Elizabeth is a Whole Hand! (5)

I remember back when Elizabeth was four, she would excitedly tell me all of the things that she would be able to do when she turned five. Well, on September 20th, our oldest child turned five years old. When we asked her how old she was, she stated, "I'm a whole hand!" Now you all understand why we love her so much! These are some pictures of her birthday party. We were lucky to have most of the Peacock family there along with Brielle and Sydney. (friends from her primary class)

This is Elizabeth's birthday cake made lovingly with 4 cake mixes! She wanted a castle cake and although we are not professionals, I think we did a bang up good job.


Elizabeth is just brimming with excitement because she FINALLY gets to blow out the candles.


It took two breaths to blow out all of the candles but I'm sure her wish was for great parents! Wish granted :)


Now we come to the favorite part of birthdays, Presents!!!!

Preschool Painting

This last week for preschool we have been talking about Warm and Cold. We read a book called "Splash" where a baby elephant is Hot, so he leads all the animals to the water to cool off. At the beginning of the book the animals are hot, so the colors are bright yellows, to show warm, and then as they play in the water the colors change to blues, to signify cool. After we read the book then we did some painting one day with warm colors and another day with cool colors. Rachel and Jorgan really loved painting! I had them use Q-tips, since I didn't have paint brushes and they were just the right size for their little hands!





It is so much fun to spend so much time with them everyday! I really love their sweet smiles!

Jorgan is such a boy!

My new rule: Kids must play outside every day! As the kids are playing outside I am cleaning the kitchen and listening to them play when I realize that Jorgan isn't really playing with the girls. I peak my head out the back door and I see this:


This is Jorgan lying on the ground playing with a car. He was perfectly happy being left alone to drive this car on the patio. That green thing on the ground is the cover to the septic tank... nice place for it... right!

Playing in the Rain

So, here in Seattle, everyone knows that it rains; but being from Las Vegas, rain is still fun because we don't see it very often. It started raining and Josh sent the kids outside. The kids had a blast!! It's amazing that you can have so much fun with rain and two balls. These are some pictures of the kids playing, getting themselves soaked and loving it!!

National Playdough Day

Before the school year started, I bought this book called 52 weeks of preschool, or something like that. I love it, because there is a theme for each week, and even themes around strange holidays, like National Playdough Day, or National Pretzel Month.
All the activities are super easy and I don't have to buy expensive craft supplies or anything! It's been a lot of fun! I think Rachel and Jorgan have been enjoying the extra mommy attention they get each day! Today we celebrated National Playdough day, which is actually tomorrow... and I forgot to take pictures... But I did remember pictures of the kids with their sticky snack!


This week we have been practicing serving our own snacks. Today Rachel spread jam onto crackers all by herself. She has really enjoyed being "big" and doing things on her own! Jorgan just liked jam and crackers!

Who needs a pony???

Playdough Snowman

So, unfortunately I have been very disappointed with the libraries here in Everett. We can not check out books from the Everett Public Library because we live in "unincorporated" Everett. But we can check out books from any of the 21 Snohomish County Public libraries. I have been disappointed because the libraries are very small and the selection of children's books at the libraries near us is even smaller. I didn't realize how spoiled I was at home! It has been frustrating not being able to find the books I was looking for.
Until! I was asking a librarian about a couple of books I wasn't able to find and she showed me how to look them up in the online catalog, then place them on hold, and then how to have them ready for me to pick-up at any library I chose! It's awesome! I can find all the books I want while the kids are quietly napping, and then I can pick them all up in one 2 minute visit to the library!
So this morning, Rachel, Jorgan, and I went to Baby Story time, then we grabbed our half a dozen books off the hold shelf and left! It was great!


When we got home, we had a snack and then played playdough. We put together a playdough snowman. The kids thought that was pretty funny! Plus, I only had to fish playdough out of Jorgan's mouth one time! All in all, a fantastic morning!

Kindergarten Headaches!

As I was scrolling through my blog, I realized that I need to document Elizabeth's success of even getting into Kindergarten. Really, I want her to remember how brave she was and how we are so proud of her successes. There may also be a little bit of bragging here too :o)
When we were still in Las Vegas, we had already registered Elizabeth for Kindergarten. The cut-off date for kindergarten in Clark County is September 31. Since her birthday is in September, we didn't have any issues, other than deciding if we wanted her to go to kindergarten or not... but that's another story.
When we moved to Washington one of the first things I did was check the registration deadlines for kindergarten. To our dismay the cut-off date here is August 31. So if your child turns 5 between Sept 1 and Oct 31 you can only enroll in kindergarten if you complete early entrance testing and the school district allows them admittance. So we went back and forth trying to decide if we wanted to put her through the headache of testing. Not only did we have to decide whether or not it was worth putting her through that stress, but the testing costs $250!! There was no way we could come up with that much money after being unemployed for a month and spending all our money moving.
So I emailed the early entrance office and described our situation. She said that since Josh had been unemployed, we qualified for free testing through the school district. Once we knew we could get the testing, we let Elizabeth choose whether or not she wanted to talk to the doctor and take a test. She has been so excited for kindergarten, ever since her friend Camill got to go last year, that she was willing to see the doctor even when she thought she was going to get a shot!
So, we made an appointment with the school psychologist for the testing, I promised Liz that this doctor would not give her a shot, and we went! She was amazing. Before we went in she was telling me that she felt a little nervous. But you couldn't even tell! She was talking to the doctor like they were old friends. It was fun just watching her think about things and listen to her answer questions.
A few days later we found out that she had passed and that we could go register her at her new school! She was so excited and bounced around for hours talking about how she passed her test. We are so pleased with her desire to try hard things and with her general love of attempting new things. I hope that she will continue to grow and foster these important qualities!

The First Day of School

Today Elizabeth had her first day of Kindergarten! She has been so excited for this day! She kept saying all morning, "Is it time to go yet?" "I'd better hurry or I'm going to be late!" Tuesday night we were able to go to the school for Meet Your Teacher night and see her classroom, her assigned seat, her cubbie, and her teacher! We also got to go meet the bus driver and get on the bus. Which was good because I was getting a little anxious over her riding the bus. The bus driver helped me chill out a little bit and we went ahead and put her on the bus this morning!


This is her getting off the bus after school. She was super excited because she was the only kid on the bus. This wasn't even a short bus... this was a huge bus, and she was the only kid riding the bus home from morning kindergarten! There will probably be more kids tomorrow and next week but for today she was in Bus heaven.


Since Elizabeth is going to school, Rachel, Jorgan, and I will be doing Preschool at home. So we had our first day of school today too. It was nice to have such a structured morning. This is Rachel holding up her first ever self-portrait. We are going to draw one every week, and by the end of the year we'll be able to see how she has changed and grown. It was really quiet without Elizabeth here and Jorgan sure missed her a lot. He was hugging and wrestling all over her as soon as she walked in the door. It was pretty cute!


So, over all an eventful and productive day! Another day of kindergarten for Liz tomorrow, and storytime at the library for the rest of us!