Field Trip

Ryder had his first ever field trip today!  His class took a trip to the Pumpkin Patch.  He has been looking forward to this day since last week when I told him he’d be going.  So much so that he woke up at 4am this morning asking if it was time to go yet!

The ride there was his first school bus ride ever!  He said he liked it most when the bus went fast over bumps! 

The place he went was close to my work, so I snuck over there for a little bit to visit with him (and be his paparazzi, of course).

Him and his classmates played on the playground, fed the goats, had story time, went on a hayride, picked pumpkins, had lunch, then headed home!

 

 

I didn’t get to stay for all the fun, but I’m glad I could be there to experience this fun first for my boy who is growing up so fast!

16 Months

Maisy Liza is 16 months old today!  Here is what she is up to this month:

• Wearing 12-18 month clothes, size 3 or 4 shoe, size 4 diapers.
• Loves to eat snacks!  Her favorites are Lucky Charms cereal, fruit snacks, and teddy grahams.
• She goes to bed around 8pm and wakes up around 7am.  She takes one afternoon nap every day.
• She has to have her blanket, pacifier, and cup when she goes to bed.
• She loves to dance, especially to the theme songs of all of Ryder’s favorite shows.  And the theme song to Daddy’s favorite show “Sons of Anarchy” – she really gets down to that one!
• She finally got another tooth, she has 5 now!
• She shakes her head yes & no to answer any question you ask her.  She has a really mean face she makes too, Daddy calls it her Mean Muggin’ face! 
• She says more and more “words” every day – her latest have all been Halloween themed: Pumpkin, Spooky, & Trick-or-Treat (obviously missing some syllables, but I know what she’s saying!).
• She loves bath time and is a lot more fearless than her brother has ever been in the water.

Days with Maisy are always fun!  She keeps you laughing and entertained.  We love watching her learn new things, especially the things her brother teaches her.  She’s the best daughter & sister God ever could have picked for us :)

Maisy Movies

Well I’m alive, I made it through the surgery and have had lots of down time this weekend resting and being off the clock from parenthood!  Thank God for my husband and my parents.  I’m excited to have my whole family back together again this evening.  In the meantime, I’m watching video’s I took of Maisy last week that are making me laugh (except I can’t really laugh because it hurts my mouth!).  Thought I’d share a couple:

 

 

After taking a few video’s identical to the one above and letting her watch them back on my camera, she became totally into making Maisy Movies!  Lucky for me :)

Ryder’s First Day of School

Ryder woke up SO excited and ready to go to school.  He has made this whole transition so easy because of his excitement!  If he were nervous or afraid, I would have been a wreck, but it couldn’t have been more opposite. 

We got him ready and said goodbye to Daddy.

Grabbed his book bag and lunch box…

Then took Maisy to Nana’s and said goodbye to her.  He was so funny explaining to her how much she would miss him during the day and how he was sorry that she wasn’t a big girl, but he promised that when she was a big girl he would let her go to school too!

We did NOT catch the bus at this point!  I got an email yesterday that the bus only comes around and picks the kids up that live in the “town” but we live in the “county”.  SO apparently next week they will be sending a county car to pick Ryder up for school, this week I will be driving him.  How do you know for SURE you live in the country???  Because a county car comes and picks you up to take you to your trailer school!!

Where was I?  Oh yeah, the drive to school.  He drank half his drink we packed for lunch before we even got to school!

We got there at the same time the bus was dropping his classmates off so we walked to the side walk and waited for them.  They immediately came over to Ryder and they all started comparing their super hero book bags!  His class is made up of 8 little boys!  It was definitely friends at first sight.  Ryder said “lets go to school!!” and they all took off toward the trailer school, Ryder in the lead, of course.

 

 

And that was that!  I followed him to the door, he gave me a hug and kiss and was off to enjoy his day without a flinch!  No tears from Mommy either, nothing sad about him being so happy!  I was pretty anxious all day, I tried to hold out but I did end up emailing his teacher around lunch time.  She wrote back during their nap time and said that Ryder was having a great day and he was having nap time.

I was so excited to pick him up when school was over!

He’s just so grown up now!!

 

In the car on the way home he told me all about his day.  He said they had breakfast time, lunch time, nap time, playground time, circle time, but they didn’t have any cartoon time!!  He sang me a song about the days of the week that he learned.  He told me he had good manners and shared with his friends, but he couldn’t remember any of his new friends names!  I asked him if he found the note I wrote him in his lunch bag.  He said “ughhh YESSSSS”.  I said “what’s wrong you didn’t like my note?  Did you have your teacher read it to you?”  He said “Noooo!  I didn’t want her to know it was there!”  I said “well Buddy it was a note from me & Daddy telling you to have a good day.  It was supposed to be a surprise for you to have a note from us.”  He goes “Well, next time just send me a note from Maisy, I think she missed me more anyway!” 

