Lou in September

Scootering after preschool

Poor girl seems to have the weakest stomach. She gets a 24 hour bug every couple of months and no one else ever gets it. She is getting much better at recognizing when she is sick. Unfortunately, on this day I didn't do a good job of believing her. That first barf happened all over me after I made her eat breakfast.

"Cool hair" for gymnastics

Playdate with her new best twin friends- Mac and Will. She loves them

Sadie in September

 She spent hours on signs for her "frart" (fort). I photographed a couple of them, but there were probably 20 in total. My favorite sign was the rules: do not hit, you can dance, do not push, please follow these rules

 First attempt at rag-tying. While nostalgic for me, it was way more labor-intensive than the trusty curling wand I use to curl her hair. 

Uncle Ben sketched this picture of Elsa in Wisconsin and I finally put it in a frame on Sadie's dresser. I am hoping to convince Ben to do more sketches, like of his nieces, ahem. 

This is huge- Sadie got the Eagle of Month award in her class. This is an award that 2 students get each month during the school year. The teacher chooses whatever they want it to be for. Sadie's says for her hard work. That's fine and all, but this award is terribly designed. The problem is that only a few kids don't get the award in a given year. Sadie was devastated in Kindergarten when she never got it. She and like 3 other kids were the only ones who didn't get it. They should only give it to 1 kid per month so that most kids don't get it. End rant. 

Look at this beautiful 6-year-old

Fall Soccer

I coached Sadie's soccer team this fall. The coach backed out at the last minute so I decided to take my turn. It wasn't too painful because the season was only 10 games. Every other week we had 2 games. The rest of the weeks we had 1 game and a practice. 

The girls on my team were very nice, but we had a few who my dad would classify as "space cadets". See photo below of the girl pretending to fly during warm-ups. In a couple of the games I had to beg girls to stop doing cartwheels and play the game. We also had several players who only came to a few games. That was very frustrating because my players would be complaining about wanting a rest and we didn't have enough subs.  

 The biggest surprise for me was Sadie. She wasn't the most athletic kid on our team, but she was a great role player. And she has a good mind for sports. As in, when she played defense she still stayed engaged when the ball was on the other end and she would go to the appropriate side of the field to where the ball was, to anticipate where the opposing offense would come from. She figured out that no matter how big or good the other team was, if she just got in the way on defense she could usually stop them. She also played a great goalie because she wasn't afraid of the ball. She would run right at the offensive players and dive on the ball. 

Daniel and I both are very encouraged at her hustle, competitiveness, and strategy.  

First Grade

 Sadie has been in first grade for almost 2 months. On the first day she woke up early and wanted to curl her hair. She also insisted on a dress, because duh, dresses are the best.

We arrived so early that we took pictures all around the school. 

  I tried to prep her all summer for being in school all day, but she came home and told me school was definitely not all day. She loved eating lunch at school and having 2 recesses. She was also instantly in love with her teacher. 

I took this picture 2 weeks into school. Sadie was still waking up crazy early, just super excited about school. It has been so fun to watch her be so enthusiastic about school. She liked Kindergarten just fine, but her teacher this year has somehow brought out all this excitement and Sadie is thriving. 

First day of preschool

Elise started school a couple days before Sadie. All summer she could not wait for school to start. 

She picked out the perfect first day of school outfit- her BYU shirt and favorite striped pants. She came home excited, but didn't tell me any details of the day.

On Sadie's first day of school Lou wanted a photo shoot so I took a few shots with her school bag. 

Nearly 2 months into school and Elise is not as excited. She frequently tells me school is boring and her teacher is mean because she tells her to stop talking. I talked to her teacher about it and she said that has only happened a couple of times, but I feel bad that Elise is not enjoying school. I hope we can find something that gets her more interested. Lou has take home reading each day and I am impressed with how quickly she picked up on basic concepts of reading. It is still a struggle to get her to want to do the reading, but once she does it, she breezes through. She has started sounding out random words she sees in everyday life. Elise strongly dislikes practicing writing. When the year started she would only write "E" on her papers, which she has now graduated to writing "ELisE" on everything. Baby steps. 

Holland's 4th Birthday

On August 23rd we celebrated Holly Cottle's 4th birthday.  

It is hard to come up with words to describe how I feel about her life and death. Her passing changed my perspective on many things. It makes me sad that Lexie, Nick and Holland's sisters have to live without her. It also feels weird and wrong to talk about how her death affects me because it is so totally not about me. 

Anyway, her birthday is usually happy because we get to send off balloons and my girls look forward to it. But I think it's also okay that her birthday makes me sad too.  

In a funny coincidence, one of Elise's other best friends has the exact same birthday as Holland, so I can very clearly imagine what it would be like if Holly and Lou got to be friends right now. 

Summer Bucket List

When we got back from Wisconsin/Minnesota we had a week and a half until school started. I wish I could say I jam-packed tons of fun into those days, but I didn't. We finally completed the last few things on our summer bucket list.

First was a hike. We had planned on Stewart Falls, but Elise's hiking performances early in the summer showed us this may be too lofty a goal. Plus, the girls told us they didn't want to do it. 

We decided to try out Cascade Springs. It was perfect. Beautiful and not strenuous. 

Another bucket list item was a pizza/movie pj party. The girls were anxious to host it all summer and we did it a few days before school started. We called it a little summer send off and invited all the first grade girls in our neighborhood, along with some younger sisters. 

After pizza we settled in to watch Little Rascals. The girls all seemed excited, but within 20 minutes only 3 girls were left watching. Instead they got into our massive dress-up collection.

The weather was so beautiful the rest of August/September that we went swimming at our little swimming hole, Manila Creek Pond, several times. 

Sadie and 2 friends attempted- and failed- to get on a paddle board together

On one of the last hot days we met several moms and their kids. It was so fun to watch all those kids together.

The only item we didn't cross off our bucket list was teaching Sadie and Elise to ride 2-wheelers. I blame it on the fact that we live on a busy street so we have to drive somewhere else to teach them. We put a few lame attempts in with Sadie, but we realized her bike was too big to learn on and we never got around to taking off the training wheels on the smaller bike. Some day.