School, Football, and a New Temple!

These next posts might seem a little random and out of order.  I'm just trying to get caught up on several events from the past few months.  A couple weeks ago we went to Brigham City to see the new temple for our church.  It was a beautiful building and so fun to take the kids to see the inside of it!  Temples are so important in our religion because we believe that the temple allows us to be with our families forever.  We also loved having our good friends that live across the street come with us.

I've avoided posting anything about this until now but the other day when all of the nieces and nephews were signing Jason's cast I asked permission to take pictures.  Without getting into too many details, the fancy mountain bike we gave Jason for Father's Day ended up being a little more dangerous than we anticipated!  Hopefully the cast will be off soon!

Here's a cute picture of Jared and Skyler.  I think they look a lot alike in this picture.

This little boy is loved so much! (Too much sometimes!)

Here are some pictures from Jared's first football games.  Their new Wildcat uniforms weren't in yet so they wore the old Ogden jerseys.  We couldn't resist taking some pictures by the big O.  Jared was made for football and loves blocking and tackling!  Notice in the picture he's the second one from the left on the line and doesn't seem a bit intimidated by the boy who is quite a bit bigger than him!

Here are the first day of school pictures this year.

Andrew 7th grade

Kaitlyn 1st grade

Jared 4th grade

Getting to work already!

Andrew is in 7th grade now and loving Jr. High.  I was pretty nervous for him to go but he wasn't nervous at all!  He didn't have any trouble finding his way around and thinks it is so much better than elementary school. His days are really long since he leaves over an hour earlier than the younger kids and stays for cross country practice after school.  Kaitlyn is in her first year of all day school.  It seems strange to have the house so quiet for so long.  She's done really well although she's awfully tired and hungry by the end of the day!

Spring

Spring is a busy time of year when it seems there is barely time to catch our breath between activities.  Add to that, being in my last trimester of pregnancy and there hasn't been any time or energy to keep up on things like blogging.  So here's an attempt to cover a few highlights of the last couple months.

The kids always love the school 5K fundraiser.  Andrew was determined to beat all his classmates in his age group this year.  He trained hard and even though he moved up to a harder age group this year he still placed 3rd only getting beaten by a couple of older Jr. High kids.  Jared decided to give the 5K a try for the first time this year.  Jason ran with him and he loved out sprinting dad at the end!  Kaitlyn was supposed to walk/jog the mile with me but as soon as she got to the downhill in the second half she took off.  I couldn't catch up to her until the end!

Kaitlyn had her spring dance recital.  Here's a picture of her with her teacher Brynn, who she adores!  She was super cute and wasn't a bit shy about being on stage in front of everyone!

Jason ran the Ogden Marathon this year.  He spent all winter training hard with our coach and was in great shape.  We went up to Ogden Valley to watch him on the first half of the course.

We got stuck in traffic on the way back from Huntsville and just missed him at the finish.  The kids were really disappointed not to see him finish.  He was 17th place and ran 2:54:02!  The kids were amazed though when we got to the point we had to turn around in Huntsville and they saw the thousands of runners that stretched for miles behind him.  It really put it into perspective how fast that really is!

The boys had their spring piano recital.  It was fun to see how far they have both come in almost a year since they started!  They both received awards from their piano teacher for their performances at federation and gold medals for the Olympics program she has been doing.

Kaitlyn finished up her year of kindergarten.  It is such a fun age that I am always sad to see it end.  They had a cute graduation party for her class.

 Here she is with her teacher Mr. Miehlke.

Spring is super busy with sports...soccer, baseball, and track.  Unfortunately I've been terrible at bringing the camera but here's a picture of Kaitlyn in one of her t-ball games.

First Day of School

It seems like summer went by too fast.  There were several things on my list of things to do that just didn't get done.  However, the last couple weeks of summer vacation it was obvious the kids were ready to go back.

Jared's first day of 3rd grade.

Andrew's first day of 6th grade.

Kaitlyn had to wait until the next week before kindergarten started.  She was so excited!  I had a lot of people ask me if either she or I cried.  That kind of surprised me since it was a happy day for everyone.  You can see from the pictures she was all smiles!  And as far as I go, half day kindergarten is only 15 minutes longer than her preschool class so it still doesn't quite feel like real school yet.  In fact, I keep accidentally calling it "preschool" and Kaitlyn doesn't like that at all!  It does seem like I just sent Andrew to kindergarten though.  I'm not sure where the time has gone!

Kaitlyn's first day of kindergarten!

Jason came home for lunch to walk Kaitlyn to her first day of school.

In front of the school.  It was so bright it was hard to open her eyes!

In her classroom.  She can't wait to get started!

First Day of School

I'm not a mom who cries on the first day of school. Sometimes I feel guilty about that but Andrew was so excited to go back to school I think it would have been wrong for me not to be happy for him. Having said that, it did hit me hard the other day looking at him how fast he is growing up. It really wasn't that long ago I sent him to kindergarten, was it? Jared, on the other hand, gets so nervous about new situations that he wasn't quite so eager to go Wednesday morning. He came home talking non-stop about how nice his teacher is though and seems happier than he has in a long time about school. Kaitlyn gets to wait another long week before going to preschool. If there was ever a four year old that wants to be a big kid, it's her. I get her one more year before she enters the big world of elementary school. Will I cry next year? Maybe, we'll have to wait and see...