Checkmate

We have a new addition to our game collection: Chess! (Or 'Chests' as Sawyer likes to say) This is one of Bill's favorite games as is anything that requires lots of strategizing and takes forever....anyway, he has started to teach Sawyer how to play and he LOVES it!

Sawyer soaked this game up like a sponge! He knows all the names of the pieces, how they move on the board and recognizes when one of his pieces is in danger. He doesn't quite get the hang of checkmate yet, but has mastered check pretty quickly!

I can see chess as being a game that Sawyer and Daddy play all the way until it's on the front porch of our nursing home!

Rayaln doesn't like chess.

Festival 2012

Last weekend our church hosted a HUGE festival to wrap up the summer and celebrate all the ways that we have seen God's hand at work over the past year! We could not have asked for a better afternoon! They had live music, free food trucks, bouncy houses, inflatable mazes,  free ice cream truck, pie judging contest, face painting and the premier of the new Veggie Tales  movie and hot air balloon rides! 

Raylan and his buddies! His little lady friends ALWAYS go straight for his hair! Pippa is reaching for it and Bella is sucking on it! They just looooove those long locks! 

They also broke a Guinness world record that night too! 

We had over 600 people simultaneously packing "Hunger Relief Packages" for the needy! 

Sawyer and his friends waited very patiently in line for this lady on stilts to make them some balloon dogs...

Waaalaaa! Balloon Dogs!

They had this HUGE inflatable thing called "The Cliff Hanger" and they climbed up the side and slid pretty much STRAIGHT down!

I Love this picture. Arliss (Norah's mom) and I always joke that Norah sees Sawyer as the mysterious, cute older boy of our little group of kids and I think this picture TOTALLY proves it! I love how she's just admiring him on the playground :) So cute!

Sawyer wasn't old enough to go on the hot air balloons, but we sat and watched them right before we went home.....

You can't get much cuter than this.

A fun day was had by all but we were all pretty pooped by the end! Except for elephant...he's always wide awake.

$5.00

During the summer months one of the things the kiddos enjoy the most is opening up a lemonade stand! So our last one of the season was a few weeks ago just before they all headed back to school. They spent most of the morning making their signs, chocolate chip cookies and squeezing some lemons to drop into the lemonade. 

Samantha, Sawyer, Dane and Payton

These four were the main posse of the stand. The little kids were out there for a few minutes but quickly lost interest after these four banned them from all of the job positions......The job positions that they appointed themselves to were the following: Samantha was the money taker (which turned out to be pretty funny because her math skills weren't quite up to par) Sawyer was in charge of cookies, Payton poured the lemonade and Dane was the welcoming committee :) 

Our best customer was Nana Kathy! 

One of the most amusing things was listening to them try and tally up the customer's total! The lemonade was 25 cents and the cookies were 50 cents......no matter how many you bought, in a very convincing tone, Samantha would pronounce, "That'll be five dollars." WHAT?? At least she really believed in the quality of her product! They ended up making $17.50!!! (Then they blew most of it the next day when the ding ding man came by our house...) It was a fun way to wrap up our summer together*

First Day of Kindergarten!

Today was the day! Sawyer's first day of Kindergarten! 

His excitement for the first day of school has been brewing for weeks now but he could barely stand it yesterday! Egging him on even more was this delivery of balloons and a little puppy from Nana Jane in Brazil! 

Then later on that afternoon, Nana Kathy came by to wish him good luck and Papa Steve called to do the same. (My kids have THE BEST grandparents ever!) After all the Day Care kids went home, we packed his back pack, picked out his outfit and made sure we had everything on the list that we needed to bring for his first day. We also made this little treat to take to his teacher that I found on another blog that I read. It turned out SO adorable! 

After corralling him from bouncing off the walls, he was in bed by 8:15 p.m. (a true miracle for our household!) and he just kept saying, "I'm so cited Mom! I'm just SOOO cited!" (We'll correct his pronunciation of EXcited later, but for now, it's adorable.) 

He popped awake at 4:14 a.m. when I was leaving to go work out, thinking it was time for school....

then popped awake again at 6:15 a.m.! 

We had a really fun "First Day of School" breakfast with all of Sawyer's favorites: fruit, scrambled eggs, chocolate chip muffins and orange juice! He ate it all in the red "You are special Today" plate too!

He also got to open up his little box of goodies from Mommy & Daddy that had a coloring book, new markers, trail mix, stickers and a good luck card!

Daddy & Sawyer

The First Day of School Picture*

We finally made it to school just as the first bell was ringing. Sawyer was just dying to get in and get started, but for me....the walk down to the Kindergarten room went all to quickly....

Once we found his room, he marched himself right in like he owned the place, proudly handed Mrs. Johnson her soda treat, hung up his backpack, turned around and said, "Bye Mom!" The emotional lump is making it's way up my throat and i'm feeling pretty proud of myself that I'm managing to keep a lid on it UNTIL Mrs. Johnson says, "I'm so excited to have Sawyer in class, it's going to be a very exciting year!" and I burst into tears while blubbering, "I KNOW!!!!" 

Bill and I quickly made our exit and I bawled all the way down the hall, up the stairs, down another hallway and into the office where we had to pay for his school lunch....yeah, it was lovely. I know he is going to have such a wonderful time and totally going to love it but who am I kidding? It's just kinda sad! anyone who says Kindergarten drop-off is easy, is LYING! lol

I'm excited to hear all about his grand adventure when he gets home this afternoon :) 

Tomorrow is the BIG day...

