Kindergarten (or How Did This Happen So Fast?)

I'm not sure how it happened, but in the blink of an eye, this little girl:

Turned into this BIG girl:

Kindergarten started last Thursday. It was a day that I'd honestly not been looking forward to. It meant that my baby girl will never be only mine again. She's going to be with a teacher and classmates that I don't really know and there is so much that I will not be able to protect her from. Thankfully, our district still offers half-day kindergarten and we actually know about half of the kids in her class. I've also heard great things about her teacher.

This new phase has been a good lesson for me, once again, in how little I can control. I've been praying as often as I think of it for strength and grace for her teacher, as well as for protection and wisdom for Brooke, and opportunities for her to show love and kindness to others. And I know that she's going to do great. She's always loved school and was SO excited to go on Thursday. Her teacher gave each of the kids a bag of "Ready Confetti" to keep under their pillows to help them sleep and give them sweet dreams. About 15 minutes after she went to bed, Brooke called shenanigans on the confetti being magic because she still couldn't go to sleep. She did say that she had sweet dreams, though.

Because we knew so many people at the school, and because I'd already shed a few tears earlier in the week, I was able to hold it together at drop off. Plus, I thankfully still had Miles and Paige to distract me. We ran a couple of errands and Miles asked literally five times when we could go pick Brookie up. His preschool doesn't start for a few more weeks, so we'll have to find ways to stay busy until then.

It's pretty fun that Brooke is going to the same school that Matt, Mike and Jamie went to, and that she already has so many friends in class. It's about a 3 minute drive and I think we're going to attempt to walk there at some point this coming week. We'll see how that goes.

Best of all, Kali's in her class! I think that she feels like as long as she has Kali, she can face the world.

She was proud to rock her Koala backpack from Australia.

There goes my heart. Off to do awesome things!

August Randoms

We've had some really beautiful weather lately, so we're trying to get outside as much as possible. Miles loves his "woo-woo he can drive that fits two people." He asks to ride it when we're on our way home much of the time (so thanks, Grandma and Papa T!). We've been spending a lot of time in our cul-de-sac.

Miles wanted me to take a picture of his jumping skills.

And Brooke attempted to climb this tree.

And Paige just scooted around with a smile on her face.

At the playground the day before school started, Brooke must've gotten a dose of Kindergarten Courage. She climbed to the top of this structure for the first time ever.

And also go across these monkey bars for the first time ever. Go, girl!

This is what happens when Miles plays with my phone in Target.

And this little lady has been really into "peek a boo" with anything she can find. This day, the kitchen towel was her prop of choice.

Have a great week!

Cousins!

We had Matt's family over for a little Brooke's first day of school/Jamie graduated/Will and Jamie have been married 12 days/my birthday celebration last week. These two are going to be trouble:

We also did a little cat herding, trying to get a good picture of the cousins.

That didn't really work. Maybe just Brooke and Bri?

At least everybody had fun. After the babies went to bed, Aunt Jamie brought out the cupcake pinata. 

We also had about ten other dessert options, thanks to Matt's mom. As always when we're all together, it was a really fun night!

Michigan!

We decided to add on to our crazy month and take our annual family trip to South Haven the weekend after the wedding. Overall, the trip was a really good one. We had great weather. We had our share of meltdowns (all five of us). It's always fun and refreshing to get away with just our little family.

We left on Thursday morning after Brooke's big show to end her cheer camp (more on that to follow). On the way up, we stopped in New Buffalo for lunch.

We decided to do an easy dinner at Maria's that night since everyone was a little tired. Have I mentioned that our kids NEVER sleep in the car?

The next day, we headed to the Saugatuck Dune Rides on the advice of a couple different friends who'd done it. It was awesome!

It was adventurous enough for the older kids to like it, and passengers only had to be over one year old, so it wasn't too crazy and we were all able to go.

It's like she's saying, "You would not be doing this with Brooke when she was 15 months old."

These two were screaming and holding their arms up the whole time.

We stopped at the top of one of the dunes and got to run up and down it.

Brooke's hair didn't fully recover for the rest of the day.

We then headed into downtown Saugatuck for the chain ferry ride and lunch.

 

We spent some time in the pool that afternoon while Paige napped, then ventured down to the sign to try to get a couple of decent shots. I think it went okay.

We had dinner that night at Taste. They had great food.

Of course the night was capped off with ice cream. Because it's vacation and that's what we do.

The next day, we went to the beach.

It was about as much work as I'd expected, but we all had fun.

This little lady wanted to eat the whole time.

I think this is my new favorite picture of her.

"Let's all take a nap!" Right.

We spent some time on the beach playground - mostly swinging.

That afternoon, Brooke and I went shopping while everyone else napped. We then got dressed for dinner and stopped for wine tasting on our way there (the kids had sparkling cider).

 

Photo shoot.

 

Dinner selfie.

Ice cream again after dinner.

Then we headed down to the riverfront to wait for the sunset.

We had another little photo shoot while we were waiting.

The kids got a little antsy.

But it was worth it.

We spent the next day at the beach, too. Notice Paige's booty trail.

There weren't as many waves that day, so Miles was a little more willing to go in the water. Brooke would have swam all day both days if we'd let her.

We walked to the lighthouse, too.

Monday was our last day there. We had breakfast out, then went to Kids Corner. I think that it is such a cool playground but the kids never last long there.

Once again, the old-school slide was their favorite attraction.

Brooke did a "show" for us. I think she was retelling the Christmas story?

Miles watched under protest.

We spent some time playing at the condo. Of course Miles used the community helper puppets that Brooke had picked out for him for evil rather than good.

We took one last dip in the pool before packing up. Paige was not a huge fan of this pool as she had to be either held or contained the whole time.

Finally, we stopped to pick some blueberries on the way home.

See you next year, South Haven!