Sydney's First Day of Kindergarten

School started Aug 16th, so I'm a little slow posting this.  Sydney's been having a great time.  Her biggest complaint the first day was that there wasn't enough time to eat lunch.  :)  She compensates by finishing it in the car on the way home.  When talking to her Grandma Jensen about school she said that she liked the boy who sits at her table.  I'm not so sure how I feel about that statement.  Yesterday, she said that her new best friend(girl in glasses and pink bow headband near Sydney in the class picture) and she decided to not sit by the boys and only sit by each other forever(during rug time, at lunch etc).  So I guess she's changed her mind a bit.

School's a big change for us all.  Soren and I have spent lots of time at parks and at playdates or playing tackle in the living room.  We're finally potty training and he's done great!  He's waking up dry and telling me when he needs to go and is only having one accident a day since starting on Friday.  Well, Friday we had accidents all day long, but the first day is always tough.  He's growing up too.

When we go to pick Sydney up, Soren always runs up to her and gives her a big hug.  He's pretty happy to see her, until we get into the car and she won't share what's left of her lunch.  Then he's not as happy.  :)

Life is good.

Love this pic of Syd and Bay!  :)  Cute friends.

We have been bowling a few times this summer and I realized we didn't take any pictures.  So I took my camera today and snapped a few shots.  Fun!  Where has the summer gone?!

 Above are some of the wild blackberries we picked a few weeks ago.  YUM!  Very glad we didn't get into poison ivy.

 Below is one of the caterpillars I pulled off the pansies.

 The bug below has been eating my tomatoes.  Still haven't identified it...

Soren is 3!  We gave him his a tee ball set on Saturday and went to play at the park.  He loved it!  Below is the ice cream baseball cake I made.

 I think he liked the cake.  :)

Video opening presents. Not very action packed, but I love hearing his little voice and how nice he is to Sydney.  He is a pretty sweet kid.

I've had fun with our small flower bed this year.  I'm starting to learn about the problems that go along with it!  This type of caterpillar ate every single leaf off of three of my pansies(see link below).  The kids and I picked 15 of them off the plants.  There is also some bug feasting on my tomatoes.  hmmmm....

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euptoieta_claudia

 Happy Birthday Sydney!  When she woke up she found a bike downstairs.  A great way to start the day.  Then she had to wait until Daddy got home from work to open the rest of her presents.  It was a LONG wait until 11 am, when Andrew was done teaching.  :)

 Thank you for the ring pop Grandma!  It kept poor Soren occupied.  :)

My beautiful 5-y-old girl!

After lunch and quiet time, we went to the spray park for a party with friends.  Jenna took some pictures for me.  I'll let you decide what's going on in this next pic....

 My cute friends!  Love these ladies!!

 Me with all the kiddos.

Presents!

 This is Melissa.  It was her birthday too.  She works across the street from the spray park and was waiting for some kids to come play so that she could give them water toys.  For her 22nd birthday, she was doing 22 acts of kindness.  Very cool.  We gave her a cupcake and wished her a happy birthday too!  The kids enjoyed the water toys as I forgot all of ours at home!

On to pizza and cake at home.  Here she is pretending to blow out the candles.

Cute Soren still needed to finished getting dressed after the spray park.

At the end of the day Sydney said, "Thank you Mommy for a beautiful birthday."  So I guess she had fun.  She stayed up until 10 playing with all her new toys in her room... :)

http://www.argusobserver.com/obituaries/walter-irvin-durfee/article_d3ab5248-b719-11e1-9afe-001a4bcf887a.html

Yesterday was a sad and happy day.  My Grandpa Durfee's funeral was yesterday morning.  I was sad not to be there.  While growing up, I visited with my grandparents nearly every day.  I'd bring them the mail and then chat about school or anything else.  Every Sunday afternoon Grandpa would pop popcorn and we'd eat it while we visited.  They went to every big school event of mine and I have lots of wonderful memories.  He was a great man.

Sydney also turned 5 yesterday.  I love my big girl!  Pictures to follow.

Bennett Spring State Park

 Soren trying to get Sydney with a stick...

                                  Sydney and Soren feeding the trout.

Those are rocks they're throwing...

These are pictures from our trip to Bennett Spring state park in the Ozarks.  We spent the night in a cabin and had lots of fun.  It's a big place for trout fishing.