Buckle Up... Life is about to get crazy!

It's here!  The season I've been waiting for since we moved back 6 months ago!  We are setting roots, joining in, making friends, and getting involved!  To say I am thrilled is an understatement!

Last Wednesday the kids and I attended my MOPS group leaders retreat.  In usual fashion, I was excited to be there, Olivia had a blast and didn't want to leave, and Logan was not happy with me about leaving him for a few hours. :)

How cute is this!?

Our group is made up of 160 women.  We have 10 people at a table.  (1 table leader, 1 mentor mom, and 1 steering committee team member are included at each table.)  So there are 16 of us table leaders.  We were greeted with a fun little binder, notebook, pen, and baggie with a necklace.  We also got our shirts!

We played a fun icebreaker, went over some logistics, talked through some things, got our table assignments and then made this fun craft.

It matches the MOPS theme/colors/graphics for the year.

After that we got to enjoy a catered lunch and chat with others.  I am SO excited about being back at this MOPS group and to be part of the leadership team is an added bonus!

Then on Thursday night we had meet the teacher night at preschool.

Olivia is in the owl room.  She will go on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 to 2.

We walked in the door and right there was a sensory bin and she just dug right in.
(She's wearing the same outfit that she wore to her first day of school last year!)

They had a cash register/market area.  She is really into cash registers right now, so she was thrilled with this.

They had all sorts of little areas set up for the kids.  They had play doh at one table, a table to color and draw a self portrait, and a table covered with chalkboard paper. Logan helped himself.

Olivia checked out the Science center too.

She got this as homework.

And she got a few treasures to take home.

How cute!

She didn't want to leave.  Her classroom is so fun and exciting.  I would want to stay too if I were her!  One of the teachers was at a family funeral, so we only got to meet the one.  But I'm confident it is going to be a great year!  I am so excited for her!

I headed straight from that to a MOPS leadership Meet and Greet.  It was for all of the Steering Committee, Mentor Moms and Table Leaders.  It was a really casual get together.  We ate, talked, laughed, and did a little table building activity at the end.  Both my mentor mom and my steering member were out of town, so I was the only one representing the rose table.  But I got to meet some new people, and that is always fun.

The only picture I took was of our adorable name tags that we will be using for meetings.  The steering committee will have pink ribbon, the mentor moms have orange, table leaders have yellow, and the regular members have a turquoise blue.  I love all of the fun little details that my group does.

 Life Groups are starting back up at out church, and there is a mom's group that meets for play dates.

Our calendars are filling up quickly, and I love it!

Summer Fun

Summer is coming to an end.  Well, at least in the "kids are back at school" sense.  We have quite a few more weeks of summer weather ahead of us here in Texas.  But I thought before we rolled into a new season, that I should go ahead and do a picture dump of our summer.  We did a little here and a little there, which is actually going to seem like a lot in one post.  Overall we've had a pretty good time.

We...

Went to a few library events.  Here is Olivia at a Fancy Nancy tea party.

(Yes, she did insist on finishing her crown.  Yes, it was pretty spectacular compared to some of the other quickly colored crowns of others her age.)

We did some finger painting as well as some other art projects.  Logan really got into stickers!

 We went to a splash pad play date with our MOPS group.

 We did some baking.  Both kids are totally into helping.  Luckily they can both fit on the learning tower at the same time.

 We played in our backyard and had classic summer treats.

We had some lazy mornings and shared lots of cuddles.

 Olivia went to 4 days of VBS at our friend's church--which is like 2 minutes from our house. She loved it.

We had family movie nights.

We went on a school bus ride!  Our friends Shaye, Sadie, and Sophie invited us along. Shaye's husband is on the local school board, and he asked if his daughter could get a ride.  She got to invite some of her friends.  We learned all about bus safety, drove through some neighborhoods to a school, and got a few little treats to take home.  Both of the kids enjoyed it!

We colored.  Olivia more than Logan, but he's starting to give it a whirl.

We found a church! (This is a picture one morning before we left.) It is about 15 minutes away, but they are building and will eventually be very close to us.  We've gone for about a month and a half now.  We all really like it and finally feel "home".  (Ok.  Logan might night say he likes it.  He tolerates it after about 5 minutes of tears.)

We played play doh outside one morning before it got ungodly hot out.

We got together with some "bumpies".  I know you've heard me talk about it before.  We all joined the June 2011 board on the bump while we were pregnant with our "June bugs".  Eventually we jumped from The Bump forum to a closed Facebook group. There are about 160 in the group.  Of those, about 10 live in the Dallas area.  We had a play date last month!

We played at home.  The kids are really starting to enjoy each other and play together.  They still fight, but overall they really like to be with each other.  Olivia teaches Logan his shapes and Logan teaches Olivia to turn the TV on. ;)

We had some water time outside. Over the summer we've used the kiddie pool, the sprinkler, and the water table.

We had visitors!  My mom came at the beginning of the summer and my sister came just last week.  The kids LOVE having visitors!!

We shared in some yummy summer treats!  We finally got around to going to the Frisco Sno Cone Lady.  Hands down the best sno cone I've ever had!  We will be back!

We read books.  Lots of books!  Logan is totally into reading right now.  Between him and Olivia, we could easily read a dozen books a day around here.

 We went bowling.  We went with Shaye, Sadie, and Sophie earlier in the summer with the Kids Bowl Free program and then again when Ang was here.

And we did some good old fashion wrestling.  Michael also taught the kids to pillow fight.  So that happens often and my couch pillows are almost always on the floor.

We may not have gone on any flashy vacations, or spent our summer at the country club, but we had a pretty good time.  Logan is really getting into our little adventures, so life is getting fun!

(Sorry for all of those who saw some of these on Facebook.)

We did a few other things when my mom was here-- the zoo and a children's museum.  We also went to a play museum the day before Olivia's birthday.  Some the pictures are stuck on a camera and some are stuck on a phone that has a cracked screen. (Yes. That happened.)  So no pictures of those now, but still lots of fun was had.

Check Ups

We finally had the kids check ups!

They were relatively uneventful.  Olivia had to get her vision and hearing tested for preschool, and passed.  (Although, I won't be surprised if glasses are in her near future!)

We talked about Logan's issues with dairy--and really all 3 of the other members of my little family. They all have mild eczema on their arms, and really shouldn't be consuming any dairy.  But you know...That's hard.

Logan was 32 inches (30th %) and 24 pounds (55th %).  He just seems to be growing much slower than Olivia ever did.  He's still barely wearing his 18 month clothes.  I guess it's because she was always "so big" and "so tall", and he's relatively short. Poor guy.  I think he got my grandpa's genes in that department.  His head was 19 cm, which was the 70th %.

Olivia was 40 inches (45th %) and 39.8 pounds (75th %).  This is EXACTLY what she was at her 3 year well check (40 pounds/40 inches).  So she has not grown in a full year.  I already knew this.  And she is still wearing the same clothes with a few exceptions.  This worried the doctor a little bit, but I kindly reminded her that this is the FIRST time in all of her 4 years that she hasn't been in the high 90's for height and weight.  I'm not concerned.  I always said that she would eventually even out, and I think this is just her evening out.  The doctor agreed, but said that if by 5 she hasn't grown (or grown enough) that would have to do some testing on her.  Again, I'm not concerned.

They both got 2 shots each and that about summed up our visit.  Thankfully they are relatively healthy kids.  And I am way happy to be back with pediatricians and nurse practitioners that I love!