First day of Kindergarten!

Today is Sara's first day of school!  She was so excited to go to school that she didn't even sleep very well last night and was asking me every 10 minutes if it was time for school yet. 

This morning we had to go down in the basement and dig through all kinds of boxes looking for her backpack, luckily we found it.  Also, she had her 1st homework assignment already, she was supposed to make a "me-shirt" that illustrates things about her.  We also filled out a sheet that asked her all kinds of questions about herself so that the teacher and her classmates could get to know her. 

I thought her me-shirt turned out really cute.  I always struggle with how much to help her with projects.  I've come to the conclusion at this age that they need more help and then theoretically as they age they will need less help, just like everything else.  Still, I wanted it to feel like it was hers too, so she picked out all the colors and different stamps and stickers that she wanted, as well as she drew a picture to put on it and told me what she wanted the theme to be.   We tried to make it bright, happy, cheerful, and fun, just like Sara is.  

Getting ready for school, showing off her me-shirt

We also painted her finger nails, light green, her favorite color, with sparkles.  When I was taking pics of her she was trying to show her nail polish.  Showing off her sassy styling, she chose her outfit for school today.

It was finally time for us to walk her to school.  She was speeding ahead of us.  I noticed that some kids, even the 1st graders were really afraid and reticent to go to school and Sara is full steam ahead.  She has no fear, in fact she likes to call herself Sara the brave.  I let her find her class room and she remembered right where it was. 

I had a hard time getting her to turn around for a photo because she was so excited to go in to her class.   After we took the photo she gave me a hug and a kiss and then grabbed Brennan and lifted him off the floor hugging him and gave him a kiss too and told him to not be sad.

 She went in and found her cubby spot and then her name on a desk.  The first thing she did when she sat down was say hello to the kid next to her.  She is always ready to make a friend.  

I hope she had a good first day and we can't wait to hear about how it went.

Getting Crafty

Sara and I have been getting back into doing arts and crafts again lately.  It's pretty challenging because Brennan is right there terrorizing everything, so we can only craft when he's asleep or strapped in his chair.  Still we try and squeeze it in.

Lately we've been doing button crafts, we made a tree and hopefully we will make a bowl soon.   I bought some blank canvases also to do some collages and a better tree picture on hopefully to hang on her wall.

I also hung up the art wall in Sara's room again, pics coming soon.

Also we just found the sidewalk chalk and today Sara drew a blue whale (that looked more like a manatee) that was really cute, and a zebra and a tiger (that looked kind of like caterpillars).

Also, she will have a real art teacher at kindergarten this year, and as a bonus, her art teacher is also her next door neighbor 2 doors down.

Piano Pals

Sara recently started back at the music academy and is taking piano again.  She was so excited to start.  On the first day, I was foolish enough to try to bring Brennan and it was a massive disaster.  Screaming his head off was putting it mildly.  I had to wait in the parking lot because he was screaming so loud.  Sara basically took the first class all by herself with other parents and the teacher helping her.  I felt really bad and really embarrassed and for the first time I really hated Brennan for ruining it.  I knew we had to get a baby sitter.  Luckily we have 2 girls next door who were eager to help. 

This week was Sara's second class and she did so well. We had taken a year break from piano, and I was surprised to see how much more mature she is this time around and how much better she is at playing the piano and picking up the music.  She has already learned several small songs.

The music academy is really really serious deal.   She has a very serious teacher, maybe even too serious, they gave her a nice tote, note cards, a binder with a practice chart and instructions, and a music book and CD to listen to.

 She has to pass off her songs every week now and also the teacher checks her practice chart to see if she has practiced every day.  She is supposed to practice every day now for 15 minutes, doing her flash cards, rhythms on her sticks, her songs, etc.  I am confident that as long as we are able to take her to the academy, she will definitely learn piano.  They also teach all kinds of other instruments there, so she will have a good music base to branch out from.  Also, let's not forget she has Granny Karen and flute too!!

Here she is learning her notes and singing them too. 

Here they are in class being space notes and line notes.  She has a lot more kids in her class this time which I think will be really fun for her. 

Star Party 2013

The best meteor shower of the year is the Perseid Meteor shower in August.  This is Sara's second meteor shower/ star party.  We camped out in Diamond Fork last year and watched it along with my club members.  I was really amazed last year how much she was into it and how well she did at spotting meteors. 

This year we found a fantastic spot up on top of West Mountain to view and camp along with the club.  Sara was so excited to be going camping and I think she realized that it was special that she and I got to go without Brennan and Daddy.   As we were driving up the long and steep narrow road to the top of West Mountain, the view down to the valley and surrounding lake is unbelievable.  She kept saying, "Wow Mom, I can see the whole world from up here."   It was pretty cute and she kept talking about how excited she was to be going camping and she kept thanking me over and over.  It made me feel like we needed to do things like this a lot more often.

