Congratulations Miss Maddie!

 Today Miss Maddie finished her final day of Kindergarten.  She was so proud of herself during the performance and was so excited to announce she was now a first-grader, but kept saying "Ohhhh Miss Falson" in a sad voice as well.  She has truly LOVED her K teacher.  She is blonde, blingy, sophisticated, stylish.....all the things that Maddie also LOVES :)  It has amazed me how much Miss M has learned this year.  She went from only really recognizing her letters and a few small sightwords, was only able to write her own name, and new her numbers but no addition/subtraction to a child who is reading at almost a third grade level, loves to create her own books and does a pretty darn good job at basically spelling most of the words right, and can now add and subtract up through the teens.

and of course a reminder picture from the first day of school to end this post:



R's Preschool Graduation

Can you believe it is over?  I can't.  It seems like just yesterday I walked both of my kids to their first day of preschool/kindergarten.  Now I feel like I blinked and this school year is complete.  Who allowed my children to continue to grow older?  I surely didn't authorize this. 

Robby and his buddies were so cute at their "show" {I am calling promotion this because technically Robby is not being promoted; he will be attending some form of preschool for one more year}.  They all recited each letter and the sound they make, their blended phonics they have learned and then Miss Rosie talked about what each child wanted to be when they grow up.  Any guesses what Robby told her???

Why a "Monster Truck Driver" of course.  He wants to be able to "smash lots of other cars for fun and do lots of cool tricks".  Imagine that.  Lots of other kids picked Superhero's like Spiderman, Superman, IronMan, even one child wanted to be a missionary.  But of course my child wanted to be a Monster Truck Driver.  I have never been such a proud Mommy!!  {he looked pretty darn pleased when she announced his choice to the group}

Thank you Miss Rosie! You have been so kind and patient with Mr R.  You have fueled his desire to learn without squashing his vibrant, inquisitive, active personality.  You have even allowed him to gradually accomodate to being at preschool on his mad/angry days too with all the patience in the world.  He has loved all the fun ways you allow them to learn: with movement, songs, learning all about different animals, coloring, eating, etc. You lovingly prod each of the children along to become the best they can be; for that I am eternally grateful!

And Eli sure liked the food and fun as well!

{now just FOUR days until Kindergarten promotion as well: YIKES}

Helper

The other day, Eli was able to have a daddy-son date.  Jesse took him to his construction job and then they browsed a few stores and had some lunch.  Eli came home proudly holding a brand new tool box just for him.  We filled it up with our "kid tools" and then he went to town helping us "fix" our backyard.  My favorite part:  seeing him proudly wear Jesse's hat the entire time he was outside "working"!

Happy {Late} Easter All!!**UPDATED**

Easter Morning:

The Easter left us a note with rhymes to figure out where our Easter Baskets were hidden.  Miss M was up for the challenge and even put her Ugg boots on to go hunting for the goodies :)

{nice hair Mr E}

My New Home***Updated***

I have delayed this post for quite some time, but now that we have officially paid our deposit for the fall semester tuition as well as a deposit for our townhouse to rent I feel like it is official!!  In less than fourteen weeks we are MOVING!!  Not just down the street, or to "the other side of town" in Mesa, but instead we are headed to New Hampshire.  My husband has been planning on going back to school for quite awhile now, but finally the timing is right.  For the past year or so, he has spend countless hours studying, taking the GMAT, writing essays, and applying for MBA school at some of the best universities in the country.  All of his hard work has payed off, and he ended up getting accepted to 3 top ten business schools: Kellogg (Chicago), Wharton (Phildelphia) and Dartmouth (Hanover NH).  It has been a difficult decision for him in narrowing down his options and picking one, after all they are all such great schools. In the end, Dartmouth won out and I don't think we could be more thrilled.  Several weeks ago we attended the schools "Admitted Students Weekend" and were able to meet lots of new people, including three other fabulous LDS couples.  We all really connected and I think that was the clincher on our decision.  Even though this will be a BIG change in our lives, we cannot wait!  We will be trading the desert and cactuses for the forest and fishing (as well as LOTS of snow).  Yeah for being "Tuckies for Life"!!

ASW: "Admitted Student's Weekend" April 15-17, 2011

Jesse and I went on a trip ALL BY OURSELVES for student weekend at Dartmouth.  It was sooo much fun! I cannot believe it has been 4+ years since our last vacation together ALONE.  After having such a blast together, we promised ourselves that we won't let another four years go by without going somewhere alone again.

Some of the fun things we did together include:

 **Red eye plane ride the first night out.  Jesse somehow convinced me to take a small (1/4) tablet of his Ambien to "help me sleep on the plane".  End result:  feeling horrible, like I was going to pass out/throw up/etc.  Got up to use the restroom, became dizzy and sweaty, somehow stumbled my way to the back of the plane probably looking like I was completely intoxicated, leaning my head on someone's seat and asking them for "help" {luckily they were asleep}, and finally managing to pull myself together enough to practically fall into the restroom.  HORRIBLE experience let me tell you.  I used the restroom, splashed my face, put my head in between my knees for awhile, until I finally felt good enough to make it back to my seat.  I don't think I will EVER take Ambien again.

