Raine's First Day of Kindergarten!

I can't believe my baby is in kindergarten!

This was Raine's very first day of kindergarten.  She went in for a few hours to meet her teacher and do assessment testing.

She was so excited she literally RAN to the door!

This was the first official day of kindergarten.  We all went early for the welcome to school assembly where each class got to enter school under a balloon arch.

Again, she RAN to school, excited as can be.

Raine under the balloon arch.

I spent so long trying to ease Raine's fears about going to school and get her excited about it that she was so ready.  The important thing I forgot was to prepare myself for her going to kindergarten.  About a week before school started I read a friend's blog about her daughter starting kindergarten at the same school.  At that moment I realized what Raine going to kindergarten meant to me, the enormous change that was coming my way.  So, of course I immediately burst into tears.  Which I then did again anytime I thought about her going to school, when I dropped her off at her assessment day and again on her first day of kindergarten.  (And I am starting to tear up yet again as I type this - and we are finishing our 3rd week of kindergarten).  I wasn't really crying because I was sad although I do miss her while she is at school, I was just so proud of her and the little person she has become.  She was so grown up and brave about going to school!  More brave than mommy, who was just pretending to be brave. 

15 Weeks Pregnant and Kindergarten!

As many of you already know we are expecting baby #2!

This pregnancy has been strikingly different from my last.  I felt continuously tired and nauseous the majority of the first trimester and my belly seemed to pop almost as soon as wee found out we were expecting!  

Now in the second trimester I am feeling quite a bit better.  Raine and I have even left the house several times in the last few weeks! :)  I feel my ligaments stretching and my body accommodating the baby much earlier than I did when I was pregnant with Raine.  I felt amazingly like myself up until the last month with Raine and this time around I worry that I am a bit whiny because I am feeling everything so early.

Raine is SO excited to be a big sister!  She is looking forward to the new baby and has told Dan and I that she will get up to feed the baby in the middle of the night. :)  She is also looking forward to kindergarten (I know I can't believe it either)!  I think all the coming changes and the hard work of growing is making her a little grumpy but she is handling it pretty well anyway.

She got accepted to 2 really good kindergartens:  Mountain Phoenix Waldorf Charter School and The Studio School (an art based magnet school).  We are still figuring out which school we will send her to but are excited to have such great options (considering 2 months ago we had no options and were just going to home-school).  Raine really likes the playground at Mountain Phoenix and she LOVES that the Studio School has a ceramics class and a stage!  We will decide for sure in a week or two which school she will be attending.

Happy Birthday Raine!!

We had a little family birthday on Raine's birthday last week. We are having a party for her in a few weeks so we just let her pick whatever she wanted to do on her birthday.

I took her to a place called Little Monkey Business, it is just a play center for infants to preschoolers. She had a great time and then we came home to celebrate with Dan. We played all her games and then Raine and Dan played play dough while I made dinner. She requested pizza and watermelon. And then she had a very large cupcake that she picked out from the store. We opened presents and watched Sid the Science Kid.

It was pretty fun to have a day that we did whatever she wanted to do! Her favorite gift from Dan and I was her Kilan night light, she loves it, and even wanted to take it in the car and everywhere she went. But when she saw the playhouse from Nana all else was forgotten. :)

Last night we spent last night making our own Christmas tree decorations. (We have only a handful of real decorations). It was pretty fun. I thought the decorations would be cheesy and silly on our tree, but I think it looks cute. :) Raine was super excited because she got to use scissors and glue! A very big treat for her, she feels so deprived not getting to use scissors that whenever she has a chances that's all she wants to do. :) Raine was in charge of hanging the decorations on the tree, which she really enjoyed. Grami Tami gave us a nice tree, it is actually our first tree bigger than 2 ft tall. And it already has a pile of presents under it for Raine from Grami Tami. We also made super chocolate cookies for Dan's work cookie bake off. Raine loves to bake (she thinks everything requires a cup of butter, cup of sugar and a mixer). She loves licking the beaters more than eating the cookies.

Raine Reading

Raine loves to read to Jasper (the boy I nanny for now) and I. Here she is reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear. Usually she just reads the pictures and makes up a story, but there are a few books she remembers the words to pretty well. :D

Raine was going to do some signing in this video but once I turned on the camera she decided to talk about dinosaurs.

Halloween Fun

We had a great Halloween and hope all of you did as well!! We went to the Children's Museum and the Aquarium for their Halloween events and then trick or treating to a few houses on our street. Raine had a blast! She really got the hang of things this year. She said "Trick or Treat" at most of the houses and kept pointing out houses to ask if we could trick or treat them.

Raine and I did the trick or treating pretty early so that we could come home and hand out candy. It was our first year that we had trick or treaters. I bought 6 bags of candy and we ran out around 6:30pm! I felt bad that we had to turn out the lights so early, I guess I shouldn't have been so generous with early in the evening (I was giving kids one of every kind of candy). :)

Happy Halloween!!

It has been a little while since our last post... sorry. We were so happy to have the chance to go to Utah for Heith and Haiden's birthday party! We had so much fun and loved spending time with everyone! I will post photos of that later (they are on Dan's laptop).

Last night Raine and Dan carved our pumpkin from Grammy Tami's house. They had a lot of fun, it was super cute to watch. :D Raine keeps telling me that the pumpkin is a girl, named Pumpkin (NOT JACK! as Dan had been calling it) and it is hers! She was so funny, she didn't want to touch the slime at first but soon enough she was playing in it. Raine designed the face of our pumpkin this year. Dan asked her what she thought he should look like and she drew a big circle with big circle eyes and a big happy smile.