First day of school & soccer!!

After close to two months of researching schools all around Bend, we finally decided on a school that we absolutely love! It may seem strange to start Tristan over halfway through the year, but since I watched Eli every day in the fall (calling it GG Academy!), he wasn't able to start in September. And then when we started looking in December/January with the hopes of sending him somewhere soon, we couldn't find a place that we liked that had immediate availability. So I started to come to terms with the idea that I would have to wait until next fall to start him in preschool even though I knew how important it was for him to be in school right now. After searching high and low, we finally found one we loved and enrolled him for September...only to find out that he would be 9th on the waitlist...yikes.  So, back to the drawing board it was. We started looking at more school-like settings, similar to where I taught at (and loved!) back in my teaching days and narrowed it down to two places. But his birthday was two weeks too late for one of them. Bummer. So we went back to another school that we had also heard amazing things about, which I initially had vetoed because of how far it was from our house. After giving it another chance and taking a tour, we knew it was the place for us! And added bonus was that they had an opening right now! Sometimes things work out the way they were meant to work out, no matter how long it takes :)

There are so many similarities to this school and the one I taught at for so many years - I love it! It's preschool-12th grade, all the students wear uniforms, they have small class sizes and have a Christian background. I'm looking forward to Tristan's next few years of preschool experience! And then seeing if he will continue to go there for all of his school career!

All dressed up on his first day of school!  I love the look of his uniform - reminds me of the preppy clothes I always dressed him in when he was little :)  Maybe it was a foreshadowing of his school career :)

 

In his classroom!  Even though he was feeling pretty anxious leading up to his first day, he did a pretty good job after finding out that his first activity was playing with red playdoh at his seat :)

 

Not only was it Tristan's first day of school, it was also Talia's first day of soccer! I was excited to find activities to do with Talia two mornings a week while Tristan was at school. This will be the first time that Talia and I will have some alone mommy and daughter time!

Pretty girly soccer outfit :)

 

She was so excited to "kick, kick, kick!" and couldn't stop saying "ball" the whole car ride over :)

 

SO excited for these milestones in the kids' lives!  And so excited to share in these memories with them :)

More February Adventures

Here are some pics of a few more February adventures.  Even though I captured many moments, there were times I wish I would have taken out the camera and forgot to - bummer!  Like when we went to Black Butte to visit friends and when we had the Carters over for breakfast whom we hadn't seen in years!! Oh well, at least we captured these fun moments and have them to share!

February 1st just seemed like a donut kind of day!

Feb 1st is also the day we celebrate Bella & Brody's birthdays!  Hard to believe they are 7 & 12 this year!

 

The drums double as seats, too

Bringing the concert into the living room

The touch table was a big hit on the two days we watched Eli!

Snuggle and Paw Patrol time was also a big hit :)

And then this happened.  Not only does Talia have a thing with putting pull-up diapers on her head, but she also found a resourceful way to watch the iPad with big bro when space was limited.  Good look all around :)

They wanted to share a chair at breakfast one morning. These two can be pretty cute when they want to :)

Since we weren't able to go up north for my mom's bday, they were able to come down the next weekend to see all of us.  Papa decided he wanted to build the world's smallest snowman with what was left of the remaining snow from our huge snowstorm!

February has brought us crazy weather.  It's been crazy cold one week and then pretty mild the next.  Here we are without our coats on - just our stripes and vests!

Looking forward to more park weather in the months ahead!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Even though today didn't go exactly as planned (another potentially huge snowstorm thwarted our plans to travel north for Grama's bday - big boo :( we made the best of it and got to hang out with friends who were in the area for the weekend.  It ended up being a fun day even though plans changed!

For some reason, I had an abundance of valentine outfits that I got to dress them in this year :)

Nick & Leah got to come over and spend Valentine's Day with us!

A little blurry, but these two had the best time together!!

Valentine's party!!

T&T got to go their very first Valentine's Day party!  We usually celebrate the holiday by going up to Seattle to celebrate my Mom's bday, but this year we also got to celebrate with some of our new friends.  So lucky to have met some new friends who love to do all these fun things with their little ones!

First Valentine project was to paint this frame for Grama.  So wish I would have gotten a pic of the final product.  He did such a good job!

Making his first valentines for his new "best friends" (as he calls them :)

 

 

All dressed and ready to go!  Gotta love the festive outfits :)

This Valentine touch table was a huge hit for Talia.  She has a thing for scooping and dumping anything - water, beans, popcorn kernels, etc.  Not sure if this could be indicative of future interests, but it's pretty fun to watch her :)

Snowstorm Birthday Parties

Luckily for us, both of our birthday parties we had during the snowstorm were at the same place - Pappy's!  All we had to do was walk back and forth between two tables and celebrate with both groups - Avery Hansen's 1st birthday and Eli's 5th birthday.  Even though it was a bit treacherous to be out on the roads, it was a great reason to be out of the house for the first time in six days!

Gotta love Pappy's!  Enough things to keep kids busy for hours!

 

A very cute Brookelynn Hansen :)

I just realized that I didn't get any pics of the birthday girl and boy.  But I swear that is why we were there :)

SNOW!!!

I think it's safe to say that we had a pretty big snowstorm.  For this "west of the mountains" girl who watches the weather religiously and gets pretty excited for a few snowflakes, I was just as excited as T&T to watch it dump snow continuously for five days straight.  However, it was poor timing that it also happened to be the same week that Brian had a work trip in Nashville for the week.  And had to take the car to Portland to catch his flight after his Bend flight was canceled last minute.  And since the Land Rover was out of commission for the time being, that meant we were stranded at home the entire week without a car and with only one thing to do - play in the snow!!  By the time Brian flew back into Portland on Friday, there was also a massive storm there, but since we'd been stranded for the whole week, I needed him and the car home ASAP!  Even if it meant taking him 6 1/2 hours in a blizzard to get home.  Ah, the joys of living on the "other side of the mountains" :)

Day 1 of the snow. They loved watching the huge flakes falling from the sky. Notice where the height of the snow is on the fence. It gets considerably higher as the week continues!

The dogs probably love playing outside more than we do! 

A snow selfie :)

Not sure what they are looking for, but digging and sniffing in the snow is one of their favorite things to do!

Day 4.  So pretty at dusk.  And really starting to add up!  This was actually just hours before Brian got home.

And then the next morning, this is what we woke up to!  Notice the Snow Grand Canyon we had to dig for the dogs :)  And how high it is on the fence!

This is how much snow fell in one night.  Brian had just arrived home the night before and in less than 12 hours, the car easily had two+ feet of snow covering it!

Tristan helping to dig us out that morning.  After being home-bound for most of that week, we were beyond ready to get out of the house and do something!  And luckily, we had two birthday parties to attend!  Little did we realize that the roads were almost impossible to drive on with our low Audi.  But we were determined to get out of the house and be social!

More play time for the dogs.

Playing Where's Waldo with the Land Rover became our new favorite game :)

 This is how it looked when we opened our back door.  3+ feet piles of snow ready to spill inside.

Trip to the mailbox was a pretty big event.