**Taking a 3 hour nap together once we arrived in our hotel room.  It was delicious.  I cannot even remember the last time we took a nap together for that long.  Probably not since our overnight flight back from Hawaii four years ago. 

**The first night meeting our "new family" in New Hampshire.  We had so much fun going to dinner with some other couples attending Dartmouth in the fall and it was relieving to see how quickly we all bonded.  It totally relieved some of the stress I felt about moving.

**Bachelor pad dinner on Friday night.  We were paired up with several guys that are first year students at Darmouth and they had several of us over to dinner.  They were all OBVIOUSLY single/dating scene era.  They spent a good portion of the time talking about drunk memories until they realized that Jesse and I were married with THREE kids.  Then they quickly began to reassure us that Hanover is "a great place to have a family".  It was pretty funny :)

**Touring Sachem Village {ie: graduate student townhouses} and knowing that "I had to get in there".  Luckily we ended up securing a three bedroom townhouse there, and just found out that all the other LDS families are also going to be living there!!

**Late nights at cocktail parties with dancing, live music, lots of laughter, and of course people watching.  We have not stayed out late in years together, so we felt so young and free again staying out late and then sleeping in every morning. 

**Going to church on Sunday and meeting some of the people we will be getting to know when we move there in the fall.  I was excited to see a good portion of young children at church.....new friends for my kids of course.

**Going to the birthplace of Joseph Smith and taking pictures at the Memorial.

**Getting lost in the Upper Valley on our way back to Boston and finally being so exhausted that we stayed overnight in Manchester.

**And finally, missing our children A LOT and looking forward to coming home and spending some time with them.

Me with Andrea, Maren, and Michelle--aka Ms. Holbrook :)

Miss M's elementary school complete with an open field next door to play in.

(and yes that IS a cemetary you see)

Sachem Village:

This is what our backyard will look like!

Handsome Husband:

Nerdy Wife:

Joseph Smith Memorial:

Pretty Gorge???

Love this Man so much!!

Easter Egg Hunt/School Fall Festival

My cute pictures from Easter day and a "fun special trip" with the hubs will not download onto my computer, sooo until that happens I will update on some of our other events recently.

Easter Egg Hunt:

First off the day before Easter, we had a fun breakfast at Cortina's "island park" (a small part of our neighborhood that is separated from the rest of us by Rittenhouse) and then an Easter egg hunt for the kids. The kids had Easter baskets in hand and were seriously prepared to find themselves some eggs :)

Robby and his buddy Jude crack me up with this running picture while still holding hands!  Robby is such our "friend" kid.  He is always on the look-out for a playmate at the park, constantly asks me when he gets to play with our street friends {aka: Jack, Tyler, Matthew and especially Luke}, asks me repeatedly when he gets to have his playgroup with Asa, Peyton and Jude, etc... so of course he was glued to Jude's side during the entire morning. They played Monster Trucks together {and lost yet another of our Monster Trucks}, ran around the playground like Superheroes, and of course ganged up together for the egg hunt. 

 Maddie on the other hand is such a free-spirited little girl.  Although she loves friends as well, she is perfectly content to hang out and do her own thing.  She constantly amuses herself with make believe in her mind, imaginary friends, playing gymnastics alone, and coloring pictures and making her own story books.  So she was bound and determined to go out on the Easter egg hunt all on her own and conquer as many as possible.

 Eli has faithfully remained the baby of the family.  He loves being "babied", cuddled, hugged and played with.  Faith (one of our neighborhood babysitters) loves him and is always coming over at ward get togethers and adopting him for a brief time.  He loves the attention and was happy to let her help him with finding his treats.

{Funny story: the other day Robby was in time out and I was talking to him about his behavior.  When I asked him if big boys throw tantrums where they kick and hit, Robby replied that only babies do indeed exhibit these traits.  Eli was in the background and immediately piped in with "Mommy, I baby Eli."  Took the seriousness to our conversation immediately away and I couldn't help but bust out laughing and reply with "Yes you are."  Which begs the question: If your child is old enough to tell you something like that, is he really considered a baby?

Yes I think he still is......

 After the kids were done finding there alloted sixteen eggs, or a few more if your name starts with R or M, they started a fun game of egg tosses.  Jesse and Br Taylor did pretty darn good with theirs, until the egg broke on J's shoe....gross. 

Cortina Fall Festival:

Every year our neighborhood school has a huge carnival complete with snow cones, rides, petting zoo's, bounce houses, you name it.  For years I have avoided going, because none of the kids knew anything about it.  This year was different.  Miss M knew ALL ABOUT the carnival and reminded me the entire week about it.  So when Friday night hit, off to the carnival we went.  We played on bounce houses, rode the teacups one time (Miss M and Robbs), visited the adorable petting zoo, rode the trackless train (boys), played a few games and of course stopped for snow cones before heading home.  We had some tired but very pleased children that night :)

{Robby looks so grown up in this picture.....he just recently grew into size 13.5 shoes}