School Begins...

School has officially started for me. I went back on the 30th of August and the students came back on the 2nd. It is bitter sweet! I love teaching, but this year is a little more overwhelming with Nick being gone and the kids going to daycare. Luckily the kids love it. Jaycie, who I was most worried about, can't get enough. She can't stop talking about all the new kids she is meeting and new songs she is learning. She is in the 3 year old class until December and then will be bumped to the 4's. Brayden is also going to daycare three days out of the week. He is in kindergarten this year and gets to go to the school I teach at,which is really nice. He had his first day on the 7th and he had a blast. It is a good thing my kids are so social and happy. This job would be really tough on me if they hated being away from me. Sadly the days I am home they wish they were going to daycare so they could play with all their new friends.

Brayden was so nervous about the first day of school. Before we headed out the door his one main concern was that kids would not like him and make fun of him because of his glasses. My heart sunk. I made him go look at himself in the mirror so he could see how incredibly handsome he is with his glasses. He made a few "I am cool looks" and we were ready.

Nick being gone is a little harder than I thought. I miss him a ton and feel a little awkward in social situations. I didn't think things like that would bother me but even as simple as going to church I feel like something is missing from me. The first three weeks have been okay and they went very fast. I am glad that I work, and the class I got seems great. We are very excited that Nick gets to come home this weekend. We will enjoy each second we get together before

he leaves again on the 20th for the year.

You Go Girl!

Jaycie got a bike from a neighbor down the road that was too small for her grand daughter so she wanted someone else to enjoy it. The bike is pretty big with no training wheels and Jaycie really wanted to ride it. I told her she couldn't ride it until she learned how to ride her little bike first. Well, apparently that is all she needed. She was determined she was going to learn to ride her bike without training wheels and she did. After a few tosses into the grass, I moved onto the cement just hoping she wouldn't crash too hard and she took off. We practiced in the road a couple of times, she did so good. I am impressed that a 3 year old can be so determined.

Our neighbors Lacey and Skyler were over helping while I was videoing. You will just have to ignore the screaming mother in the background. I got a little excited for her.

Summer Fun!

Before Nick left we did a lot of camping and playing. Here are a few of those pics.

Our Bear Lake Trip with Lacey and Skyler. We camped at East Beach and then played on North Beach the following day. It was a lot of fun. Shawn and Mariah ended up having a family reunion that same weekend and amazingly we ended up parking right by each other so Brayden and Zach were able to play all day. Brayden was excited to have a boy to play with.

Jaycie with Abigail and Emalyn. Jaycie is only about 6mo older than Abigail. She looks like a giant next to these two.

Skyler built this amazing sand castle. The kids wait all day for Skyler to give them the go ahead to crash it.
Yeah! Skyler was finally able to part with his masterpiece.

Deployment!


Nick is being deployed with the HHC 116th Calvary Brigade out of Twin Falls. He will spend the year in Baghdad in support of Operation New Dawn with his Brother Shawn. We are all very excited he gets to have this opportunity, but he will truly be missed. Brayden seems to be doing okay with the idea for now, he keeps reassuring me (and himself) by saying "We'll be okay, won't we mom?" As for Jaycie when you ask her if she is going to be okay she very solemnly says "no, daddy I am not okay." It is very hard to explain to them how long he will be gone. A year is very hard for the kids and I to grasp. It is a good thing for friends and family.

Flag Football!

Brayden just finished his flag football season and loved every minute. He actually did a great job. He made more than one touchdown each game and did awesome at blocking. I was a little afraid he was playing too rough but Nick very kindly informed me not to correct his behavior "He's a Natural." OK, but this is flag football, not tackle! Oh, well he really was very good at it.







We are proud of you Brayden, you are a great sport.

SUMMER VACATION PART 2!

The Beach and Sea World!

After going to Disneyland we drove to San Diego to go to the beach and Sea World. The kids loved the waves at the Beach. Brayden actually went out into them and Jaycie just ran away as they approached. She jumped over a few little ones but was a little nervous about going in too deep.

After cleaning up after the beach we went to the San Diego Pier and walked around the little shops and saw all of the huge ships. It was very neat.

