Preschool Wrap-Up

 Natalie had such a fun year in preschool.  I was so glad I ended up signing her up.  She absolutely loved her teacher, Mrs. Chae:

In fact, I don't know if she will ever love another teacher more.  Mrs. Chae has hero-status in our home.  She was a great teacher for Natalie.  She could be firm with the kids, but she was really good at getting down at their level and they all loved her.  She loved Natalie, too.  We had a parent-teacher conference at the end of the year and she just raved about what a pleasure it was to have Natalie in her class.  It was so wonderful to hear as a parent.  

We had a lot of fun activities and field trips towards the end of the year, including:

a picnic at the park...

 ...and a fun trip to Happy Hollow which I got to go on.

We also had a really cute Mother's Day luncheon complete with songs, homemade gifts, and flowers.

Natalie and Zoe:

Janelle took this one there and I loved how it turned out:

Even though it was hard sometimes volunteering so much at the preschool, I'm really glad I did.  It gave me some great one-on-one time with my Natalie.

1st Grade is in the Books

That year really flew by for me.  I still can't believe Elizabeth is going to be a 2nd grader soon.  There were some highlights at the end of the year.

She lost both of her top front teeth!  They've almost completely grown in now but she was toothless for awhile there.

Elizabeth got an award for excellence in writing!  When we got the notice that she would be receiving an award, I though for sure it would have something to do with reading.  But, it was a nice surprise to see it was in writing.  She is a great writer and I hope she keeps working hard to improve.

Elizabeth really loved her teacher, Mrs. Gray.

She loved the last week of school when they had their fun dress days.  Here she is on crazy/mismatched day:

It was a great year!  The poor girl will be starting yet another year at a new school.  She's a little bit nervous but we keep reminding her about how well everything worked out last year and all the friends she made.  I think she'll do great.

Primary Talent Show

Back in May (I think) our church put on a talent show for all the kids to participate in.  The girls were so excited about it and took forever deciding what to do.  They were all over the place.  Finally, (a few days before) Natalie decided that she would sing "Oh What Do You Do in the Summertime" by herself and Elizabeth decided she would play "Ode to Joy" on the piano.

It was so fun to watch them.  They both did wonderfully.  I was so impressed with Natalie's courage--going up to sing all by herself, and not even with anyone to accompany her.  You couldn't have paid me enough to do that when I was her age.  Here she is:

And here's the video we got of her:

This was Elizabeth's first time performing in public on the piano and she did a great job.  She played the song  perfectly and then I joined her and we played a duet.  We messed up a little bit on that part but that's OK.  During practice Elizabeth kept stopping when she'd make a mistake but during the talent show she just pushed through and I was proud of her for that.

(I was concentrating pretty hard :)

We were some very proud parents!

(Those still pictures are courtesy of my friend, Mary)

Lots of Changes

So--it's been about 2 months since I've posted.  A whole heck of a lot has happened.  Where to start?

Change #1:  Joe has changed jobs.  He is actually still working part-time doing contract work for his law firm, but he had a new opportunity open up and we decided to take it. 

Change #2:  This new opportunity is in Sacramento, so we have moved!  We packed up our house and moved away from friends we'd come to love in the bay area.  We're currently living at my parents' while we look for a house.  We are planning on buying--an exciting but exhausting endeavor.  We're hoping to find something soon.  We did love the bay area but we're excited to be back closer to family and where we can see ourselves staying long-term. 

Change #3:  We are expecting baby #4 at the end of December!  This was a bit of a surprise but we couldn't be more thrilled.  We're hoping we can have a repeat of Nate's calm, uneventful pregnancy.  I'll be returning to the doctors I loved in Sacramento--another benefit of moving back.

As you can imagine, it has been a stressful couple of months for us.  We've been so grateful for all of the help from friends and family, though, and we're excited for what the future holds.

So, now that I've laid all this out there, maybe I can go back and try to update the blog.  That is, if pregnancy sickness doesn't stop me... :)

From the mouth of a "2 a half" year-old...

I need to record a lot of Nate's cute little sayings before he outgrows them.... 

