Last Day of Summer, First Day of School

Friday, August 10th
Monday, August 13th

Here are pictures from the last day of summer, and the first day of school.  (I guess I might never catch up . . . )

I'm not sure if this is actually from the last day of summer, but I liked this picture and it's reminds me of summer, so . . . there you go.

On the last day of summer vacation, we went down to the school to meet the kids' teachers, and bring all our supplies to their classroom.  We pulled up the hill our little red wagon laden with bags of crayons and markers, glue and pencils, paper towels, clorox wipes and reams of paper.  And went to each classroom delivering supplies and meeting the teachers.

Sean, 1st grade, with Mrs. Chavez

Daphne, 3rd grade, with Mrs. Altweis

(She was really busy with lots of other students and their parents, so I felt bad asking for one more picture--hence a dark one.) 

Dallin, 5th grade, with Mr. Dolan

After our trip to the school, we went to Pop-Pops to enjoy one last cold treat of the summer!

First Day of School!

(Hayden snuck into the picture)

All ready to go for the first day!

I think we are in for a great year--the teachers are all seem great, and the kids are enjoying being with their friends again after the summer break.  Daphne has jumped right back into public school without a hitch.  She is making new friends and comes home with a smile everyday.  Hooray!

Hayden and Sydney were excited about the first day of school too, and each of them found a backpack that they wore around all morning.  Hayden even took himself on a pretend field trip to ITZ (the backyard).  

Here's Hayden on his first "First Day of Preschool."  That's a whole story in itself.  I put him in the same preschool that Sean went to, but Sean and Hayden have very different temperaments.  Sean is pretty laid back and is happy to play by himself.  So he was a great peer model in the Autistic-Specific Preschool, where many of the children are not verbal yet.  But Hayden, who loves to talk and interact with other people, has not adjusted well.  So after two weeks of fighting with and bribing him to go to preschool, we've decided that not everyone is cut out to be a peer model, and Hayden is one of them.  So, he'll have a second First Day of Preschool this Tuesday.  Hopefully he'll do alright in this one . . .

Some projects

Okay, here are some projects I've worked on the last few months.

This first one is a project Jenny showed us when she was out here for the 4th of July.  What makes this project remarkable is that she was only here for 2 days, one of which was the 4th, so of course we didn't do any projects on that day.  But the next afternoon, during our sister's outing, Jen convinced us that we could make these cute little sign posts.  With nothing but a picture on Jen's camera, Emma, Julianne, Jenny and I went out and got the supplies, cut, sanded and stained the wood and even started assembling these sign posts.  

Unfortunately Jenny had to leave the next morning, or we probably would have finished these puppies in about 2 days.  So what makes this doubly remarkable, is that Julianne and I actually finished our posts a couple weeks later without Jenny to help us be brave and figure out what to do!  

Jenny took her pieces to her new home to assemble, so below are pictured mine, Jewels' and Emma's.  We also made one for Mom, but didn't have the right colored door-knob at the time of the picture, so hers was still in the garage.

They turned out pretty cute, if I say so myself.

The following are more of those fun table runners that Mom and Jenny taught us to make:

April/(Easter)

May/June/Summerish

4th of July

Obviously, not a table runner or a project--just a cute little Sydney