So excited!

Louie had his first day of preschool at Nativity today. As you can see from his smile, he was a little bit excited!



He was also really excited to finally get to use his pirate backpack. He and I found it on a random stop at Menards this past summer and he had to have it because of the skull and crossbones. Score! it was only $4!!! like every kid starting school, his backpack was wayyy too big; why do they make them so big???

When he got to his classroom, he had to move his apple to the tree to let the teachers know was there today.

And then, he played with playdough while waiting for school to start.

When it was time for us to go, I was saying goodbye to him; he grabbed my finger to ask if I could stay, "don't leave mommy!" Dan walked him over to the rug with the other 3 boys in the class and they started playing. He never looked back.
I got the report that he had a great day! He got to be the "special helper" today because they were making a line to go outside to the playground and he said, "it's just like Peter Pan, 'we're following the leader!' " So, he got to be the line leader and pick out the last story.
He's really going to love preschool....oh and while he was gone, Emily kept saying "I miss my Louie." She starts on Thursday, stay tuned!

the last day of summer....

We went over to the Wabun Wading Pool one last time on Monday, since it was such a beautiful day! I don't remember the last time that we had such a beautiful Labor Day Weekend.

We brought our friend Peter with us to the pool. Peter is going to be a big brother to a baby brother and sister in about a month...he's very excited.

I forgot to bring the bag with the snacks and drinks in it, so we had to resort to the ice cream truck...they loved it!
The pool was PACKED, but it was fun!

Louie's School

We went to Louie's preschool on Tuesday night, we met the teachers, the kids and the parents. It was so nice! Dan and I didn't know any of the other parents, so it was nice to meet them before the school year starts.
The teachers went through the daily schedule of events. The first thing the kids do is put their name on the apple tree when they arrive, so the teachers know who is there that day. Louie picked out his name right away.

This is the name board over by their rug area. As you can see, it's a pretty small class. Only 12 kids in the afternoon session, which is great! 2 teachers, 12 kids, perfect ratio! One of the teachers has been there for 29 years!

Of course, Louie found the one toy in the whole class room that has to do with pirates...


We went and saw the gym area and then the newly renovated playground out back. Louie had so much fun! He didn't want to leave; when it was time to go, he had the biggest tantrum he ever thrown in his short little life!
He screamed all the way home and then continued in the front yard. It finally ended when we made a countdown calendar to his first day of school.
He is so excited to start school and we are all excited for him!

I just found this on the video camera!

I just found this on the Flip video camera today...it is from our family vacation back in June. My brother, Mark and Jared took the Flip with them down the Giant Slide at Lutsen. The kids had a ton of fun!

s'mores

We made s'mores last weekend. Someone was a little impatient waiting for the coals to be ready so that we could roast the marshmellows. So, he passed the time pretending he was a pirate and having a sword fight with the lighter. No, we normally don't let our kids play with lighters; I don't worry about this one too much, I can hardly get it to work.

Once the coals were ready, we got roasting. They started out "toasting" their marshmellows.

I watched Louie carefully toast his...

but he wasn't interested in eating the s'mores or "lightly toasting" the marshmellows.

All he wanted to do was make them burn and flame so he could blow them out like birthday candles.

This girl, LOVED her s'mores and actually ate two of them.

It felt like the end of summer and it was a great way to cap off a really fun summer with the kids.

St. Kate's Pond

We walked up to St. Kate's to feed the ducks on Sunday night. There were lots of people there doing the same thing. It was really hard to take any pictures. I did manage to get a few of them sitting on this bench looking at the pirate ship stickers.

I showed Emily and Louie how to roll down the hill too, tuck and roll! And they had a blast! it was a really fun walk up there.

I thought this was a cool shot of Our Lady of Victory Chapel.

driving

In order to get the photos of Emily and Louie actually sitting next to each other last week, I had to resort to good old fashioned bribery...and the one thing that they will do anything for, absolutely anything is driving or pretending to drive.
We don't let them drive in the "new" van, but we do let them sit in the driveway in the Camry.
First, you buckle up.
Then, you have to drive to your destination. I had no idea where he was actually "going".

Until I heard him yelling out the window, "I'll have TWO happy meals, chicken nuggets and cheeseburger, with chocolate milk" and then I knew that he and Emily had driven to "Frickdonalds."

I'm sure you think that we go to Frickdonalds on a very regular basis, but no. We really don't. It is either a rainy day lunch and they go to PlayPlace or a quick lunch after ECFE. Either way, our kids LOVE McDonalds. Apparently, more than we ever imagined.

Charlie's Angels

Once upon a time, there were two little kids who pretended to go to the police academy....Now, they work for me, my name is Mommy!

I was just going through my photos for the month of August and deleting...I came across this one, it just made me laugh and I immediately though of Charlie's Angels. This was from a few weeks ago, on a day when both kids came across their rain boots behind the front door... they thought it would be a really good idea to wear them in the swimming pool! Not so much!

finger painting

Dan got out the finger paints yesterday afternoon...Emmy and Louie had fun!
Louie loved finger painting and didn't mind having dirty hands, yet...

Emily loved painting too!

and then Louie realized that he had paint on his hands and he was "dirty." He absolutely HATES to be dirty and have dirty hands.

Summer afternoon

We were playing around outside tonight and for the first time in a really long time, my children were "willing" to sit and let me take their pictures.....

Even Teddy let me take his picture.


Watching a HUGE 747 fly over, clearly loaded to the gills with cargo...sometimes it seems like they're going to just skim the house.
It seems like a new style with photo editing is to make the photo look over exposed. I'm not a huge fan of it, but the exposure and colors in this one were all wonky and running PW's "sunshine" action on it was the only way to go. I love their cute faces!