Carson Turns Two!

Our baby is two! And he loves Mickey Mouse.

Austin turns 6!

Here are the limited pictures I can find from Austin's 6th birthday.

Graham turns 4!

Graham's Superhero 4th birthday.

Austin Starts Kinder -- August 2016

My firstborn, my first baby is officially old enough to go to Big School. I surprised myself by actually crying after drop off. I BAWLED. I had been looking forward to having elementary-aged kids and yet here I was, sobbing as I walked out. He was SO EXCITED to start school. It was like this realization that he was totally fine without me and that was painful. We walked there as is our plan for most of the days. He went right over to his spot at his table. I could barely get a hug! Corey and Sign Gypsies put up an awesome sign for everyone to pose with. His class is super duper cute and Ms. Marcia even gave him a First Day of School gift. Which helped offset the burn of sweat in my eye from walking home that afternoon. I decided to drive on the super hot days. :-)

End of School 2016

My how these boys have grown over the year!

Austin Has Graduated... Say WHAT!?!?

May 20, 2016 was Austin's preschool graduation. I was both really looking forward to and really dreading the ceremony. I had been seeing friends' kids ceremony all week long and knew that I would be emotional. But I'd also been looking forward to this day for a really long time. It means he's growing up. It means he'll be in full time school next year. I used to long for him to just get to kindergarten, but now that it's upon us, I want to freeze time so we don't have to go there yet. I know that I can't have it both ways, but it's a reminder that "these are the days."

We've been coming to this school for years and soon he'll come no longer.

The ceremony was in the sanctuary. I just expected it to be in the gym because that's where things always are. We'd never been in there before, it's very pretty!

After we dropped Austin off at his class, we went and waited for the program to start. Carson was super restless and Graham was being a pill. I didn't pay much attention during the actual ceremony to how they did because I was so busy trying to get video and pictures (which was super hard to do given that some aides sat in the front pew, right in front of some parents).

Typical Graham.

They got into place, waved at the parents and then began singing three songs.

Song One.

Song Two.

Song Three.

Here's Austin walking to get his certificate. (I missed his name being called.)

Austin's pre-k class

best buddies

Mrs. Self and Austin

Ms. Sherry, the director, and Austin

I had told Austin that he could pick the lunch place after graduation, fully expecting him to pick McDonalds, Chick-fil-A, or Mellow Mushroom. He chose Chuck E. Cheese's! Seth and I exchanged this glance of "oh no, we've been played." We went home to change first which was really good idea because ended up making a whole afternoon of it. We had originally planned to go to the Galaxy Drive-in that night as part of the celebration, but "lunch at Chuck E. Cheese's" lasts for three hours and people were tired and cranky, so we drove in the car for a bit, wanting to get them to rest and head to IKEA to look at the cupboard I want for the laundry room. (We had thought we'd do lunch, naps, dinner and then Galaxy, but we ended up being out all day long! It would be nice to do the Drive-in on a day Seth has off because heading down there will be hard with traffic and such on an evening he gets home at 6pm.)

Some cakeballs by Diana that'd I'd bought as celebration.

 Here's a video of Carson and Graham riding the tea cup of hot chocolate.

After Chuck E. Cheese's we went to Nebraska Furniture Mart and then IKEA. The bigs got to play in the play place at IKEA for their first time and Carson walked around with Seth and I. He loved pushing the cart. At one point, we were walking along and I realized he was no long between us pushing the cart! He was only 10 feet back or so, but it was both scary and hilarious. Now if I can just get myself to pull the trigger and get my cupboard!