Emma's First Day

I will catch up. Really.  Emma's first day as a 2nd grader was great. She has a lot of friends from her 1st grade class in her class again along with one of her BFF's who was in a different class last year. She has a really fun teacher who is having her first baby in the next few weeks, but she will be back after Spring Break so we are happy about that. She chases boys at recess and is getting perfect grades. The first few weeks were tough to get back into a routine and during one meltdown she cried out "2nd grade is a lot harder than 1st grade!" How rough it is to progress to the next grade! She's so funny.

Brielle's First Day

The first day of school came so quick this year! Brielle started the day before Emma this year and she was pretty excited. She's attending the same preschool she did last year except this year she is going 3 times a week instead of two. The drop-off was also a lot easier this year because Brielle's two cousins, Ike and Isabelle, are going to be in her class again! I can't believe only one more year until Kindergarten!

Our Dash of Summer

Brielle's two sleeping pictures just make me laugh. She looks completely comfortable and exhausted. That was what our summer felt like. We worked so hard in our yard, but we played hard as well. When we had a free night we went to Lagoon with our season passes (even though I didn't bring my camera when we went there) or we went to the Treehouse museum, or went swimming, or painted our toenails, or went to a kids' movie, or had friends/cousins come over, or had a BBQ, or go to the fireworks, etc. Each night Nick and I would collapse into bed completely wiped out from the day.  There were so many times we complained about how tired we were, but we also realized that we were having so much fun with our kids and hopefully creating a lot of good memories as a family.
We also participated in the "YES! Utah Dash for Donation". It is a walk/run at Weber State University that promotes organ donation. I ran the 5K with my brother-in-law two years ago, and I wanted to do it again to see if I could beat my time. I persuaded my friend Melanie to run with me and warned her that it was a tough one. We put a team together called the "Liver Lovers" and Nick, our girls, his mom, our brother-in-law, Melanie's husband's and toddler did the 2k walk while Melanie and I did the 5K run. It was much more fun with a big group of people. Unfortunately, we didn't win any raffle prizes, but I did beat my time by about 2 minutes! After the race, they had some fruit and pastries to snack on and then went to Great Harvest for our "real" breakfast. Nick was excited to be able to participate this time, so I think it will become a yearly tradition.

Just Keep Swimming

Right after our get-a-way, the girls started swimming lessons for two weeks straight. It was amazing to see the progress that they made during this period. For instance, before swimming lessons, Emma would scream/cry/freak out if she got water in her eyes during bath time! But on the first day of swimming, Emma's class had to bob up and down under the water! I don't know if she felt some peer pressure because everyone else was doing it, but we were amazed! By mid-week, Emma's class had jumped off the deep end which stressed me out because I was sure that Emma was under the water too long. Emma also was incredible with the back-float and eventually held her breath under water as long as the other kids. Brielle's class was at the same time and it was so cute to see these tiny kids learning how to swim. There were a few boys in Brielle's class that were fearless and were constantly jumping off the edge even though their teacher told them not to.  It drove me crazy because I didn't want them to knock Brielle off the edge, too. Am I over-protective or what? Anyway, Brielle learned how to blow bubbles in the water, how to jump off the edge (holding her teacher's hand), back-float and front-float. By the end of the two weeks, my girls thought they were pretty hot stuff! Luckily, Nick's aunt Margo has a pool so we got to go swimming there and practice their skills a few more times before the summer ended!