FIRST 1st Day of School!

Today, Micah had his first official day of formalized education. Here he is, in his FIRST 1st day of school picture, all dressed in Thomas shirt and Thomas backpack.

On the walk home after school, he told me, "Did you know that all the letters have a name? Like CAPITAL I." He also told me that they read a Clifford book, and that there was a boy named "Steel" in his class (Ked confirmed this, though the spelling is different). All right, then.

He seems excited to go back on Friday, so we'll count this day as a success!

Blast from the Past

My Mom is cleaning out our childhood items, and came across several old record albums. I do remember belonging to one of those record clubs, where you tape a penny to the postcard, send it in and get 8 for the price of 1, so I'm assuming I'm responsible for most of these:

Michael Jackson - Thriller

Flashdance

Tiffany

Amy Grant - Unguarded - still one of the best Christian records in my opinion

Hall & Oates

Cyndi Lauper

Whitney Houston

Chaka Khan

Stray Cats

Twisted Sister

That's right, Twisted Sister. Wow.

Happy Birthday, Micah!

Micah, minutes after he was born:

Here's our super smart, particular, strong-willed, passionate, silly, creative, Thomas-obsessed, wonderful 4 year old today!

I guess you can tell what our favorite restaurant is. . .

Micah will soon be moving to a "real" (translation: twin sized) big boy bed. So today I had him look online at some sheet sets that he might like. We got caught in the character-themed section, and he enjoyed looking at the Thomas, Cars, Tinkerbell, etc. sheet sets. THEN, he saw this beautiful set:

Micah: "Look! PIZZA RANCH sheets!"

E Eats Everything

Our littlest Iowa Boy loves Iowa Sweet Corn!

And. . . blackberry smoothies too. . .

Mud Room: Before and After

This room has had the biggest overhaul yet. It is such a pleasure to see Ked becoming such a handy guy! The "before" pics don't totally do the room justice for how awful it looked. We'd started cleaning (believe it or not) when I realized I hadn't taken pictures yet. So. . . here we go!

Before:

After:

This room is L-shaped. His where we enter from the garage.

The washing machine area:

The absolute worst part of the mudroom was the carpet. WHO ON EARTH puts carpet in a mud room?

After ripping up the carpet and seeing all the gross, bumpy adhesive underneath, Ked opted to lay some new laminate flooring. Now, to me, it looks like the prettiest flooring there ever was!

I cannot tell you how much we love having a mud room, especially after not having one in our other house. And now after this makeover, it's one of cheeriest spots in the house!

You will NOT believe this

Yesterday we decided to pull out our ice cream maker and make some ice cream! Considering how often we did this last summer, I'm not sure why we hadn't yet done it this year. So I reached into the back of the closet, pulled out the dust-covered ice cream maker box, and you won't believe what we found inside.

The mixer and fruit bowl we had "lost" in our move.

Seriously.

WHY would I have packed those inside the flimsy ice cream maker box?

Never mind we've already thrown the corresponding beaters to the mixer away, rendering our "found" mixer useless; I am still quite thrilled to find our fruit bowl.

Now, that probably means that our lost plates, potato peeler, and egg slicer probably are still around here somewhere. . .

Anyone need a pick me up today?

Then, Then, and Now

Here are my angels two years ago, sitting nicely and taking in the wonder of the Balloon Classic.

Here they are last year, behaving so well and allowing me to take a nice photo.

And. . . here they are this year.

Goin' to the Zoo

We went to the zoo on Friday. As always, as we got in the car, I asked the boys what their favorite animal was.

Me: "What was your favorite animal today?"

Micah: "The train!" (no surprise there)

Eli: "I wiked the pawade!"

Me, confused: "There wasn't a parade at the zoo."

Eli: "There was a pawade weawwy faw away, but I WIKED it!"

Silly Boy

Me, grabbing Eli's cheeks in my hands: "Eli, you are an old soul! I can see it in your eyes."

Eli: "No, you can't." (He covers one eye.) "I'm a pirate!"