Picture Day

It's that time of year again: Picture Day. I always get nervous for picture day. I'm not there to make sure that every hair is in place, faces are clean, Tyler's tie is on straight and Nicole isn't sticking her tongue out through the hole in her teeth. So, I decided to take a few pictures at home before they left. I didn't have a lot of time (and the batter was almost dead on my camera) so we only got a few pictures by the front door. Tori wanted to get in on the action, so she grabbed her "fancy" headband (she made it herself) and started posing. Can you tell that she picked out her own outfit?

Welcome to the family

Katelyn Michelle Lenz was born last night to David and Sara Lenz which means... I'm an aunt!!! Again. I have two nieces on the Davis side, but none of my brothers had any children until last night. I'm so happy for them! David has wanted to have a baby since before he was even married. I know that it's something both of them have been looking forward to and I'm glad that everything went so smoothly with pregnancy, delivery, and recovery. I can't wait to meet this sweet little bundle of joy!

Date Night

Ben and I actually went on a date! We really should do this more often.  Basketball season is fast approaching which means I will not see him nearly as much as I would like. I appreciate him working so hard to support our family and I'm glad he has found a job that he enjoys so much and is so good at. I just miss him sometimes. Last night my mom watched the kids while we went out to dinner. We went to Chutneys for Indian food. It was delicious.

When we got home we watched the latest Transformers movie (Dark of the Moon). Transformers movies are kind of corny, but we love them. What's better than robots punching each other and fake blood coming out?
I love my Benamin. Thanks for being awesome.

Nicole's 6th Birthday

It's Nicole's 6th Birthday! I won't say that it seems like just yesterday she was born, because it doesn't feel like yesterday... it feels like 6 years. I don't think I've hit that time in my life where time passes extra quickly. I have loved every single day with this little girl. She is such an amazing girl! She is the girliest girl I have ever met in my life. She loves everything sparkly, pink, or soft. She wants to wear makeup and dress "fancy" all the time. She wants to wear perfume every single day. She loves being a girl! But at the same time, she loves to do karate, loves pirates, and loves to wrestle. Her love of pirates has inspired her birthday party for this year.
8:30 am -- Nicole wanted a special birthday breakfast: scrambled eggs, toast, and chocolate milk. The only reason this is different from normal breakfast is the chocolate milk. Easy enough for me!

9:10 am -- Drove Nicole to school instead of making her walk. Plus, I had to bring her treats for her class and I didn't want to carry it the whole way. What complicated, time consuming treat was a required to make for her kindergarten class? OTTER POPS! It doesn't get any easier than that!

11:30 am -- Nicole wanted a special birthday lunch. Last year I brought Tyler a Happy Meal at school. I assumed she would want the same thing. She surprised me by asking for macaroni and cheese from Panera instead. That's my girl! She also wanted root beer, but Panera doesn't sell it so I had to go down a few doors and get one from Chipolte. She loved eating restaurant food at school.

1:15 pm -- Today was early release so Nicole got to come home early. Her friends walked home from school with her and we had our pirate party.

 The kids made these pirate hats and loved wearing them. They had sword fights and played pirates for an hour. Nicole wanted a very weird unique cake. She wanted a chocolate cake with grey frosting and chocolate decorations. She did the decorating all by herself. I set out the rest of the chocolate and the kids added whatever decorations they wanted to their own slices of cake.

3:00 pm -- Party is over. Whew. Nicole got to hang out and help me put her presents away while she got ready for karate. She was so excited to tell her karate friends that it was her birthday, especially her teacher. She has a little bit of a crush on him. In the hour between the party and karate, Nicole decided to try out her new face paints that Tori gave her:

I was able to scrub it off of Nicole's face before karate, but Tori's eyebrows are stained red! She looks weird and devilish. I hope it fades soon.

5:00 pm -- we had Nicole's birthday dinner. She wanted chicken curry and broccoli. We ate quickly and got ready for the family party.

6:00 pm -- Grandma Lisa, Diego, Aunt Susie, Grandma Belva, and Grandpa Wiley came over for our little get together. We did presents and then had brownies with powdered sugar, whipped cream and hot fudge.

At the end of the day, she was hopped up on sugar, but exhausted. She went to bed feeling happy that she was finally 6 and she couldn't wait to measure herself to see how much she had grown. I'm afraid she's going to be sorely disappointed to find that she's the same height.
Happy Birthday, Nicole! We love you.

Pictures!

As usual, Ben's dad has taken some amazing pictures of my kids. Here's some of my favorites:

Tori's First Day of Preschool

Tori started preschool at Mill Plain United Methodist Preschool! Hooray for me! Do you realize what this means? I will have 2 1/2 hours all to myself on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am WAY too excited about this. When it came time to take pictures of her in front of the door, she followed in her sister's footsteps and wanted to do a whole photo shoot.

When it was time to take her to school, she grabbed her backpack and went running to the school. She was so excited! I was excited for both of us :-). I thought I would go in the classroom with her and hang out, but she asked me to leave so she could start working on her coloring page. There were a bunch of kids crying and there were some very frustrated moms. It was so nice to just kiss her goodbye and walk out the door! I ran over to Wendy's and grabbed myself a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger, fries, and a Diet Coke, then met my mom at Elegant Nails and got a pedicure. After stuffing my face and getting pampered I went to World Market and got some new accessories for my new family room. I picked up all the kids from school and got back to real life. I can't believe this is going to be my life! I love it! It would be different if my kids didn't like school, but they love it and they are becoming smarter, more independent children. Hooray for school!!!

Nicole's First Day of Kindergarten

My little girl starts kindergarten today! In some ways it seems like she's already done kindergarten because she spent all summer working on math and reading. She did 3 years of preschool at Mill Plain United Methodist Preschool and I feel like she has a good head start. She was really excited this morning and we ended up leaving for school REALLY early because she didn't want to wait anymore. She wasn't nervous at all and couldn't wait to learn how to be a kindergartener. She wanted more than just the traditional picture-by-the-front-door so here's our little photo shoot:

 Nicole is really excited to walk to school with Tyler every day. 

We'll see if that excitement lasts once the rain comes.

Here's Nicole with her teacher, Ms. Roberts. Tyler had her for kindergarten and I was THRILLED to learn that Nicole would have her as well. The little flower in her top button hole was a gift from Nicole. Ms. Roberts made a very big deal about how nice it was and how much she liked it. I fear she will be getting a lot of random weeds picked on the way to school during the upcoming school year. There were no tears from me or any of the other moms. I was very proud of all of us.