Preschool

Jared right before his first day of preschool

Better late than never, right??

Here is a post dedicated to Jared's first day of preschool. He's been going now for a few weeks, and he loves it! (I must admit that I am loving it, too, and am wishing it was three days a week instead of two... I didn't even cry on his first day.) He loves the endless crafts and keeps talking about a friend named MaKenna and how much he loves that name. Today he told me we need to name our next baby MaKenna. No, this is not an announcement.

Cute random picture of Maggie. I love her pigtail.

Jared sporting one of the endless handouts he brings home from Sunbeams on Sunday.

Zoo

I'm never very good at these "self-portraits." I love that you can see Maggie's eye in the corner. Yeah, she came, too. This was our first time riding the little train at the zoo.

A couple of weeks ago we went to the zoo with our neighbors the Pratts. They have awesome mechanical dinosaurs right now that Jared loved! (Although at times he seemed a little scared and kept asking me, "Those are pretend dinosaurs, right?") In fact, as I am going through my pictures I realized that I didn't get any pictures of zoo animals--just the dinosaurs. Ha ha! That's ironic.





Jared likes the zoo even more and more each time we go, but he still thinks the most exciting part is the automatic toilets. I think he went to the bathroom four times in the three hours that we were there. I cannot for the life of me convince this kid that bathrooms are yucky and that we should spend as little time as possible in them.


We went to one of the bird shows this time, which I totally recommend! It was pretty cool. It was my favorite part of the visit.

August

Oh, I love this girl!

My parents have a swimming pool at their new house. We have had lots of fun swimming there this summer and will miss it dearly until it is open again!!


I signed Jared up for a six-week soccer league through our city. All of the kids on Jared's team are three- and four-year-olds in our neighborhood and his coach is a mom who lives a few houses down from us.

Jared is the one kicking the ball! I'm wondering where the other team is...

Since Alan and I are both "athletically-challenged," Jared has had a big disadvantage and we haven't practiced with him as much as some of the other parents have, but he is finally starting to get it. We went for several weeks where he was running around saying to the other players, "It's my turn to kick the ball! It's my turn!" So we had to have a little chat about how nobody takes turns in soccer! Right before last week's game he was saying, "Mommy, I hate soccer! I don't want to play!" or "Mommy, I can't wait until I'm a grown-up so I don't have to play soccer anymore," and so I said, "Well, Jared, you don't have to like it, but you have three more games to play." Well, something seemed to click during his last game. Jared suddenly figured out how to play or something--he did a great job chasing after the ball and even made two goals! Today he said to me, "Mommy, I could play soccer all day long!" We'll see how these last two games go...

Cedar City Trip

We are in front of a bristlecone pine, which can grow to be thousands of years old!

This year was our 4th annual trip with my side of the family. We have gone to few different locations, and this year we decided to go to Cedar City. We rented out a cabin with lots of bedrooms and TONS of amenities, and we had lots of fun attending plays at the Shakespeare festival and hiking in places nearby. Mostly it was fun to hang out as a family.

Lots of my family (not everyone)

Jared holding hands with his cute cousin

Alan and the Magster on a hike

We went to Mammoth Cave, which was pretty awesome

More of Jared's Bday and Neola

Jared's real birthday was sandwiched in between two family trips, so we had to try and cram celebrations in where we could. We had a quick celebration with Alan's family on our trip to Neola and then we had my parents over for dinner on Jared's real birthday.

We have gone to Neola three years in a row now with Alan's family and have loved the tradition. This year I think the highlight was swimming in a lake near Vernal. But it was tons of fun to just hang out and eat good food with the family. Thanks, Lani and Steve, for letting us stay in such an awesome place!

The three Stout hearted cousins with Uncle Spencer in Neola

Jared and Uncle Beef in Neola

Grandma and Papa, plus Jared's favorite dinner: rigatoni noodles

Happy 4-year-old!

One of Jared's favorite things to do lately is to play restaurant. I have all the play food from when I was little, and recently my sister-in-law gave us this cute used kitchen set that she no longer needed. I was going to save them for Maggie for when she was older, but since Jared is totally into pretending right now, I decided to give them to him for his birthday now. Jared LOVES playing with them.

Jared's presents. Maggie's looking a little jealous, I think. Or maybe just tired. :)

Birthday Party

Well, we wiped our laptop clean this weekend and *I hope* things are faster now so that I can get back into blogging. I downloaded tons of pictures today and have a lot to write about. First up, Jared's birthday party...



We had a Backwards Birthday theme. I got the idea online, and it seemed fun for some of Jared's older friends but was over the heads of some of his younger friends. Oh, well. I wrote the invitations so that they had to be read in a mirror and we asked everyone to wear their clothes backwards. Friends were greeted by a "Birthday Happy" sign on our front door, and all of the balloons and other decorations were upside down. The treats were cupcakes inside of ice cream cones, and the kids had to sit on backwards folding chairs! We played backwards games, sang "Birthday Happy to You," and read a story about a family who does things wrong all of the time. There were several minor things that went awry with the party, but none of the kids noticed and they had fun, which is what is important. It was a good learning experience for me.

Maggie enjoyed setting up for the party, too!

We played Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and the winner was the person whose tail was farthest away from the correct spot. Jared didn't want me to take his picture.

Some of the guests at the party with their Eeyore tails. I didn't get a better picture of everyone together. Oops.

Opening presents

Story time!

Jared enjoying two of his presents--finger paint and his Toy Story T-shirt.