to taylor

Taylor...

we...

miss...

you.

first day of school

When kindergarten ended for the summer, Meredith didn't want to leave school.

In fact, there were quite a few tears involved on her last day.

And even though she had a fun summer, she was thrilled to go back to school and start first grade.

The day came and she was up bright and early. Her bag was packed, complete with the essentials like High School Musical pencils,

and a my little pony for good luck.

And...it didn't take long before she was tired of taking pictures and of squinting.

I think she had a good day!

Paging the tooth fairy...

Meredith has had a loose front tooth for a LONG time. Last Thursday night she ate supper and it got really loose.

As in, hanging by a thread (gross, I know. It almost hurt me just to look at it! So why not just post a picture on the blog so you can all cringe too?!?)


Anyway, she wouldn't let me touch it, but I knew it was just a matter of time.


And finally on Friday morning she wiggled and pulled it, and it came out in her hand. She was so excited...can you tell?

Debut

Gretta recently had a dance recital. We were invited, and I was so excited to go and see Gretta dance. But I will confess that I wasn't too terribly excited about sitting and watching everyone else's performances. However, I totally loved it - and Meredith did too.

We got to leave Jesse at home with Kent, which made for a much more relaxed time for me. And it was so much fun to watch the groups - from girls younger than Meredith up through junior high or high schoolers. Gretta did wonderful - it was fun to see her in that setting.

It was quite fun to watch the younger groups perform while they had their eyes glued to the side of the stage just behind the curtain where their teacher did the dance moves with them.

Thanks, Gretta for inviting us - we had a blast!

Nap Time

The other day Meredith hadn't gotten dressed for the day yet, and already she decided it was time to take a nap.

So she made herself a bed in the middle of the living room floor.


Complete with a picture of her and Jesse, her favorite stuffed animal of the day, a box of Kleenex...


and an 8x10 school picture of herself.


Too bad I forgot to get a picture of Jesse's bed that he made right beside hers.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

So it seems like our lives are filled with ballgames...

and ballgames...

and more ballgames.


Meredith is having a blast in T-ball this year. Her fielding skills are improving every game, and surprisingly she is a pretty good batter. Especially when she brings her own bat. Not sure if it's the actual bat that makes the difference or the confidence that it gives her when she uses it. Whatever it is though, it's working.


(If you ever talk to Mer about t-ball, ask her to give you her ballgame face. The expression is supposed to strike fear in the hearts of the opposing team when Meredith is up to bat...too bad it's her own coach that pitches to her and gets the full benefit of the face!)

Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere

Wednesday night Taylor was over for supper and I sent her, Meredith and Jesse out to the garden to pick lettuce for salads. Apparently while they were out there Meredith went missing.


Where was she? In my mom's garden picking flowers.

And flowers.

And more flowers.

(Yes, there are 10 little "vases" with flowers in them!)


When they came inside, Meredith got all these little glasses out of my china cabinet and separated and arranged all the flowers in the glasses. All by herself. I didn't even have to tell her which ones she could use.

Mom, I figured you wouldn't mind. Considering you won't be in your garden again until September!

Kindergartener no more

Well, Meredith is no longer a kindergartener. But Kent assures me that since she hasn't yet started first grade, that she isn't a first grader either.

At any rate, she's not in school anymore. And summer break is now in full swing.

Yesterday was her last day and although there were no tears, she was definitely sad that she wouldn't see her teacher all summer long.


And wouldn't see her 2 best friends 5 days a week.


Cara and Meredith are in the same Sunday School class at church, so they will see each other at least every week.


And Colby and Meredith both play t-ball (on separate teams) so they may see each other in passing between games.

But as Meredith points out to me, it's still not the same.

I'm just wondering what we will do all summer long.

Kindergarten Blog

So Meredith's Kindergarten teacher has a blog that she updates every so often that you might want to check out. She writes about what they have been studying and also posts pictures. Meredith is even in a few of the pictures.

