Beautiful Days

another day another ball

Sophia's new trick is to try and kick the rings with her feet while swinging
kite flying all star!

Surprise?! Leo tangled himself in the kite string

hard at work!

look how high it's flying!

Leo wanted a turn and goodness knows Sophia had to get in on that action too

Cheese! Notice the metal free grin?!

Wheeeeeeeeee!

We are really loving the weather that's come our way recently. Truly I am a summer girl; I love the heat, the swimming pool, the long daylight hours, but even I need a break from the heat sometimes! ;) Fall comes in as a close second to my favorite season and honestly if our weather was between 70-90 year round I'd be a happy camper! (okay, maybe 60 cuz I do like my sweaters!)

Preschool Take 2

ta da!
Wow, my sister is so big! :)

through the window we saw her putting her stuff away...

Leo checked out the playground, turns out he approves

Sophia made it to school this week! Yay!! I was a tiny bit late in dropping her off, which is not what I had planned, so I didn't get a lot of pictures. Plus since it wasn't the official first day for everyone else I kinda felt like I couldn't even come in the classroom. I was met at the door and basically given the cold shoulder! ;) I mean, I didn't necessarily need to come in, I'm actually not overly emotional about her starting preschool, which I know is odd since I'm overly emotional about everything else, but I just kind of felt left out and pushed aside! I did go to my first Preschool Moms Club Meeting, and it was okay. Not quite what I was expecting, but I'll probably return, plus there's free child care for 2 hours!! Leo did great in the play room and we even had time to check out the playground before picking up Sophia. She did great, as I knew she would and had a super fun time! She was so tired she didn't really have a lot to tell us, but she's excited for the school year! Monday is the big day for Leo, so more pics soon!

A Whole New Look

We finally got our house painted, and it's finally done! Of course as soon as we were scheduled the only rain of the summer started coming in full force...so we were delayed, but after 9 days of hard work from our crew...it looks beautiful!

Okay, so I forgot to take "before" pictures so here David has only done a little bit of the front, you still get the effect I think! ;) The white stuff in the pics is all primer, which was done by them, our house didn't look quite that bad!
Here's the back deck off the kitchen

and the rear of the house with the family room

AND...Drumroll Pleeeeeeeeease.....

Ta DA!!!!

Although we really do love the new look, we both realized how ready we are to see those front hedges seriously trimmed down! But other than that, we are totally happy with it (and we're hoping to get to the hedges this winter when the leaves are gone)!

Here's the front step. We got a new light fixture and our new storm door (with disappearing screen...woop woop!) will be here in another week.

the back of the house

We also chose to have the deck stained and it looks fab with the house color. Plus, I think it really makes our new sliding door pop! We got the door when we got the new windows last year but it looks even better now!

This little friend kept our painting crew company while they worked. He was there two mornings, hung out a while and then flew away...gorgeous! He's looking straight at the camera, it's a tiny bit fuzzy b/c I was trying to zoom in.



Since we had such a pretty new house, we needed a pretty lawn to go with it! Charlie did so much work on the yard last fall and it was doing great for most of the summer. But the heat of August just did us in and a lot of the yard died. :( So I verticut (with the help of our neighbor) the yard, raked it and helped Charlie fertilize and seed. We've already got some little sprouts coming up, so we're feeling good so far!

Leo was really into using the spreader and was oh so helpful, once I got him onto the grass anyway, but he was halfway down the block before I caught up to him.

Sophia, who takes after me, isn't much for yardwork, so she practiced writing with chalk. I demonstrated an S for her, but did her name all on her own. The P is hard to see but it's there!

let me at these weeds, Mom

Sophia does like pulling weeds so she happily directed the garden pruning and told her brother what to do, something else she likes to do!

ta-da!

Fall Soccer

on the move!!

Leo and I went exploring and he absolutely had to sit on this stump. Plus, he was able to see the butterflies, birds and lawnmower, he was very happy.

Sophia was trying to show Leo some moves, but he was distracted

Sophia gave up on playing with Leo and just tried dribbling both balls

Great Wolf Lodge

We sort of decided on a whim two weeks ago to take the kids to the Great Wolf Lodge. It's so close but we've never been. We didn't really do much this summer in terms of vacation or excitement so we figured we'd check it out. To say Sophia was thrilled would be a gross understatement. Although she was disappointed that it wasn't a long drive (she wanted to watch tv in the car) as soon as we walked in the lobby she exclaimed that it was the best place she had ever been! The room about sent her into a tizzy. The kids had their own "wolf den" complete with bunk beds and a TV. This sent her over the edge. She begged me from the time we got into the room, through the water park, in the bathtub and during PJ dressing to watch a show from her bed*. We only stayed one night but we were able to utilize the park all day on Sunday. We tried to take full advantage. The kids had a blast and we look forward to going back!

before we could even go to the water resort they had to try the beds out!

Whoosh!

Leo must have gone down this slide easily 100 times before the weekend was up!

Sleepy boy drinking his milk in mom and dad's bed

enjoying some Dippin' Dots during story time

there was a huge "magic" tree with talking animals and Leo was very intrigued

giant live animals, however, is all Sophia! Leo ran screaming.

*So by the time the kids were actually ready to sleep it was a little bit late. Plus, the TV had limited stations and there were no kid shows on. Sophia was insistent on trying to watch something so as I flipped channels looking for something kid-ish she spied baseball and shouted out...Oh, MOM! Is that baseball? I'll watch that, no problem! LOL! I obliged, even though she's never watched baseball a minute in her life, but anything on that TV was better than nothing! the next morning we hit the arcade after breakfast!

this game Leo was actually able to throw balls at the screen, this was a big hit.

aah-oooooooooooooo!

and this is possibly the best picture of all!

Charlie was so fast coming out of that slide that this was the only picture I was able to get! Sophia wasn't interested in the slides that required tubes and although Leo probably would have gone, he was too little. Charlie and I had fun on them, but the only bad part was having to take turns!

First Day of Preschool....

....isn't quite how we planned. :(

Sophia woke up with all those nasty croup symptoms this morning, including a fever! She was so miserable and my little heart just ached for her! I tried to let her down easy and tell her she wouldn't be able to go to her first day today and she said...'I know. Maybe another day.' It broke my heart and I knew she was really not feeling well with that response. She is doing better now and even asked over lunch if she could go to school now since she felt better. We're keeping our fingers crossed that next Wednesday will be the day!

Baby Bro offered to keep her company in Mommy and Daddy's bed

Crappy Croup

Ugh. Leo has it again. He's been a bit coughy and what not since Saturday night/Sunday, but he had been helping us with yard work and at first I thought it might be his allergies acting up. After acting only a little bit puny yesterday I went ahead and put him to bed with the humidifier in full swing, as that usually helps a ton...but about 10 pm I heard this terrible sound coming from his room. When I went in he was very pathetically looking up at me, barely getting out 'mommy?' in between his gasps for breath. Although he wasn't blue, his breathing was very labored and I sent him to Children's Mercy with Charlie. Luckily it wasn't busy, they were seen right away and Leo got a strong dose of steroids. By the time they got home, I tucked him back in and he slept like a rock until 8:30 this morning. He's about to go down for a nap and I'll have to see how he does this time around. The hospital suggested that if he needed it to call our regular pediatrician for a steroid prescription but I'd like to see how nap time goes first.