead we walked home without our favorite Cody. 

Kylee talked about buses all day long and asked me about 10 times why she wasn't big enough to go to school. 

And Cody made it safely home as happy as can be. 

On the walk home from the bus stop he told me that his best friend is Sam and that he ate all his lunch and that his teacher couldn't wait to see him tomorrow and that he got to read Star Wars books.

Looks like it will be a great year!