Jaycie had fallen asleep right before this picture, so Nick is trying to hold up her head. It reminded us of The Princess Bride when the Giant is holding up the Man in Blacks head. (You've been mostly dead all day). We at least thought we were funny!

We went out to eat at this really cool fish house where we got to sit out over the ocean. It was so neat. There were ships passing through the whole time. We did have a few birds come to visit which was quite disgusting. The dinner cost us a fortune, but it was fabulous.

The following day we headed to Sea World. We were able to get in free because of the Military it was awesome. The kids loved seeing all the animals. We watched the new Dolphin show, The acrobat show, the seal and otter show, and then of course the Shamu show.

The kids loved being able to touch and pick up all of the crustaceans. Their favorite was the star fish.
These Sea Lions were Nick and the kids favorite. I thought they were so obnoxious. They made the loudest most annoying begging noises. They would get right up to the glass and "aaarrrrt" as loud as they could. Then they would clap and wave. Nick thought they were hilarious so he had to buy the food and feed them. They laughed and laughed at those things. I was just grateful to move on to something else.




Nick is so afraid of sharks. He hated the shark exhibit, he was walking so fast, nearly running out saying "what if the glass breaks, we will all be dead." Jaycie had to cover his eyes to protect him from the many sharks floating around him. So Funny!
We got out of Sea World at 6:00pm and headed straight to St. George. We didn't get there until 2:00 am. We were so exhausted. It was nice having the kids sleep through the whole drive though. That following day we hiked the red hills, played in the splash park and swam. It was a very nice relaxing day.

We had such a great time, but it was time to go home. We were ready! What a great Summer Vacation!

Summer Vacation!!

In June we took our very first family vacation! It was so much fun. After waking up at 4am we got into Vegas at 9:00am, which was A little earlier than we had planned. So we decided, after dropping our stuff off at my Aunt and Uncle's house, we would go to the strip to show our kids a few of the cool things there.




After about an hour we were extra hot and it wasn't so kid friendly. Nick had to keep turning Brayden's head so he wouldn't keep looking at all the "Fancy Ladies". He kept wondering why all the girls were wearing their swimsuits when their wasn't even a swimming pool. On our drive through town Brayden says "Dad slow down, slow down, okay perfect." I looked back to see what he was looking at and he was watching a taxi drive by with a picture of a naked, okay so some things were covered, oh who am I kidding a naked lady sign on the top of the taxi. Nick of course sped up immediately once he realized what Brayden was doing. Oh, what I am going to do with him.

The following morning at 4 am once again we headed to Disneyland!! Woot! Woot! Because we had a day to sight see we decided to go to Knotts Berry Farm. That was a lot of fun! There wasn't a lot of rides the kids could get on it was mostly big roller coasters but what they could ride they had so much fun!









I laughed forever with Nick being squished into this truck! He felt okay after he saw another dad doing the same thing.
The next morning we went to Disneyland! We were going to save so much money by eating our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the park instead of eating two meals there so we had it all packed up and at the gate they took our jar of Jam. (It was glass) so of course we carried with us all day a loaf of bread and peanut butter that didn't get eaten because no one wants to just eat a peanut butter sandwich. Good planning on our part. We only did the one day pass and spent the entire day there running from one thing to the next so that we could get it all in.



We rushed back to get to toon town very first in hopes to catch all the characters and it didn't open until 10:00 so we hit "It's a small world very first". Jaycie loved it, Brayden was really quite disappointed it didn't do anything but have dancers and singers. He was ready to get the the REAL rides.

We started the Roger Rabbit ride and part way through it the ride had some technichal difficulty so all the lights turned on and the lady of the speaker said it would be a minute before it started back up. Well it didn't and we sat there for awhile until she came and got us out of the cart and we had to walk the rest of the way through. This is us entertaining ourselves with picture taking.





This was the parade in the street that they do each night. Brayden and Jaycie were both pulled out into the street with all the characters to dance with them. It was way fun to watch them get so excited when a new character would come by them.
That night we stayed for the firework show with Tinkerbell and Dumbo flying through the air. It was a great day! The lines were not bad at all and the kids did great. They kept saying "oh, mom and dad thank you for taking us on this trip." It was so fun!