Well it's almost here.....Sawyer's first day of Kindergarten is TOMORROW! We have been getting him ready for this for the past five years but we've really kicked it into high gear over the past few weeks. He's been working through lots of different Kindergarten activity books, practicing his handwriting, memorizing his phone number and street address ect. And ready or not, Here he comes! 

This week Sawyer, Payton and Samantha have been doing some work sheets to get them back into the school mode and this was Sawyer's from yesterday:

Raylan has been hard at work too: Tummy Time!

Yesterday, Sawyer's friend Payton brought in a care package that her Aunt Mindi sent her from Japan! There we lots of fun things inside but the one that the kids got the biggest kick out of were these Cheddar Cheese flavored worm snacks!

GROSS! But at lunch time Payton was more than happy to share them with all her friends! 

And believe it nor not, they all wanted to try them! 

They said they tasted like Cheetos! 

 This is Sawyer's best buddy, Dane. They have been together since Dane started coming to Day Care, four years ago....since we have been talking about Sawyer going to school quite a bit these past few weeks, Dane keeps saying "I don't want Sawyer to go to school! I won't be able to see him anymore.....Can he stay home one more year?.....Can I go with him?" How sad! :(

Anyway, Sawyer is pretty much counting down the minutes till he gets to go tomorrow morning~He is just so excited! Meanwhile I'm doing the whole, "This is his last breakfast....this is his last lunch.....this is his last nap time at home...." I'm excited for him though, don't get me wrong! :) He's going to do great and have such a wonderful time! 

Truffula Trees

This weekend Bill and his brother, Alex, have been in New York visiting their sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law Ron! I'm extremely jealous of all the fun things that they are doing but on the other hand, I loved spending some quality time with Sawyer before he starts school later on this week! On Saturday we were out at Village Point Mall doing some shopping for school clothes and Sawyer and I were trying to decide where to go for lunch....He kept trying to explain this one place that he wanted to go and kept saying, "It's that Truffula Tree place!" and after a while it dawned on me....he was talking about 'Cheeseburger in Paradise' whose logo has a palm tree in it....or a Truffula tree. (From Dr. Seuss's 'The Lorax') 

Later that day we were driving around and Sawyer was enjoying a sucker in the back seat......after a few quiet moments he pipes up, "Raylan really likes suckers!" WHAT?!?! Apparently Sawyer had been giving Raylan little licks of his blue sucker! 

Sawyer's reasoning was "Raylan just wanted a little taste..." 

 When I got him out of his car seat, Raylan's lips were all blue and sticky but he was sure loving it! (And yes, we did have a little chat about not giving Raylan little tastes of anything...) 

Every night when it's time for bed, Sawyer always begs to have Raylan come down to say good night and it's the cutest thing ever.....they lay in bed together and between pillow talk secrets, Raylan likes to grab Sawyer's face which makes Sawyer laugh and laugh and laugh.....I just love it*

Sneak-A-Peak

 Last night was Sneak-A-Peak Night at Sawyer's new school! This was a little different from Kindergarten round up because we were able to meet his specific teacher and see exactly which room he was going to be in. The kids have been divided into two groups and half of them will come Tuesday and Wednesday, then the other group will be there on Thursday and Friday and they will all be there together on the following Monday. They wanted to keep the groups small so it wasn't so overwhelming on the first day-Which I think is a great idea! Anyway, they started out the evening with a dinner from The Pancake Man! He had the coolest and biggest pancake griddle ever! He would just slide the batter over the griddle and it would pour out perfectly sized pancakes!

We sat in the gym/cafeteria where Sawyer will be eating lunch everyday! While we were eating, this other family came and sat down with their kindergartner who was VERY out going and introduced himself to Sawyer right away. (Sawyer would neeeeever do that!) He and his new buddy Grayson unfortunately aren't going to be in the same room together but at least he'll have a familiar face to look for on the playground!

We navigated ourselves through all the hallways to the Kindergarten wing and found his class! 

Sawyer walked around until he found his seat and started looking through the welcome back that his teacher had laid out for him. (He was pretty excited about his name tag too!)

Mrs. Johnson came right over and introduced herself to us and started telling Sawyer about all the fun and exciting things she had planned for the next week! She was soooo sweet and we are really excited to have her as his teacher! (Note: as soon as we walked out of the classroom, Sawyer says, "Our hair looks the same!" Ahahahah!)

Checking out the bathroom pass......

In the mornings the kids decide what kind of lunch they will be having : Hot lunch, lunch from home, salad bar or yogurt lunch (which I think is just weird, but knowing Sawyer, he would LOVE the yogurt lunch...) They put their stick in the bucket for whatever lunch they decide on....

After looking around and getting a feel for the place, we headed out back to the playground. Sawyer and Grayson spotted each other right away and took the place by storm! (Grayson is the little boy in the black shirt, next to Sawyer) They twisted each other up on the swings, dumped sand on each other, rode the zip lines and found the only two big rocks on the entire playground and put them in their pockets...I foresee rascaliness in their future!

The evening was meant to get everyone excited for the start of the school year next week and it did just that! 

Sawyer is just aching to get started :)