Chopped Liver – that’s me!

I know he was exhausted from his first day of school!  He was yawning before we even got in the car to leave.

 

He sat in his recliner when we got home and said he was going to “kick back and relax for a while”.  Re-Re called to check on him and see how his first day was while he was “chillin”.

         

I even found him all curled up in Maisy’s crib a little while ago! 

His 1st day of school was definitely a success!  He had a great time, is excited to go back, and even got a nice note from his teacher on page 1 of his composition book saying that he had a great day and she was happy to have him in her class!

This is so fun :)

Now that the anxiety and anticipation of that is over, I’m facing dental surgery tomorrow…ahhhhh.  Pray for me.

School Preparations

Today we had a meeting at Ryder’s school with the Pre-K Special Ed coordinator and his Teacher, Miss Emily.  We went over all of the goals they had set for him to accomplish by the end of the school year in June.  I think he’s going to do great!  His little classroom is in a trailer outside of the high school, he calls it “the trailer school!!!” in his country boy accent.  He has been so excited but lastnight he came up to me and said “Mom, I don’t want to go to school anymore, I think I changed my mind”.  Luckily we had the meeting at his school today and now he is super excited and hyped up again!

 

For the first month he’s only going on Thursday’s and Friday’s, then by next month he’ll start full time which is Tuesday – Friday from 8:30am – 2:00pm.  They gave me a school calendar, a school lunch menu, and even a permission slip for his very first fieldtrip to the Pumpkin Patch next Thursday.  I can’t believe this is really happening, my baby boy starting school!

  

We’ve been preparing for this for a few months now.  After we started trying to get him into the program we wanted to get him excited about it, so we took him and let him pick out a book bag.  He picked Spider Man and loved it so much that he insisted on sleeping with it!

 

It is currently packed with really random stuff – A hammer in case he needs to fix the roof on the school, pop tarts in case he gets hungry, cars and trucks in case he meets any friends that want to play…it’s loaded down.  At some point before Thursday I need to get him to empty it and pack it with the stuff he really needs (I can feel the argument coming on already).  BUT, today when we got home, there was a package!

 

It was from Nana!  And it had all the stuff he REALLY does need for school!

 

A Cars lunch box, thermos, snack cup, and sandwich holder – everything for Mommy to pack his lunches :)

   

And a Jake Pillow and Blanket to take to school with him for nap time!  The Jake pillow was his favorite part, as you can see, that made him really happy.  He calls it his “Jake naptime pillow pal” and he wasted no time taking him to bed to cuddle.

  

(Thank you Nana for all that awesome stuff!)

Three more days!!  He’s excited, I’m nervous, Daddy just can’t believe it, Maisy is going to FREAK when that big school bus comes and takes her brother away.  You know I’m not good with change.  But here we go, no turning back, I’ll post about his first day of school on Thursday! :)

Renaissance Festival

We decided to join some other friends of ours and head to the Renaissance Festival this year.  We had such a great time!  I love having these kids to take on little adventures, they make life so much more fun!

 

There were lots of fun activities there…Ryder did juggling school:

Daddy impressed us at the sledgehammer game, making the bell ring over and over, big muscles :)

Ryder shot a cannon..

He played on a Pirate Ship…

He got a shield and a sword (and later asked us to write Knight Ryder on them!)

Ryder and Daddy went down this huge slide…

What, you don’t see them coming down?!  Oh that was because Ryder chickened out once they got to the top, who didn’t know that was going to happen?!

Scott & Kara did go down though!

Ryder stuck to the smaller slide, which is still a big deal considering this is the first year he has come around and started sliding!

Of course we had to eat a turkey leg! (sorry Alan, had to use this picture as proof!)

And other yummy stuff, like chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick! (wow I’m really annoying with my mid-chew shots)

Your turn Maisy…

Awww the little monkey eating a banana cookie.  She was such a trooper the whole time.  Just rode around looking at every thing!

At one point Ryder tried to hop on and catch a ride…Poor Maisy!

The sweetest boys in the world bought me a beautiful pink rose!

 

The sweetest girl in the world wanted to hold it and smell it.

Then she turned mean and started slamming it on her stroller until it was nothing but rose petals on the ground!  She gets payback against her brother at every opportunity.

There were some pretty interesting things walking around this place…like this weird guy…

But there were some pretty awesome people there with us, like these people:

Our favorite newlyweds, the Bagley’s!

  

And The Seymour’s.

And us!  (apparently Ryder wanted to claim a different family at this point)

He was pretty attached to their little girl Kara and had a great time playing with her.

(or chasing her around telling her she had a belly ache and he was the belly ache doctor!)

I’ve known Justin & Scott for such a long time, I love that we have been able to keep in touch over all these years.

So that was our time at the Renaissance Festival.  Spent way too much money, but it was a great time with friends and the kids had a lot of fun, so it was worth it.

And…crash…