Kindergarten!

Today was pretty huge.  Lucas started Kindergarten (and this is my 200th post, but Kindergarten is much more thrilling, DUH)!  After a weekend spent feeling pretty hot and cold about it (he alternated between "I can't wait for Kindergarten!" and "I am NOT going to Kindergarten!"), he woke up today feeling ridiculously enthusiastic about it.  He was in a great mood, and there was so much excitement about this new adventure!

Breakfast!  He requested pumpkin bread for his first day of school, so I made some yesterday. 

It was so hard to get him to look at the camera when he kept seeing buses drive by.

With Poppy, who was just as excited about Lucas going to Kindergarten (and having the monopoly on the adult for a few hours a day). 

And he's off!  We are lucky enough to live right around the corner from school (literally), so we get to walk.  You can feel his excitement, right?

When we got to his classroom, the nerves started up.  The smile wasn't quite so big...

We got to step inside for just a second before he got in line with the rest of the kids and I took a quick picture.  Yep, definitely getting nervous now...

 The morning routine is to line up with the class, and this was when he realized that I wasn't going in with him.

But, he quickly recovered.  Oh, look at my sweet boy!

There he goes!  No tears!  Actually, I didn't see a single child who was upset or crying.  Big win for the Kindergartners today!

After a couple of hours (he only goes half-days and Mondays are early release, so it's an even shorter day), Poppy and I walked back over to get him and after waiting for a few minutes, we saw him emerge from the cafeteria.  He did it!  He survived his first day of Kindergarten!

On the walk home, he told us that Kindergarten is "way so much cooler than preschool."  He said his favorite part was playing "on that huge playground" and when I asked if he went down the slide his response was "Uh, YEAH.  Lots of times." :-)

I'd had the idea to take a few pictures to really celebrate his first day.  It was foggy this morning (and we didn't have time to get fancy), but the sun had come out by the time we went to get him, so I set up this desk I got at a thrift shop a year ago (I had intended on painting/refinishing it in some way...obviously it's not a top priority on the list of craft projects) in the backyard.  They turned out exactly how I had wanted!  And he cooperated, but he did tell me "Mommy, I listened at school so much better than I listen at home."  No surprise there.

And a couple of silly poses after the serious smiling was over. 

Cheers to Kindergarten!

Soccer!

After the success of tee-ball, I asked Lucas if he'd like to play soccer this year.  He seemed okay with the idea, so I signed him up in August and his first practice was Monday, September 02.  His first game was yesterday, after having practiced only twice with his team!  It is really cute to watch the littlest kids play.  He's on a team with four other boys, none of them have played before but some are better than others.  While a couple of the kids are really intense, my Lucas is more into dancing his way across the field and chasing dragonflies.  That's my boy!

Here is my little soccer star at his first game.  The coaches for both teams were really great, and they helped each of the kids on their respective teams to score at least one goal.  The look on Lucas's face when he kicked the ball into the net was priceless.  He was so thrilled with himself!

Yep, he's on the orange team just like he was for tee-ball.  Unlike in tee-ball where they are given cute team names (Lucas was on the Grasshoppers), there aren't team names for soccer.  So they had to name themselves and they came up with The Avengers.  Striking fear into all of the 4 and 5 year old boys soccer teams in town. :-)

Oh, oops. I forgot I had a blog.

What the fuzz?  Is 2013 really two thirds (almost) over and this is my very first post since our little Elf left us!?  Dang.  Well, it doesn't matter what you call it: a break, hiatus, or sabbatical (fancy word!).  The reality is that I got lazy and sometimes went weeks without even thinking about the blog at all.  I had every intention of catching up (ha, ha, not really!) but alas, I found it much more exciting to be lazy.  Let's see...what has happened in the 8.5 months since my last post?

Holly and Brad visited at the end of December and we got to celebrate Brad's 29th birthday on December 31 (which is also kind of a holiday, in case you weren't aware).  I told him in advance that I would make him camo cupcakes, so after reading up and researching (for real, I researched this) I thought "Eh, it can't be that hard."  WRONG.  It was so time consuming and the end result looked like dog barf.  Whatever, now that I've had the experience of making destroying camouflage cupcakes, so I don't think I'll ever feel the need to do it again.

At first, the frosting was okay and looked semi-camouflage.

And then it went to Hell.

Let's say it together now: HOT MESS.

Hard partying crew.

Birthday (interpretive) dance?  Who knows...

Unicorn siting.

Holly, Brad, Brad's Beard and Chloe.

We went to Coupeville on New Year's Day.  It was freezing, we were all tired, but it was a beautiful day.  And I got this picture of my little darlings.  So cute.

Grandma and Grandpa visited toward the end of January.  We wandered over to Anacortes and watched the ferry, threw rocks in the water, and just acted silly.

At the end of January, I felt compelled to take pictures of the moon.  While going through old pictures so I could try and catch up on everything that has happened over the last 8.5 months, I found like 25 pictures of the moon from January 25, 2013.  It must have seemed important at the time...

In March, we started to come out of our Winter Coma and started to see signs of life.

And the most vile, disgusting sign of life in the world... And my sweet daughter just couldn't get enough.  So gross.

Lucas played tee-ball in the Spring.  The guilt from not blogging every single second of this is pretty heavy.  It was hilarious and so much fun to watch him go from not having a clue what he was doing to kind of having a tiny inkling what he was doing.  Baseball pro he ain't (not yet, at least), but it that's okay.  Tee-ball is still pretty rad.

Lucas was the recipient of the "Best Listener" award at the end of the season.  Yeah, I definitely did laugh when they called his name for that particular award.

We went to the Tulip Festival in the Spring.  It was lovely.  It always is!

In May, Lucas turned 5 years old.  FIVE.  I swear, he was my tiny baby last week, where has the time gone?  He has turned into a real little person with ideas and interests, likes and dislikes.  He likes cookies.  He does not like cake.  And so, for his 5th birthday, he got a cookie cake.  And the solar system, because what 5 year old doesn't want to stare at the planets every night?

A major, MAJOR milestone was reached in June.  Lucas said goodbye to preschool.  It was bittersweet.  Bitter because "he's still MY LITTLE BABY, right!?"  But sweet because "Hell yeah, I don't have to pay for preschool for a year!  Woo hoo!"  I wrote up a sign on the little chalkboard and made him pose like I did for his first day of preschool.  

Bye, cubby...

Bye, little blue bus...

Goodbye, preschool.

Our Summer was busy with three little trips to Seattle (and one quick day trip to Vancouver, the Canadian one) and taking care of our garden.  We grew almost everything from seed this year (one cherry tomato plant was bought at the store along with a few marigolds), so it was a lot of fun to watch it all from start to finish.  In the middle of July I had a real, serious dream-come-true moment when I saw the orcas for the first time.  I saw the report that they were in the area, loaded the kids up in the car and we set out on an adventure.  After an hour of nothing and feeling very discouraged, we trudged back to the car to head home.  Then (of course it was THEN!) I looked out... and there it was, the thing I've looked for every time I've been around water since we moved here almost four years ago.  A huge, black dorsal fin.  There they were.  Finally.  At last.  It was the single most exciting experience of my life.

She did not share my noisy enthusiasm.

Of course, that's not all that has happened over the last 8.5 months.  There have probably been a ton of other moments that were totally worthy of being written about.  But this is a pretty good summary, I think.  I need to make a better effort to keep this up to date, since I'm so, so, SO terrible at photo-albums, this is a nice place for Lucas and Poppy to look at pictures of themselves.  But that will only work if I don't take 8.5 months off at a time! ;-)