the beginning

Monday was the first day of school. My big little girl started kindergarten. Sigh.

Because school here starts at 0800 and we walk/bike to school Ella has to wake up at 0630. (And I have to wake up earlier still.) She was very excited and very prepared. She had set out an outfit the night before and had me braid her hair so it would be curly.

Tada:

Here are my children eating breakfast at 0645.

Here they are getting some play time in at 0705.

At 0715 we are out the door, back pack on, and ready to go!

Ella rode her bike. Eli rode his bike.

Rhys rode in the stroller. I pushed him while roller blading.

On our way to school.

This is the "secret passage" (a wall blocks the view of the continuing sidewalk.)

Ella's bike, safe and secure.

Ella was still excited and refused to come home with me. Fine, go to school then.

The school allows parents to eat lunch with their children any day. Ella invited me to eat with her on day one. I was thirty seconds late because I had to sign in as a guest in the office. She was already sitting down with her class.

I almost left to let her eat lunch and make friends, but she jumped up and moved to sit by me at the guest table...all the way at the other end of the cafeteria.

She was giddy with excitement and told me everything they had done thus far. Then she noticed the note I had put in with her lunch. She just about bust a gut when she saw the smiley face I drew...

Ella left with her class after lunch. I just had to document that she is tall.

Eli really missed his best friend while she was at school. Luckily Chris had the day off and took him to the beach. They swam with jellyfish. Eli loved it.

The problem with school is that it is a recurring event. I'm fine sending my girl off to school for 7 1/2 hours every once in a while, but they want her five days a week! That is a lot of waking up at 0600. I'm more of an 0700 kind of morning person.

science/art fun

Today we did a fun science/art project. The idea came from Crayola.com.

You squirt liquid glue (elmer's) in a design onto your paper. Then you sprinkle salt on the glue. Then you use droppers to drop colored water (food dye + water) onto the salty glue.

You get to watch the colors spread across the picture as the water spreads across the salt. When the colors mix you make new colors. Science is cool.

See how much fun it is?

This was a big hit with Ella too.

Treasure

I made fried rice for the first time last night. It was a fun dinner to make and to eat and here is why...

Fried rice is a meal of left-overs. I planned ahead and made extra rice with dinner last night so I could use it tonight. I had planned ahead and had leftover chicken to add too. I knew you need vegetables so I added carrots from the fridge and peas from the freezer. Then I started to have fun.

You see, as I was stirring the rice/vegetable mixture I was reminded of my father who likes to use leftovers to make fried potatoes. I stood there stirring and thinking of the weird additions he would make to the potatoes in the pan- ham and peas, ground beef and corn, etc. At this point I decided to add the left over broccoli in my fridge. When the fridge was open I saw a left over corn on the cob. Perfect! I grabbed it and a knife and added the corn kernels to the pan.

As I stirred the rice once more I felt somehow closer to my dad.

I had the urge to add cheese to my fried rice, but did not because that would be gross. Had I been making my dad's fried potatoes though cheese would have been absolutely necessary. Several types of cheese if possible.

I decided that my dad's fried potatoes are simply his version of fried rice.


These epiphanies were nice, but the fun came when I sat down with my children to eat the fried rice. Ella was so excited. She said it was like digging for treasure. Then she made it into a game. The vegetables were the treasure and whoever found the most treasure won. Her favorite was the eggs and Eli and I preferred the corn.

Can you find any treasure?

excited

Ella is really excited for school to start on Monday. Today she colored, and cut out these back to school pictures to decorate our front window with. You can't read it, but there is a sign that says "Back to school" underneath the block letters Ella wrote her own message: "Yay, I like school."

this elephant has two teeth!

Some updates:

Rhys is elephant walking.
He really wants to be walking and loves it when I hold his hands and help him walk around. Here he is on the lawn at my parent's house in Utah:

I don't have a picture of this, but Rhys has two teeth! (front bottom) He is growing up so fast!

We love going to the beach. We live a mile from the Gulf of Mexico and go to the beach about once a week. Sand castles are fun, but so is getting buried...

Our new home has grass! We love having a lawn and the kids love running through the sprinklers.

We bought a new fridge for the house we are renting. Ella loves that she can get her own water from the fridge's water dispenser. I love that Ella can get her own water and wants to get Eli's and mine, and her dads...

Chris has started his new job (finally). He sees an impressive amount of patients each shift and feels like he's pulling his weight so that is good. I like that he doesn't work as much as he did in residency. It's almost like I have a husband!

Our next adventure is that school starts next week. I'll keep you posted...