Monday, June 29, 2009

finish Kindergarten- check!

Seth finished Kindergarten on June 3 (after having to make up 3 snow days).
Last day of Kindergarten.

First Day of Kindergarten, August 2008

Seth had a great school year and truly loved everything about it! He had an awesome art teacher who came in every Friday morning and taught them actual art concepts along with how to cut and paste. He said that was his favorite part of school. He also had great PE and music teachers- those classes alternated everyday. In music, they did a whole unit on Indian music and each kid got to make an instrument- Seth made a tambura.
His best friend, Brennan was in his class all year. And since there are only two classes per grade in their school, they have a 50/50 chance of repeating the fun!
Seth did pretty well in his subjects- but really excelled in reading. His teacher told me that at the end of this school year, his reading level was a whole year ahead (end of first grade). We're determined to keep this ability going but having him read multiple books every day this summer. He's doing great so far. Seth also did well in math- he caught on to the concepts of addition and subtraction quickly. He like to sit and write out math problems for himself or have us write some for him. He can add multiple digit numbers together and carry numbers as well.
His handwriting is pretty poor though, he still writes using capital letters a lot. So we are trying to work on that at home this summer too.
Seth rode the bus to school almost every day. His was the last stop, so when the bus picked him up at the end of our street at 8am, it took him directly to school. I usually picked him up everyday though, otherwise he would have been on the bus for 45 minutes or so after school. He really liked riding the bus.

Seth has started piano lessons this summer and is doing pretty well and not tired of it yet. He has a great teacher who is very patient and jokes a lot- so his lessons are always fun. He's also on a swim team and goes to practice every weekday morning for an hour. Slowly but surely he is getting better and better at swimming. He understands the basic concepts but he is not very strong and his strokes are really wild. I'm hoping that after this summer, he'll be able to swim across the pool without stopping.

He is a good boy and we love him so much!

Saturday, June 27, 2009

my two little boys

could not be more different....
Tonight we were at an outdoor concert ("Blues, Brews and BBQ").  The kids all got their faces painted and a balloon tied to their wrists (both were free- you can tell by the quality of the "baseball" on Jonas's face).  Jon pointed out to the kids a red balloon flying way up high in the sky.  Jonas was fascinated by it, looked at the red balloon tied to his wrist and said "Mommy- I want my balloon go up too!"  (He has suddenly started to speak in complete sentences!)  I spent the next few minutes explaining to him that his balloon was going to go bye-bye.  He seemed excited about it, so I took the balloon off his wrist and he let it go.  He was totally elated and watched the balloon until he couldn't see it anymore yelling "bye-bye balloon" over and over.  Seth and Maryn still had their balloons but Jonas didn't care that he didn't have one anymore. 

In complete contrast to Jonas's excitement- Seth completely fell apart crying and saying "He should have just given his balloon to me!  Can we go back and get him another red balloon?"  He was totally distraught for the rest of the evening, crying and saying things like "I wish balloons would never pop.  How does the helium get out of the balloon anyway?  Is that balloon going to go all the way up to outer space?  Is it going to get to heaven?"

caution and control-----curiosity and adventure

Friday, June 26, 2009

mia

summer is upon us- so much going on- must update blog

- family visited
- swim team
- piano lessons
- princess birthday party
- kindergarten graduate
- toddler speaking in sentences

details and pics coming soon

Thursday, May 28, 2009

who knew there was a difference?

On the way out the door to Maryn's last ballet class of this semester, I grabbed my camera and some new batteries so I could take video and pictures. When I tried to use the camera, it was totally freaking out and I was convinced it was broken. So I didn't get any video and only a few pictures. I'm really upset about it. After I got home and read the camera manual and looked at the batteries, I realized that they were non-alkaline. I didn't realize that alkaline made a difference, I thought all household batteries were alkaline. Guess not.

So here are the few pictures I was able to take.
In this picture, the girls were practicing prancing around and picking up flowers with their thumb and forefingers. Maryn wasn't very dainty about it, she pretty much ran the whole time.
Those are not her ballet shoes, this was taken after class after she had put her crocs on.
This is Maryn and her teacher Mrs. Tobey. She is a very sweet person and Maryn has learned so much from her in the past 9 months. She starts every class reviewing ballet positions and practicing toe pointing. The rest of the class time she uses different games to teach turns, skipping, galloping, and probably a lot of other things about ballet that I don't recognize because I don't really know anything about dance. Her teacher told me that Maryn has gone from not being able to skip at all to being able to skip pretty well. She said she was impressed with her concentration when she was trying really hard to learn to skip. It is really an awesome class and I hope Maryn continues to enjoy it.

(As I was watching SYTYC Dance last night and hearing that a lot of the dancers started dancing at age 3, 4, 5- I couldn't help but hope that Maryn will want to stick with it so she can say that too!)

Saturday, May 16, 2009

and so it begins

Yes folks, that's our back door...

See the water line?

Remember this post from last summer?  Our rainy summer season got started with a bang last Friday with 2+ inches of rain falling in about 60 minutes which lead to 3 inches of standing water in our basement.  We were very prepared this time and had minimal damage to our stuff (except for the bottom three inches of our bookshelves and piano- we'll have to see how that one turns out).  

Here's the video Jon took during the flood:
 
We spent all day yesterday cleaning up our basement and it is pretty much back to normal, function-wise.  We're hoping that sandbags will minimize the damage next time.  Not that anything about this was humorous, but when we looked outside after the flood waters had receded, all of our outside toys were gone (floated away into other people's backyards) including our sandbox turtle!  We found it about twenty feet away and the sand inside was still dry as a bone.  The real question is, how are we going to get it back into our yard? :)

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

my kids....

unfortunately do a lot of this.....


The funny thing about this picture is- it shows how Maryn and Jonas pretty much copy exactly what Seth does. If Seth lays down on the floor, then Maryn does too (usually very close up next to him) followed by Jonas not long after.

Monday, May 11, 2009

what we've been up to

The last few weeks have turned out to be really really busy for our family. Jon is trying to finish up his semester, the rest of us had (in random order) book club, Primary meeting, enrichment, swim lessons, open house at school, father/son campout, ballet, English Dept. party, school half day, activity day girls, mother's day crafts in Seth's class and at church yesterday...phew. Thankfully I had an awesomely-relaxing Mother's Day (except for the afore mentioned Mother's Day craft in Primary that I was in charge of- that was crazy). Jon did a great job taking care of all my usual responsibilities so I could just chill. I wish every day was Mother's Day. (Plus, I got released from my calling yesterday- it was a great day!)

I made these rolls for enrichment and the school open house (they were on the same night). They were yummy and got eaten up quickly.
This is Maryn's new dress, thanks Aunt Wendy!
We were watching funny animal videos on You Tube. Maryn loves to snuggle Seth!