First day of School

It was Alex and Aaron's first day of school on Monday. They were total champs.

In the morning, Alex and Chris rode their bikes to the school, dropped Alex off, and Chris rode on to the Google shuttle stop. In the afternoon, I took Aaron to school where he met up with his new best friends Coby and Nicholas and he walked hand in hand into the room with them. As long as he had those guys by his side he couldn't care less about me. It was a perfect first day. Then Jacob and I went home and he took a nap until it was time to pick both boys up. Again, perfect for everyone involved.

Our day at Raging Waters was really fun. The kids loved it. There was plenty of stuff for them to do that they never got bored. Alex was tall enough to go on anything, but just barely. Aaron didn't want to do anything scary so Chris and Al would go on the big kid slides and I would keep an eye on Aaron and Jacob. Jacob wanted nothing to do with the water so it was a lot of following him around discovering new people to meet and new disgusting things to put in his mouth.

The Summer Reading Program

Alex and Aaron finished their summer reading program with flying colors. It was from the Hooked on Phonics program, Aaron finished the Kindergarten and Alex finished the First gradecurriculum at twice the speed I had first planned for. They were passing off 2-4 books a day instead of 1-2 and as a reward we all got to spend a day at Raging Waters.

Jacob's First Birthday

Jacob's first birthday was awesome. It was a family party on Sunday, July 31st. As you can see he is taking the whole thing very seriously.

The cake and icecream was distributed. Aaron and Jacob have similar "frosting on the finger" methods.

This is the BEFORE picture:

And this is the AFTER:

And here he is congratulating himself on a job well done. He wasn't into eating the cake as much as spreading the frosting around on his tray, his face, and his body.

Sunday Musical: Hello Dolly

We watch a musical every Sunday afternoon as a family. It is one of my favorite traditions but when we play movies we haven't seen before it is a mixed bag. We learned a couple weeks ago that a Danny Kay musical "The Inspector General" was less about the music and more about the slapstick. My favorite dancing musical is "Royal Wedding" with Fred Astaire and Jane Powell.

Hello Dolly was a win on many levels today. First, the score was used in the movie Wall-E so the boys would perk their heads up every time the theme replayed. Second, there was so much difficult singing and dancing content it was almost overwhelming. (There is probably a reason why high schools don't just do Hello Dolly every couple years) Third, the costumes were INCREDIBLE. I was entertained by Barbara Streisand's gowns alone. Fourth, it was directed by Gene Kelly. And I just love him so I had to add that in there.

Though it was long, (2.5 hrs) the boys moved the couches back and practiced their break dancing moves to pass the time. Alex was practicing the "coffee grinder" and much to everyone's suprise the dance finale included the ensemble doing a series of coffee grinders. Who knew they were doing hip hop in 1969. priceless.