-"Agidator" - alligator
-"Kauai...?" (like the island) - This how he says "Could I...?"
-"Tap-the-tio" - Tapatio (his Daddy puts it on everything)
-"slumb" - thumb--My favorite is when he says "slucking my slumb."
-"Yah-come" - You're welcome
-"I'm bigger and bigger" - It sounds more like "bigoo".  When he's feeling proud of something he will stand up, look down at his body and say, "Look, Mama, I'm bigger and bigger!"
-"Erse-nie" - nursery
-"were" instead of "our" - i.e. "We're going to ride in were car."
-"Mama Daniqua" - Like his sisters before him, he loves the Backyardigans and he likes to pretend that he's Tyrone and I'm Uniqua--except it's Daniqua and he likes to keep Mama in there, too.  So, our pretend time sounds something like this: "Oh no, Mama Daniqua! Agidators!  Let's fight them!"
-We also have frequent conversations that sound like this:
Nate: "Don't do that, Mama!"
Me: "Don't do what?"
Nate: "Don't do anyfing."
He gets in these moods where he's very discontented yet very vague and this is repeated over and over again.
-"Crit-mas" - Christmas.  He likes to tell everyone about the red bat he got for Christmas.  According to him, basically everything we have we got for Christmas last year.

I'm sure I'll be adding more as I think of them....

Nate has a bosom buddy.  Her name is Amara.  Her mom and I swap babysitting so they spend a lot of time together and have developed quite the friendship as a result.  They have the funniest little conversations that always make me laugh.

They other day we had a scare with Joe.  He had this pain and went in to an urgent care place and the doctor there felt sure it was appendicitis.  So he ended up going to the ER to get a cat scan.  Turns out, it was a false alarm, thank goodness. 

Anyway, I was watching Amara that morning and I packed the two of them in the car to visit Joe while he waited an eternity for his test results.  They wanted to know where we were going so I told them we were going to the hospital.  As a background, Amara's dad is a podiatrist and works in a hospital.


Amara: Don't worry, Nate.  It's no big deal.
Nate: It IS a big deal!  (More out of a desire to be argumentative than out of concern)

(They repeated this exchange a few times and then things calmed down)

Amara: You getting you shots, Nate.
Nate: No!
(I reassure him he's not getting shots)

They just have this hilarious way of getting under each other's skin.  But then the next minute they're laying down on their stomachs right next to each other, happy as can be.  I took this awesome video of them playing on my phone but I think Nate deleted it.  These pictures will have to do for now...

 Nate is also very concerned with his clothes.  I don't know if it's having older sisters or what but I can no longer have any say in what he wears (unless he's feeling very generous that day).  He also likes to change outfits multiple times a day.  It drives me crazy sometimes.

Here he is modeling one of his outfits:

gray shirt, gray shorts, and a tie...

...perfection!

Recent Adventures

We've had some fun times lately. Here's a whole bunch of catch-up:

Natalie got to go miniature golfing with her preschool class:

Natalie and her good friend Zoe:

(those pictures are from my friend Janelle)

She has also made friends with a little girl her age who lives 3 houses down from us. She went to her birthday party and got her face painted:

I had a birthday! It was a great day full of Conference, family time, and yummy food. Here are Lily and I (the early April birthdays, minus Katie) with the awesome cake my dad made:

Elizabeth painted me this picture:

Isn't it amazing? I loved it.

Natalie started soccer! She loves it. It helps that she has a really great coach and that she is with 3 of her friends from school/church.

They played their first game in the freezing rain:

She toughed it out and even scored a goal!

Here she is with her friend Addison:

(that picture is from my friend Megan, Addison's mom)

We went to a fun park recently, too. Nate loved driving the old fire truck:

We managed to find a way down to the creek there, too. (Still not sure if that was allowed?) The kids had a blast, though.

Over spring break we let the kids have a little slumber party.
Reading before bed:

Nate made it until about 3am when we woke up crying since he didn't know where he was. Not bad, though!

Another cute one of the kiddies after a bath:

They honored a deceased pet (a roly-poly):

Climbed some trees:

Hunted for Easter eggs:

...And, during spring break, the kids and I hit the beach again. We tried a new one (thanks Steph!) and we were so glad we did. It was a fun one.