New experiences

August has been a milestone month for us. On the first of August, Luke and Elyse celebrated their 3rd birthday. It's hard to believe that they are three years old already. Feels like we've turned a corner with them finally. Although, the last couple of weeks have been nothing short of interesting with Luke. It seems that because he breezed through the Terrible Two's without any trouble that he's decided that three should be another story. He has had more timeouts in the few short weeks since his birthday than I can even count! Hopefully, this stage doesn't last all year!

Just two days before their birthday, Elyse took a spill at swimming lessons and cut her skin open just above her eye. It was the first experience for us with stitches or Dermabond (glue). I could just kiss the person that invented Dermabond! The dr. was able to glue the cut closed and it healed up very nicely. She was such a trooper about it, too. She cried more when we took the band-aid off that the lifeguard had put on than when the dr. was putting the glue on and fussing with it to get it just right. We're busy applying Mederma and sunscreen to it now although the scar is minimal and her hair covers it some of the time. She heals very well so she most likely won't have much of a scar as she gets older anyway.

We had family pictures taken on the 2nd and they went great. We found a new photographer that we adore - Jamie Stoia. Unfortunately, she lives in MN and only comes back to Iowa once or twice a year. We got some great shots out on an old abandoned farm with my Grandpa's armchair and our hammock as 'props'.

Cory left on a trip to North Dakota to see the Engebretson farm that is there. It was a guys only trip with his two brothers, Jeremy and Nick, his dad, and Grandpa Rex. They were gone Friday through Monday and had a lot of fun. I decided that I'd take the kids to Omaha for the weekend while he was gone since we had not been there yet this year. Cory's mom, Linda was going to go along wtih us for moral support. Thank goodness for wonderful mother-in-laws! :-) The forecast for Saturday was for temps of 102!! We canceled the trip only to decide to go ahead and go late Saturday afternoon since the forecast for Sunday was 85 and no rain until after 3pm. Well, we did get caught in some rain just after we got there and had to sit under a shelter for a bit, but we didn't melt and had a great day at the zoo. We were all exhausted when we left after spending 6 hours there.

We took an impromptu trip to Adventureland last week with some family. The kids had a blast with Ethan and Deb and Drew, Nan, and Talia. Logan was in heaven having big kids to ride all the 'big' rides with. He is fearless and was quite disappointed when he wasn't quite tall enough to ride the SpaceShot. I was relieved, though! Luke and Elyse loved all the little kid rides. Cale alternated between the big rides and doing some of the little ones with Luke and Elyse. I can now officially say that I've ridden all three rollercoasters at Adventureland. The Outlaw is definitely my favorite!

Logan and Cale had their first day of school yesterday. Logan is in 2nd grade this year and Cale started kindergarten. They are both very happy about the teachers that they have for the year and so are Cory and I. Logan said yesterday that he thinks Miss Tietgen is the best teacher he's had so far. That says A LOT because he has really liked his teacher every year so far. Cale didn't give me much information yesterday except to say that he didn't have a favorite thing because he liked everything so much. Tuesday night and drop off yesterday were a little tearful for me. I just can't believe that Cale is in kindergarten already. This morning Luke, Elyse, and I were about halfway home from dropping the boys off when I had a moment of panic because Cale wasn't with us and I thought I'd forgotten him somewhere! Guess I'm not quite ready to let him go yet. Thank goodness that Luke and Elyse don' t start preschool until Sept 10 or I'd really be a mess! It's an adjustment for Luke and Elyse to not have their big brothers around, too. Luke just said to me in a very strained voice at about 10:30am, "When are we going to pick up Logan and Cale?".

This fall/winter promises to be an especially busy one - two boys in school all day, Luke and Elyse in preschool two mornings a week, I am teaching for DMACC two nights a week and training for the Des Moines Public Schools Early Childhood Special Ed dept two full days a month, Logan playing soccer and then wrestling and Cory and Cale playing flag football. I think we'll survive, but we'll all be breathing a big sigh of relief when Christmas break rolls around!