It was right at sunset when we went to go put our tent up at the viewing area and I got her picture with the mountains in the backdrop, Provo, Utah Lake, and Mt. Timp.

We set up the tent and then went back down to Lincoln Beach below to meet the rest of the group and Grandpa and Grandma.  Sara was really excited to be camping with them too.

Later that night the clouds finally cleared away and we had a fantastic view of the Milky Way, as well as the whole of Utah Valley, and we saw TONS of meteorites, even huge fireball-like ones with long tails.  Sara saw at least 15 or 20 of them. 

Finally around 1 a.m., she was so tired she couldn't stay awake anymore.  I had sent the tent up and even staked it about 25 feet away so that it would be out of the way of the star party.  However she was afraid to go lay in it by herself and I wasn't ready to give up viewing meteorites yet.  So I unstaked it and dragged the tent over right behind where we were sitting and then she crawled in and went to sleep.

I stayed up watching meteorites with Dad until 3 a.m. before we finally crashed too.  When I came to bed I noticed that the tent was hanging really low around us and was mostly covering Sara's body.  I was cursing that the tent was old and obviously falling apart and just hoping there weren't any storms coming that night.  Thankfully we didn't have any storms, however when I woke up the next morning I realized what happened.  I had forgotten to put a pole in, duh, no wonder it was sagging. 

Anyway, it was a great Mother/Daughter night and one that I really look forward to again next year!

The Angry Tadpole

Sara likes to go garage saleing with me.   We go on Fridays and she usually comes home with a hand full of books, a stuffed animal, or a t-shirt.  Last Friday we did really good, we got a ton of great books and she got this Slimer stuffed animal.  She hasn't seen Ghost Buster's of course so she didn't recognize the character.  She called it the angry tadpole instead, it cracked me up.

Then as luck would have it, just a few days later, we were driving through Provo and saw this truck.  We told her it was related to the angry tad pole and she said it was a strange looking car.  So in her head I guess she's thinking that angry tadpoles drive strange cars, well, it will all make sense to her one day I guess.

We made it to page 185 in the Neverending Story which I thought was pretty good, it's 400 pages.  Her interest is kind of waning a little.  It's been a complex and convoluted book for her to follow.  Basically I read her a chapter and then we go back and talk about what it said.  She kind of gets it but a lot of it is way over her head too and she thinks some of the creatures are scary.  I however have really really enjoyed the book and Dan wants to read it now too.  I would love a copy of it someday to read to both Sara and Brennan when they are quite a bit older.  It's a great story with some really fun messages about creativity and imagination. 

Our next book is "What we found in the sofa and how it saved the world".  I hope we like it.   Between reading all these books and the yard sale books, we've been doing a ton of reading. 

Sara has a placement test this week for her Kindergarten class.  I think it's probably just so the teacher knows what the students know already and not that they would move her up a grade, but I guess I could be wrong.  We've been reviewing and she had gotten a little rusty on things over the summer, especially with money, telling time, and math.  She's got her letters, colors, and shapes down pat.  It will be interesting to see how she does on her first test. 

Also, there is an orientation tomorrow and we will go to meet her new Kindergarten teacher and see where her class room is.  She is going to a brand new school that is just right behind our house.  She is very excited to be able to ride her bike to school every day or just to walk.  I will probably only have to meet her out at the street corner where she crosses the road behind our house.  She got afternoon kindergarten so while Brennan is snoozing she'll be in school and that leaves mornings open for activities.

She is taking Piano Pals (hopefully if I can get a babysitter for her brother) and today was her first class.  I was really impressed with how much she remembered and how much she still loves going there, she was ahead of a lot of the other kids who had never taken the toddler classes.  It made me want to try really hard to keep her in that class because I think she could do really well in the next year. 

Also I'm thinking of doing ice skating lessons for her again in September and swimming starting in October if she still wants to.  She's going to be a busy kid.   

There goes the summer/ iphone dump

I last blogged on Munkey Belle in March, since then we've sold our house, lived in Alabama for a month, and then lived in Kanab for a month.  Then we moved into our new house at the end of July.  Things are finally settling down now for me to start blogging again.  I also finally got all my photos off my iphone in a big dump that I did tonight, so I will just narrate the photos and videos randomly to get caught up.

The first videos and pictures I came across were from Kanab.  Sara and Brennan were messing around, wearing plastic ear rings and singing.   Sara was singing a song she made up entirely called "Don't Lose Me" and Brennan is singing backup.

Looks like she's wearing big 80's hoop earrings.

Of course Brennan had to try them on too. 
 
Then they got even more creative, nose rings.

I found a pic of the city pool they loved in Kanab.  Sara swam the whole time all by herself, she's a great swimmer now.  I wish I'd gotten video but I had to watch Brennan and I didn't want to get my phone wet.  Sara wished we would go to the pool every day.  She is a water loving kind of kid.

I recorded a cute video of Sara in Kanab talking about what she wants to be when she grows up.  I believe we had just been to the pool, hence the sunburn and wild hair...

