Monday, August 29, 2016

First Week of Kindergarten!

It is official! We have an elementary schooler! The weekend before the first day of school James got to see his classroom and meet his teacher. I was trying to prepare him for how long school is (they go from 8am-3:30pm!), so I told him it was twice as long as church. Big mistake! The night before and the morning of school, he kept saying, "I am NOT going to school." I think he was nervous. I know I was a ball of nerves!

When we got there, the classrooms weren't open yet, so all the kids wait in the lunchroom. Anthony was still in the Keys, so we made him a video so he could feel like he was there.

Once we got to the classroom, James got to exploring. One of his main complaints about school was that they didn't have "good toys" like in preschool, but I haven't heard him say that since the first few days. I think he just didn't see that they were put away out of sight. He found a clock and was trying to make it match the actual clock. Do you see their class schedule?? So full!

Once Anthony got home, we made a trip to chuck e cheese to show him the new card machines. We seriously have spent way too much money there recently :) I got a picture of Rett throwing balls with his left hand. He does this a lot, I wonder if he is going to be a lefty.

We cooked our first quail eggs! This is four eggs. We all took a few bites and James really liked it. Now he will request some quail eggs and will even eat them when I make it.

Doing some snake snuggling:

Since Anthony had been gone for a week, it was time for him to feed the snakes as soon as he got back. When he feeds them, he takes them out of their cage and puts them in a separate container and then after awhile he puts them back in. Except this time he forgot to put the big snake back and accidentally left him in his open bucket. At midnight he remembered and when he checked, the snake was gone, loose in the house! We searched for about 30 minutes until I saw his nose poking out through a crack between the fridge and a cabinet. I guess he found a nice warm spot behind the fridge and decided to stay there. I was so glad we found him! 
Back where he belongs:

One day after school after we picked up James, we drove down to Mimi and Papa's house to swim in their pool and eat pizza before they went on their trip to Utah. James got to sit in Anthony's lap and help him steer the car when we drove from their RV to the clubhouse. He thought it was the greatest thing ever!

At the RV, Dallas and Nevada had fun showing James where they sleep when they stay over and how to open up the windows.

It was a good first week of school, overall James really likes it. Sometimes he says that it is boring or too long, but mostly he is excited to talk about all the things they are learning and what they are doing. His teacher is absolutely perfect for him and he loves her already. I still can't believe that I am the mom of an elementary school child. How did that happen??

Last Week of Summer Staycation

The last week of summer before school started, Anthony went on a fishing trip to the keys and I stayed home with the boys. Originally we were all going to go, but school started earlier this year and we didn't want James to miss the beginning of school. I planned a different activity every day throughout the week so that it would feel a little bit like a vacation for us. The day before Anthony left, we visited the Lighthouse. I wasn't sure if Rett would be able to climb it, but he did it like it was nothing!

I love Rett's face in this one!

The next day was James' OT appointment and afterwards I surprised them with a trip to the zoo. His appointment is about an hour away from us and it turns out the one of the zoos is only a 15 minute drive from there. I wish I had realized this at the beginning of the summer!

The first stop was to ride the zoo train. Look at their faces when they saw it coming down the track. Priceless!

They wanted to ride the carousal and James ran around the entire thing to find "the one that stays still", so they sat in the wheelchair seat for the entire ride. Even the operator asked if they really didn't want to sit on one of the horses that go up and down and they both said no, they liked their seat.

Waiting for the train ride to start:

Petting the goats:

James really wanted to go play at the splash pad, so I let him. Rett definitely didn't, so he stayed next to me. The poor boy looked so hot!

Another day was chuck e cheese day and we discovered that they installed card machines to use instead of tokens since the last time we were there. The entire time James was talking about how he couldn't wait to come again with Anthony and show him how to use the cards to make the rides work.

Our quail started laying eggs the week Anthony was gone! It was very exciting.
Since they started we get one a day from each girl, so we get two quail eggs a day now. It is James job to collect the eggs, so he checks everyday after school and brings them inside. This week we also buckled down and got rid of our 5 extra roosters. I got pretty good at cleaning them and getting them ready for the freezer. We ate some the other night and they tasted great! We just put more eggs in the incubator to start everything over again, hopefully we will end up with more girls this time.

We had a pool day and we got home so late, I decided to let Rett skip his nap and just have an early bedtime. He fell asleep watching TV!

I took the boys to a classic car show they had downtown. James loved that everyone had their hoods up and he could see all the engines!

His favorite was this hearse!

We ran into our next door neighbors and we got to catch up a bit. James was dying to see inside his car engine, so he lifted him up and gave him a good look. James said he has always wanted to see inside his car!

Anthony did a lot of lobstering and fishing while he was gone for the week. He do as much of it as he wanted to, but I don't think the guys he went with realized just how precious this time was. Time with no kids or responsibilities?? If he wasn't sleeping he wanted to be fishing! He came home with a lot of lobster for the freezer, so that was good.