Macie's First Day of Pre-School

Macie has been waiting all summer for Pre-School to start up again. She loved going last year. She has come a long way this summer. We are so proud of her. Her speach has dramatically improved.
She says so many more words then she used to, and her understanding of things said to her appears to be right on track. She probably won't qualify for the district Pre-School next semester. She will still get to go, but she won't get to ride the bus if she no longer qualifies through the school district. She will be very sad if that happens. I think the bus is her favorite part of going to school. But if that happens it will be a happy moment for us to know that she is on track with other kids her age.
We are so proud of her improvement over the last year. She is doing so well...she's a great little girl we couldn't be happier!

We even fixed her hair a new way just for school. It turned out pretty cute.

Bridgers First Day of School and Another Missing Tooth

I can't believe it is time for school already. The summer went too fast. Bridger was very excited to go. I can't believe he is already in 1st grade!. He has a really fun class too. There are a bunch of kids from our ward in his class so he was happy about that.
This morning as he was eating breakfast he escaped to the bathroom. I didn't think anything of it till he came back with toilet paper in his mouth. He has had a loose tooth since April and it finally came out. We have been trying to get him to pull it out every day for about two weeks because it looked so goofy. It was kind of just hanging in his mouth, it was longer than all his other teeth and it had a big gap on one side of it. It was so loose, but he said he would just wait till it fell out...and today it did. He is much more patient than I ever was. Once I found a loose tooth I had it out in a few days. He must take after Jay!

Our Family Fun Day

I thought that since school starts next week I would take the kids to a new park and then to the zoo. They were all very excited and I was too, but I was a little nervous to attempt to take them to the zoo all by myself. We are never quite sure how Macie's temper will be, and if she has a break down and I am home it is no big deal. I hold her till she is done and make sure she doesn't hurt the other kids, but in public, it is a little bit harder to control her and help the other kids too.
Well after swim lessons the kids told Jay that we were going to the zoo and he wanted to know what time. I told him that we were headed straight over there from the pool, so he decided to join us for the day and go to work today (Saturday). First we went and got lunch at KFC and then drove over to the new Equal Access Park by the zoo. We ate then let the kids play. They all loved the park and Jay and I were amazed by how fun all the toys were. It is a really neat park.
After the park we went to the zoo. Bridger and Macie loved all the animals, and Emy did too from a distance. If we pushed her stroller up to any of the glass windows that the animals were sitting by she would start to panic.
We all had a fun time together and the kids did great.
I took a lot of pictures, these were some of our favorites.

Emy liked playing inside of this hippo.
But she didn't know what to think when Jay tried to help her hang from this toy. She didn't quite get the idea.


Swinging is one of Macie's favorite things to do. She hasn't figured out how to pump her legs yet so she would have someone push her all day long on the swing if they were willing. She does really well if you tell her you will only push her a certain number of times and then she helps count to that number and then she is done. It has saved us from many temper tantrums over the summer!
This was a fun toy. It was a tube that went under ground and came up in a different location at the park. If you talked into one end, then the person at the other end could hear you and talk back.



Bridger is always posing for his pictures. He is very photogenic...we aren't quite sure where he got that from!
I love to watch kids grow over the years. It is fun when they are big enough to figure things out on their own.




Macie thought this monkey was pretty cute.
Bridger loves eagles and is always looking for one when we go boating. It was fun for him to see how big they are up close and he even got to see how his arm span measured up.
They had a few different animal skins for the kids to feel. Both Macie and Emy were too scared to touch, but Bridger thought it was neat till Jay draped the tiger arm over his shoulder.


After the zoo we let Bridger and Macie pick one ride to go one at the amusement park.
Macie picked the train
and Bridger picked the plane

It was a fun day and all the kids did great. We were glad to have Jay come with us!

Swim Lessons

We finished up the summer weeks with swim lessons. Both Bridger and Macie took lessons this summer, and they both loved it. Macie would wake up every morning and have to put on her swim suit...even though lessons weren't for several more hours. They both decided that going under water wasn't scary and they both spent the majority of the time under water. It was really fun to watch. We have taken them boating a couple of times since they have been in swim lessons and they both don't mind going under water. They have always loved the water, but putting their heads under was another story. Today was their last day and we wondered how they would do. On the last day all the kids jump off of the diving board. But when it was their turn neither of them hesitated. They both jumped right off. I recorded it, but I can't figure out how to watch the video on my computer, so I haven't attempted to down load it to the blog.

Sunday Morning Activities

Some how we managed to get ready for church an hour early...and this is what I found Jay doing. I have always heard he could do this, but for some reason I didn't think he could do it any more so I never asked to see it. Of corse, once the kids saw him do it they all had to try.


Well all the kids gave it a try, with there dress over their heads and all! I didn't notice this until I was looking at the pictures, but Macie had to help everyone including Jay. She has hand on each of their legs "helping" them out.

Stitches...A First in Our Family

On Thursday night we were out watching Jay mow down the weeds in our yard (yes, weeds...not grass). Emory had a little rake and Macie decided that she wanted it, so she grabbed it from her and began digging in the dirt. Emy was crying on the steps jumping up and down and just as I turned around to help with the situation Macie said, "here" and threw a shovel over for Emy to play with. Well, it hit her in the face and split her lip open. I grabbed her and ran her inside to the bathroom and sent Bridger to go get Jay. Macie came running in behind me with tears streaming down her face and holding her lip and crying Owweee! Owweee! over and over. Emory was already done crying and then I had to calm Macie down and let her know that it was an accident. Jay still wasn't inside yet, so we went out to find him and he was still mowing the weeds. He said Bridger told him Macie hurt Emy, but this is an hourly occurrence, so he didn't think much of it. I got his attention and we decided that she was probably going to need stitches. I ran the kids over to Robin's house and he loaded Emory in the car and off we went. We realized what time it was and that we had less then five minutes to make it to a doctors office before they closed otherwise we would have to go the the ER and pay much more. So needless to say we drove really fast, but we didn't make it in time. We took her to my parents house to see if we could just butterfly bandage it and they took one look at it and said take her to the hospital. So back in the car we went. We got her to the ER at about 8:10 and about two minutes after we sat down Jay got a phone call from our sister in law who was at the hospital with her daughter's friend. The friend was needing a Priesthood blessing because she was about to deliver her baby at only 21 weeks pregnant. It was neat for him to be able to be there so quickly and hopefully his blessing brought her some comfort.
Well the ER was very busy and were there several more hours till Emory got her stitches. We were lucky because the doctor who stitched her up had a lot of plastic surgery training and he did a great job stitching her up. We decided in the end it was probably a good thing that all the other doctor offices were closed because we don't think anyone could have done a better job. Emory even slept through getting her stitches, the doctor said that never happens. She had to have 5 stitches. She is such a good little girl. No one else in our family has every had stitches, so she is the first to go through this and she did great.

The Verdict Is In...

We are having baby girl #3. We told everyone we wanted it to be a boy, but we are thrilled to have another girl. We apparently aren't done having kids yet, because Janae is determined that there is still supposed to be another little boy in our family.