Jewelia's Dance Class

Yesterday, Jewelia went to her 1st dance class.

She was excited to show off her new dance class clothes and use her cute little dance backpack.

She made lots of new friends and learned a new dance.

She liked it best when she got to be the queen and do the kings and queens dance in ballet.

My Joys, Fears, Obsessions, and Surprises...(tagged from Jenn)

3 JOYS:

My family
My home
My job

3 FEARS:
Losing our jobs and not having any money,
Our vehicles blowing up,
Having to move

3 OBSESSIONS:
Cleaning, Organizing, and rearranging the furniture,
Budgeting and figuring out the bills,
Chocolatey Chocolate milk

3 SURPRISING FACTS:
I own a unicycle,

I can pogostick 4,003 times without stopping and without hands while clapping "Hey, Mickey, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind! Hey Mickey!"

I am an excellent poet and can whip up any creative rhyming song, jingle, invitation, or story in less than an hour.

(OK, so most of you who know me probably don't find any of those surprising, but oh, well.)

First Day of School!?

OK, I just burst out laughing when I uploaded this picture.

Yes, we are going to SCHOOL, but by the looks on their faces you'd think we were going to the dentist or something.

I guess it was just really bright outside, here this one's a little better:



Well, we got the boys all ready with their "cool" shirts and new shoes and backpacks. Micah finished his tons of summer homework projects, and they were ready to go.

We let Micah run on ahead to his class. (We hope he found it because we had no idea where it was.) And then we walked Caleb to his. He was excited!

Not too surprisingly, he was the smallest kid in the whole class. If you want to see a cute picture of all the other kids as giants and little Caleb, then click on our parenting the gifted child blog. For those of you who didn't know, Caleb skipped Kindergarten and is today in a class of 1st and 2nd graders. He is 5 in a class with 6-8 year olds. He'll do alright though. He's a good kid. Here he is in his class at his desk:

The next exciting thing is for Jewelia. While Micah started dance classes again last week, Jewelia gets to start dance class for the first time this Wednesday.

Finally--Professional Family Pictures!!!

Yea! We were finally able to go have a professional family portrait done again! It's been a while. The last portraits we had done as a family was in January of 2006 when Jewelia was only 7 months old. Well, we had to wait until there was a super sale and I had lots of free coupons, but we did it!

Most of them turned out pretty well. Macey didn't smile in any of them, but I'm not expecting too much out of the baby for family pictures. She wasn't crying at least.

And of course, we always have to get at least one of the kids just by themselves. I call this the "dog pile on top of Micah" picture:



Oh, and don't worry, all of you grandparents will be getting your own copy soon of both the kids picture and a family picture! I bet you can't wait! Which one will it be?

How much stuff does he need!?

OK, so this post is in no way to say anything bad about Micah's school or his teacher, but how much stuff does he have to have!?

Look at all this---go ahead and count.....

For school supplies that are REQUIRED before school starts, he had to have:

-10! folders

-6 composition notebooks

-highlighters

-expandable filing folder with at least 10 or more pockets
(I'm not even sure if I did that one right because really it only had 5 but I'm assuming you can use each space as a count. The ones with 10 pockets were like its own suitcase.)

-large 3 ring binder

-index tabs

-pens

-pencil sharpeners

-erasers

-pencils

-pencil zipper bag thing

I mean I had to stuff it tight to even fit in his backpack! I guess he'll be carrying his lunch box separate. And it weighs a ton, and this is even before he gets to school! If he's got to bring any textbooks home, then I don't know where he's going to carry them!

Remember, he's only going into 3rd grade! I don't think I ever had to have that many folders or notebooks in all my days of school and even college!

Sorry to be venting, and I know there are a lot of teachers out there who buy school supplies out of their own pocket, but by the time I bought all his supplies, backpack and lunchbox, it was over $50! Maybe that's nothing, but it's a lot to me, and I don't even know what Caleb is going to need yet. (Oh, and I haven't even started on school clothes!)

It was so stuffed and heavy that we couldn't even hang it on the hook thingy (thanks Sally, I finally had Troy install them) with the other bags. See--it has to sit on the floor so the hook thingy won't rip off the wall.

(Oh, yeah, by the way, Caleb asks that I mention he has a new song on his blog you can see.)

A pretty good day is when.......

Caleb is practicing his spelling words like a good boy.....



Micah is playing quietly in his room........

And amazingly enough, BOTH girls took a nap!

Plus, I can reorganize and decorate Uncle Nathan's room all nice to surprise him when he comes home. I even hang pictures and install a mirror on the wall!

Now he can feel at home :).

And you know what would be even better? If Troy took me out on a date.....hint hint...

Welcome to our home Uncle Nathan!

This week we got a wonderful addition to our family--Troy's youngest brother, Nathan, moved in with us. The kids are all pretty excited about it. He has his own personal paparazzi. Jewelia watches his every movement and reports minute by minute plays of what he is doing. Caleb and Micah are in heaven because they think they have new video games to play, and Troy likes having a computer buddy.

It's pretty funny that they can't just talk to each other, but they have to instant message one another from one computer upstairs to Nathan's laptop 2 floors down in his room. It's like calling someone's cell phone that are in the same house with you.

Anyway, we are glad to have Uncle Nathan and hope that he isn't bugged too much by us here surrounding him and Jewelia reporting on his every move.