Meeting their new Teachers

While Dallin wasn’t all that thrilled to see the summer come to an end, but Layton and Mandy couldn’t wait to meet their teachers and get started at school!

Their teachers are Ms. Chapman, Ms. Peyton, and Ms. Allen.

Pioneer Day 2013

Pioneer Day 2013 found us headed out first to a Stake Primary activity for a pancake breakfast and a pioneer walk through the forest.  It was beautiful.  Especially the butterflies!

Then we headed to the church for more fun activities!

Reading!

At the end of the school year, all of the first grade had a huge reading celebration.  They had accomplished a lot that year and wanted to show the kids how much they appreciated their hard work.  Each member of each class received an award.  This is Mandy’s teacher, Ms. Rucker:

Mandy up on stage with her class:

Proudly showing off her award:

Friendly Mandy

We live in a pretty close community.  I mean literally, the houses are really close.  Lucky for us in some of the houses closest to us live quite a few kids.  And Mandy had made it a point to be friends with all of them!  She is a little social butterfly and we have kids knocking on our door everyday asking if she can come out to play.  The really nice thing is that most of the time they congregate at our house.  The arts and crafts table, chalkboard easel, swing set, and access to the woods (along with a well stocked freezer full of popsicles) are a big draw for all the kids. These are only a few of the ones she plays with.

Preschool Graduation

Layton had such a fantastic year in preschool.  He learned so very much and had lots of fun with his friends.  He was so blessed to have such a dedicated wonderful teacher, Mrs. Sandy Staab.

She prepared such a cute graduation program for the kids.  They had a blast doing a few little songs for us.

Layton was so proud to get his graduation certificate.

Ms. Staab also gave each of the kids an award recognizing something special about them.  Layton got the “smarty” award.  Ms. Staab said that each morning when he came to school, rather than rushing to the toys like all the other kids, he went immediately to the academic board to find out the letter, number, color, shape, and words of the day.  He loved learning so much, he would get upset when he didn’t get homework :)  Let’s just hope this love of learning continues for the rest of his life!  So proud of my baby!

Fun Preschool Moments

Picnic and stuffed animal day:

Math homework by Layton’s request:

Water day:

I’m Cute and I know it

Layton crawled up in my lap to snuggle with me.

I asked, “Do you know that you are very cute?”

Layton, “Yes.”

Me, “How do you know?”

Layton, “I looked in the mirror.  I saw me. And I was cute.”

You can’t argue with that!

Soap Man

Dallin is so clever with the things he creates.  For cub scouts, he had to make a carving out of soap.  So what did he choose to make?  Himself – dressed as a missionary :)

How cute is that?

Sleepover!

While the Jarvis/Pettersen cousins were visiting I decided to have a cousins sleepover.  I wasn’t quite brave enough to have Reese join us because I was afraid she would miss her mommy too much.  But still, I almost had all of them here.  And 9 kids in our tiny house was quite the accomplishment!!!

To start the fun they wolfed down a donut

and then headed outside to play.

After some good hard playing outside it was time for a little playtime inside and then dinner!

And everybody knows that once you finish dinner your are supposed to hide under the table.  At least that’s what they told me.

Time for popcorn and a movie!  Or well technically lots of movie shorts.  Pixar shorts are hilarious!

We let them stay up to the terribly late hour of 10:00 and they promptly woke up before 7:00.  Awesome.  Pillow fight!!!!

Layton quickly tired of the pillow fight because lets face it, it was morning time and he needed his morning milk to get him going.  He really is no good until he gets his chocolate milk ;).

It was a lot of fun and hopefully we can do it again sometime!