Salt Lake City, St. George, and Seattle All Together

The weekend before Cara started preschool, Mommy grabbed me from school early on Friday and we headed up north! Daddy couldn't join us but it was an opportunity that could not be passed up. Our Seattle cousins were in TOWN! 

Iva and Park finally met each other!

The three big girls

The three little girls

And of course more pictures of the two squishies, who are opposite in coloring!

They stole each other's binkis for a while.

Card games galore

See more pictures of them. They really did like each other

We also went to the zoo with Oma and Apa. It was delightful. We missed the Seattle Romneys for this one.

We then went to Seven Peaks to cool off in the afternoon. No pictures there. Mommy was down a hubby and her hands were always full. So enjoy some pictures of our evening walk to the park.

Iva LOVED the swing and being pushed really high!

Cara Does Preschool...Again

Cara had her first day of preschool on Monday! Okay it's more like her third first day of preschool. She has already done a year and a half of preschool, but  Mom made the decision to keep her for one more year. And Cara couldn't be happier. She loves Miss Tracy and Summit Preschool!

She refuses to wear anything but her Summit Kids shirt. She always wants the prize for wearing it!

End of Summer Freedom

Well we are in to the school year now. Cara has started preschool and I'm gone for six hours a day and already Mom misses the freedom of Summer. Sniff.

But don't worry. We made the most of the end. This is what we were up to in that first week of August.

Lake visits!

Another birthday cake for Cara. (She talked Mommy into the BIG chocolate cake!)

A giant glow in the dark jello slip in slide for Mommy and her friends.

This is how she found Daddy and Iva. Awwww.

So we HAD to have our own slip in slide

Found a new swimming hole that everyone else knew about, but we were just slow....

First week of First Grade, Check!

School felt like it started so early this year! August 11th is a heinous date to start on. It feels like it's still July! That's just my Mommy talking. I was so excited to start school and see my friends again. This year I am in FIRST grade and I get to stay all day at school.

My teacher's name is Mrs. Seegmiller. She's very nice. Her favorite colors are black and white and turquoise. (I keep accidentally mixing that word with trapezoid and saying something like trayquoid and Mom and Dad were really confused!) She eats lunch with us.

We are doing school jobs right now and I want to be a school nurse. Mom thinks what I mean is we are talking about what kind of jobs we can have one day.

I was lucky to have Tariq, Tiana, Ali, Amelia, and Carmendee in my class! Amelia was my favorite friend from kindergarten and my mom kept warning me that we might not be in the same class. She was wrong! Yay!

My favorite part about my first day was lunch time. I love packing my lunch and taking it with me. I asked Mom to get me an alarm clock so that I could surprise her and get in the shower and get ready all by myself that first day. I'm not great at actually getting out of bed when the alarm goes off, but I still like it. I've kept it in my room.

(Somehow Mom always picks the chalk color that doesn't come out in pictures!)

Nine months!

Guest post by Mommy:

It's true. It's been a whole month since the eight month post. It FLEW BY. I mean fastest one yet. It had a lot to do with our jam packed end of summer weeks, but Iva just gets cuter.

Not a lot of changes this month. She's just getting better at everything. She's a fast crawler, pulls up on EVERYTHING, loves food.  LOVES FOOD. She spits out her binki, sometimes THROWS it across the room, if you even approach her with something that resembles a drink or food in your hand. She could have just eaten a full meal and she wants it. I really let her try just about anything. Her big sisters are her favorites. I'm her favorite out of Pete and I, but she lights up around her sisters. She just loves to be in the same room. She plays for hours on the floor in our living room, pulling up on everything, grabbing toys, following the big kids around, she's pretty easy going. She's getting pretty steady on her feet. I think standing on her own is in the very near future. Walking might still be a ways away. She's very good at falling though! She just rolls with it. It's kind of funny to watch. 

She actually spent her first full night away from Mom just last weekend. Thank you, Aunt Angie for being our guinea pig. It was rough. She's still nursing and does not appreciate milk from a different kind of nipple. Plus when you tend to co sleep (don't report me!), you also tend to nurse all night long without realizing it! Angie didn't get as much sleep as she normally does, but she said she survived. We are now in the process of weaning Miss Iva at night and getting her to sleep in her crib so that I can go on an overnighter to Disneyland with Pete with much less stress!

We might have been a little naughty and let her do some riding forward facing. It makes her look so tiny as opposed to huge in her old car seat! 

11:00 church is hard on her...so sleepy.

Water baby. She loves it.

What rolls?

She figured out she can stand up in the crib if she doesn't want to go to bed!

Edit: As of 8/19 Iva weighed in at 20 lbs 7 oz which had her dropping into the 75%! She IS getting skinnier! She was also 27.4 inches long. Woowoo. She's only in the 27% for height but hey we always knew that was going to be that way!

Fireworks, Blue Angels, and a Really Big Watermelon Plant

Well BEFORE our big trip to California, we did lots of things that didn't make it on the blog! Mom has a whole file of pictures that we haven't talked about.

Did we mention that we like to go swimming? We like to go swimming. We went to the Washington City Pool and had a ton of fun...

And then on the 24th of July which is a state holiday for us, we went to the St. George City Pool and got messy.

That night we did a little firework show at our house for the cousins. We didn't know how "the boys" would react so we tried Pop-Its with them. We were not prepared...

Lexi didn't like them so much!

Iva seemed amused

And check out what's been happening to our watermelon plant! It has taken over the world and in fact it's even BIGGER now. I don't know if we will even get watermelon off of it. I kind of don't think so!

That next Saturday, we went to the St. George Airport with Grandpa and Uncle Eric and watched the air show. It was really long and really boring in some parts, but we enjoyed checking out the planes.

Iva didn't love the the first buzz by we got. She cheered up afterwards though.

How sweet is this picture? While Grandma has been recovering, Iva has gotten very mobile, but any time Grandma lies down beside her or near her, Iva comes over and lays her head down and rests with her for a moment.