Go to http://wtkdg.edublogs.org/ if you want to check it out.

Here's a teaser picture from the blog - Meredith and 2 of her friends are digging for dinosaur bones!

nighty-night

I thought Jesse had a good nap yesterday.

I really did.

But when Meredith got home from school, he was ready to take another nap.


On the stairs! (Of course along with his baby.)


Meredith was so sweet - she was totally mothering him! She said prayers with him, read him a book, and sang the ballgame song with him. (Yes, he requests Take Me Out To The Ballgame before every nap and before he goes to bed.)


And then it looked so fun, that Meredith decided to join him on the stairs!

Birthday fun

Wow...what a whirlwind birthday weekend we had.

It's been fun. But busy.

Meredith's tea party on Saturday morning with 4 of her best friends was a lot of fun.

It was funny to see how a few of the girls preferred to play with Jesse or help me in the kitchen instead of playing with the other girls. I'm not sure if it had to do with a pecking order amongst the girls or what. But I enjoyed the help anyway!


Meredith of course got lots of fun presents.


And all the girls enjoyed the grown up tea party complete with butterfly-shaped PB&J sandwiches, fancy dishes, and hot tea in regular china teacups and tiny china teacups.

Jesse wasn't so thrilled that he couldn't eat lunch with the girls. He also wasn't thrilled that he got the leftovers of the PB&J sandwiches after I used cookie cutters to cut out shapes. Oh yeah, and he also got a cupcake without frosting. I know, I know...what a cruel mom I am!


Fire crisis averted - her hair was dangerously close to those candles.

Note to self: put Meredith's hair up in a ponytail for her next birthday!

Sunday we had a lot of fun with my family celebrating her birthday. Once again she got a lot of fun presents - everything appealed to her girly-girl self! How well everyone knows her! :) She also had time to play with her cousins - something that she totally loves to do. And at this party Jesse had other boys to play with and older girls to dote on him. So he was happy too!

I made my first layer cake for the party - it was a really easy recipe from here, so it turned out pretty good, actually.


What is it with my kids and blowing out birthday candles that makes us laugh so much? It seems like every year they do something funny...like how it took Meredith probably 5 or 6 tries before she got all the candles out.

Yeah, now I'm glad I didn't watch the episode of Food Detectives that discovered just how many germs are passed along from blowing out birthday candles on a cake!

Anyway, we had a great time and Meredith had a pretty special birthday weekend.

Pinkalicious

Have you ever heard of the book, Pinkalicious?

It's one of Meredith's favorite books. The little girl eats so many pink cupcakes that she turns pink. In order for her to turn back to her normal color, she has to eat only green vegetables.

Anyway, Meredith's having a bit of a pinkalicious birthday. Last night I made pink cookies for her to take to school as a treat today. (The recipe was one that I blogged about earlier this year. They are the easiest cookies ever to make! I got the recipe from here.)


The cookies were a hit with the class. Seriously - who doesn't love pink cookies?

I also made pink (strawberry) cupcakes. That will be frosted with pink frosting for Meredith's tea party with her friends tomorrow.


Meredith chose a purple cake for her family party that we are having on Sunday. I think I'm going to make a lemon cake with purple frosting. She'll just have to settle for having purple frosting instead of the whole thing being purple. (Maybe she was channeling Purplicious??)


In addition to taking snack to Kindergarten today, I got to visit the class this morning, and Meredith got a birthday present from her teacher. She got to pick out a book and a pencil, and also got a birthday certificate from her teacher.


I had a great time in Kindergarten for the morning. We had Chinese class, 2 recesses (where I totally froze outside) spent time learning about the letter and sound "x" and had lunch together. The kids really impressed me. When you have 25 or 26 kindergartners in one room with one teacher, I thought it might be chaos most of the time. But they were all really well behaved and seemed to really enjoy school.

I do know, however, that I definitely would not have the patience to teach Kindergarten!

Stay tuned to see how Meredith's tea party goes tomorrow!