First Day of School

I love the first day of school.

Everyone around here was excited for the new change, and new rhythm that school brings, but even with the excitement we all still had little butterflies in our tummies.

Megan had lots of firsts.

She started the 1st grade with Mrs. Tu as her teacher, she started in a new school that is closer to our house, and she started taking the bus, which is awesome for her and mom. Meg was a little nervous, but when she came home she was all smiles and chatting up a storm about how great the 1st grade is. This is going to be a great year for Megan. I love this age.

My little Henry started preschool.

He has been waiting to go to school, just like Megan, for so long.

Thanks to the great Arlington school program, Henry is in an integrated preschool program, which means he is in a regular preschool that takes up to 4 cognitively age appropriate kids with special needs, and then physical, occupational, and speech therapists are provided to work with these kids throughout the day. It is a 5 day a week program from 8:10am-2:50pm, but I wasn't ready to send him that much time, so he goes 3 days a week. He loves it.

Henry at school with "His" teacher, Ms. Allison.

He walked right into school, turned around and said "bye Mom."

I was happy, but my heart broke a little too.

We always said, he would be the cutest kid on the short bus.

And of course little Eli.

He was pretty sad to see that his fan club was gone...

But, not for long.

He is so cute.

It's teepee time

Kim spotted a teepee in the backyard of a friend from the ward last summer, and decided that her kids' lives would not be complete until they had a teepee of their own. It may have taken 14 months for her to make it, but our kids are finally living the dream.

As an added bonus this week -- body surfer extraordinaire:

She's getting so big

Even though Megan had already lost four teeth on bottom, she was deathly afraid when her top front tooth became loose. That thing was hanging by a thread for weeks, and she would not let us anywhere near it without breaking out the tears. Finally, we'd had enough. We convinced her that my needle nose pliers were actually a special tooth extraction tool, and with one twist, out it came. Her tears dried up really quickly, and suddenly she was super proud of her lost tooth

Shortly after it popped out, the other front tooth decided it was ready to go. Megan swore that she was going to be brave this time, but when it came down to it, she freaked out, and laid on her back, crying her eyes out. That gave Kim all the opening she needed to reach in and snatch that tooth right out of there.

With both front teeth gone, we figured it was a good time to learn to ride her bike, as she had nothing to lose. This was the second or third time that we thought she was ready to ride a bike, and as you can see in this video, it was clear that she was nowhere near coordinated enough....

 

 ..Or so we thought, but suddenly it just clicked, and Megan instantly became a bike rider. These two videos were literally taken one day after the other.

   

 Meg starts first grade on Tuesday, and she's knocking down those milestones, left and right.