My 6 year old

 

Our sweet Molly turned 6 this past week.  With all of our activities and busy schedules, its hard to fit a birthday in.  But we made the best if it!  She choose to have dinner at Freddy's a hamburger place.  Then it was dessert and present opening at Cold Stone.  She still had more presents to open so the next stop was my parents.  As usual she was spoiled rotten!  It was an American Girl birthday!

Steamboat

Last weekend we had a little family getaway into the mountains.  The weather was beautiful, and the scenery was gorgeous too!  The leaves on some of the trees were changing!

We didn't really do a lot in Steamboat.  We enjoyed time together.  I had a migraine on Friday which included a hangover on Saturday and into Sunday.  Needless to say, not many pictures were taken.
We had a lot of fun on the Alpine Slide.  However, Ava may differ that it was fun!  We were unaware that only two people could ride on the chair lift up the mountain.  I rode with Molly and Mike took Rachel.  So, Ava had to ride the lift by herself.  She would have been fine with this if we had time to prepare her.  It was a last minute thing.  She was basically lifted on by a chair lift operator.  So, the ride p was kind of traumatic for her.  If that wasn't enough, she got stung by a bee at the top of the slide.  It was a memorable ride for her!


My favorite activity was the Hot Springs pool.  It was a pool but the water was the temperature of a hot tub with natural spring water.  And there were two big water slides.  We spent an entire afternoon there.  It is open year round and we are looking forward to going back in the winter!


It was the perfect weekend to go.  Right after the busy summer season ended and before the winter ski rush.  A great family getaway with great memories!

The Long weekend

Ah.....just what we all needed!  A nice long weekend to recover from all the chaos of school starting. One more day always helps!
I have been anticipating this weekend for months now!  Mike decided he wants to start taking the girls on a daddy daughter camping trip.  I was all for this.  A whole weekend to myself.....in my own quiet house?  Oh yeah!

The quiet me time was wonderful.  I did some shopping and spent some quality uninterrupted time with my parents.  It was nice.   As unusual, the time flew by.  I really didn't have time to miss my family but felt refreshed nonetheless.
The camping went great.  Mike had a great time with his girls.  Not that I had any doubts but he managed all three of them without any trouble.  I was a tad bit skeptical when he took two of the van seats out and lined all three girls in the way back....car seats and all.  They would have killed each other if I would have been driving.  They fight like cats and dogs when each of them have their own seat!   I am glad they were on their best behavior because that means another trip in the future!

 They even ventured away from the campsite and went to Canon City to see the Royal Gorge.  It was very kid friendly with lots of fun activities!

Finally....lost a big one!

Ava is way behind for losing teeth.  I blame it on being almost a year before she cut her first baby tooth.  She has been obessed with losing her top teeth.  She came home  from school lots of days telling me how so and so lost his or her top tooth.  For a while she was really into books about kids loosing teeth.  And the thing that got to me the most, her finger was constantly in her month checking to see if it was loose!  GROSS!  GERM CITY.  So, it finally came out.  She wrote a note to the tooth fairy requesting a picture of her.  And the tooth fairy left money and a picture of herself.  Ava was so excited! 

A big hole for a tiny tooth.  Hopefully we will have plenty of room for the adult tooth!!

First days of school

I now have a preschooler, kindergartener, and a 2nd grader.

The first week of school went smoothly for the older girls.  Nice to know they are both at one school.  A big kid school.

 Ava LOVES her teacher and thinks she is quite the fashionista.  Her beautiful teacher makes up for the fact that she is split up from most of her friends this year.  There are only 7 girls in her class!  I say her teacher lucked out!  Less drama that way!

Molly wakes up every morning so excited to go to school.  She is becoming quite the little student.  Her favorite part of school is walking in the mornings with the big kids!  I know how much she is going to grow and change this year.  I feel blessed that I get to have her home with me in the afternoons.

Rachel started school today.  It was anticlimactic.  She new exactly what to do.  Walked right into the room, found her cubby and hung up her backpack.  Mike and I started laughing because she was waiting for us to leave!  Her teacher's called her a pro.  It makes sense because she has been going to that school for her sisters since she was 3 months old!

Swimming

With summer coming to a end quickly, we decided to spend the last two weeks doing swim lessons at our pool.  They were GREAT!  Small classes, and great weather.  The girls learned so much!

Rachel is now going underwater and floating on her back.  She has braved her fear of going across the rope into the deeper water.  Not sure about this one since I will have to watch her like a hawk now!

Molly has become a great swimmer this year.  She is now going off the diving board.  Swimming lessons taught her the crawl and backstroke and she is perfecting diving!

Ava has perfected both her crawl stroke and her backstroke.  And is so close to diving!  She is very excited to start swimming on a swim team in Sept.

I have mixed emotions about summer ending!  I will miss hanging out with friends at the pool.  The girls are more than ready to start school!  Stay tuned for back to school photos next week!

S. Dakota

A getaway is good for your soul. This trip was so much more than that. With so much going on at home, an escape was just what I needed. More importantly, it was great to get away with just the 5 of us! I can count on 1 hand the trips we have taken just with just our little family. It was heaven. We could do what we wanted, when we wanted.  We stayed crazy busy.  The girls had so much fun experiencing lots of new things! And it was great to show the girls Mike's old stomping grounds.

Bear Country

The Cosmos

Mt. Rushmore

Reptile Gardens

Storybook Island

And lots and lots of fishing