We did some more workbooks in Kanab too, trying to keep on learning through the summer.

We have done a TON of reading this summer, which I am glad for.  We have read three pretty long chapter books as well as two sets of National Geographic books for kids and a box set of Fancy Nancy.

Uncle Ben brought down to Kanab this book he had been reading to Benny called "Dorko the Magnificent".   It's about a little boy who wants to be a magician and all his trails and tribulations as he figures it out. Ben read Sara and Benny chapters every night but they only made it half way through the book.  When we got back to Spanish Fork, we checked out the book from our library to finish it because Sara really enjoyed it.  We finished it a couple of weeks ago and got another one written by the same author that we didn't end up liking as much.

The next time we went back to the library we checked out "The Neverending Story".  I remember really loving the movie but I had never read the book.  It is quite long, about 300 pages and not many pictures to Sara's dismay.  So far we have read half way through.  I think it's definitely over Sara's head and there are some really scary elements to it, so I'm not sure we'll make it through.  Although now I'm hooked and really enjoying the read.  To try and encourage her to keep going, I let her watch clips of the movie on Youtube and she really liked seeing the Luckdragon and the little boy personified in the movie, so she agreed to keep going for now.  

Sara is happy that we've been going back to the library and story time.  Everyone at the library remembers her name and she loves story time.  Now Brennan gets to sit with her too.

We lived with Uncle Ben for a while in Springville when we got back from Kanab.  Sara had a blast playing with her cousins every other day or so.  Sophie, one of her oldest cousins patiently taught her how to play Monopoly by letting her do the money and the properties while Sophie helped her. It was very sweet.

Also, she got to see her cousins from Hawaii, she loved hanging out with Kayla and Malina. She also went to the Stadium of Fire with Daddy and watched her first ever music concert, Kelly Clarkson.  She loved it and really wants to go to another concert, probably with Daddy.  I wish he had gotten pictures of them there.  All of her cousins went to the concert too, which made it even more fun for her.

Then came the night we were all waiting for, on July 24th, we finally spent the first night in our new house!! Sara slept on a sleeping pad on top of her dog White Stripe that she had missed very much.  We got him out of storage for her and she never let him out of her sight.

For Brennan's birthday on the 25, Sara really wanted to take him to Kangaroo Zoo, she thinks that is where you should have birthday parties because it's the funnest place she knows.   It was just the two of them and they had lots of fun.  She really likes birthdays and birthday parties so I'm glad she gets to celebrate his vicariously, so it's like she gets 2 birthdays a year.

Since we've moved in, she has gotten all of her stuff back, her dresses, bracelets, toys, etc and she is thrilled about it.  The first few days we were in the house, she unpacked her stuff all by herself and put it away and her room was spotless.

She and Brennan have been playing outside a lot in the dirt at the new house, riding bikes and scooters too.

Sara also got to see Grandpa Glade, she really likes all the attention that he gives her and he always reads her books.  They ended up finishing the last 10 chapters in the Dorko book.  Also, this picture shows that she got registered for Kindergarten and she was really excited to get a pink t-shirt with the name of her new school on it.

While Glade was here he bought us a new vacuum and Sara has discovered that it's much lighter than our old one and she can push it around really easy.  So she  has been wanting to vacuum every day.  It's working out great for me.  I'll be sad when she gets tired of it.

Now school is almost back in.  She will be in Kindergarten and she's really looking forward to meeting her new teachers and finding some new friends.  She has to take a placement test so we have been reviewing her numbers, letters, shapes, etc.  Here she is pulling her hair out trying to remember how to count by 10's.

Today she decided that digging in the dirt around our new house was fun, so she sat and did that for a long time, moving dirt around in the dump truck. It was cute watching them play in the dirt together too.  I got a video too:  they only fight over the shovels and the dump truck sometimes...

They have been riding bikes and scooters together too. 


Sometimes everything gets in a jamble.


I'm really excited for Sara to start school because I think she will do well and enjoy it. Also her piano lessons start up again in August at the piano academy.  She might have swimming and Ice Skating again this Fall, we haven't decided that yet. 

She is a great kid, she is creative and sweet, thoughtful and funny, energetic and bouncy, and full of love for everyone.  Also my other favorite thing about her is she is totally fearless most of the time. At the pioneer day carnival she rode some really scary rides at the fair, ones that scared Daddy and I, without any fear.   Lastly my favorite thing about her is that she speaks to everyone she meets, says hi, and introduces herself and her brother and I.  I hope she continues to have a positive outlook on the world and stays outgoing and sweet forever, it will take her a long way in life. 

Whew, I really tried to catch up on things with Sara, I probably have left out lots of stuff but hopefully I can blog more regularly on her blog now so that I won't forget the details.  I also hope she enjoys looking back and reading this someday, maybe even with her kids if the Internet is still around by then, who knows.