Kindergarten

When Sadie was a baby I thought this would never happen. People told me it would, but I didn't believe them. Some days, when the crying and the screaming and the potty training seemed never ending, I would pray for this day to come. Some days, as I rocked her to sleep or listened to her innocent and completely joyful giggles, I would pray that this day would never come. It seems as of lately I offer up prayers of the later kind a little more frequently, but come this day did. Sadie grew up and started kindergarten.

 

 

Alyssa was feeling a little left out so we got her in on the first day of school picture action

 

Sadie's birthday is a late summer birthday. In fact, she just barely turned 5 a few weeks ago. So, Ryan and I (and by "Ryan and I," I mean, mostly me) have been agonizing over whether or not we should send her to kindergarten this year or hold her back until next year. We obviously decided to send her. I think either way it would have ended up just fine. She is smart and super social so I think she will do great in a lot of ways. I am hoping that whatever she is behind in she will be able to catch up quickly without too much trouble. Fingers crossed!

 

All summer we have been working on her letters and numbers and other such school-like things and she has been doing fantastic! You can imagine my horror when we went to kindergarten assessments last week and she told her teacher that she didn't know what the letter "A" was. I asked her later what was up and she said that she was just pretending not to know because she thought it was fun...ay, yi, yi! I guess I can't fault her for having a great imagination. On the positive side, she did end up knowing a lot of stuff I didn't even know she knew, like reading words out of a sentence.

 

Last night for FHE we talked about Priesthood blessings and Ryan gave her her first school year fathers blessing. He talked about being brave and not being scared on the first day. He blessed her mind to learn quickly. He talked about her safety and her listening and obeying her teacher.

After her blessing we took her up to the school and went over drop off/pick up procedures, lining up at her classroom, safety rules and other rules we expect her to follow while at school. I think this ended up being really successful. Sadie seemed comfortable with what was going to happen on her first day. And I felt reassured that she wasn't going to wander off with some stranger.

 

Just when I felt I was comfortable and confident that I was going to be OK with sending my little baby off into the cold, scary world, we got an email from the school alerting parents that a man had been trying to lure kids into his car after school. We got another email today. The same man trying again to get kids to go home with him. I know we hear about this kind of thing in the news, but why is it happening at my school on my child's first day? Freaky!! It is stuff like this that makes me pretty sure that I am more nervous about kindergarten than Sadie is. I offered up some prayers last night, that is for sure. I think they worked because I woke up today feeling calm about sending her and excited for her.

 

 

Well, the first day came. Sadie did GREAT! And I did pretty OK too. We walked up to the school. She patiently endured the pictures I made her take. Then she said goodbye and ran to the playground. When I say ran, I mean RAN. No hesitation, just excitement. We got there a few minutes early (I wonder how many more times that will happen this year? Probably none:)  ) so she played on the playground while she waited for her teacher. She turned back to wave a few times, but then the bell rang and her teacher gathered them into the room. And she was gone. One of the first in the classroom. She was the first to hang up her backpack and she quickly found her seat.

Sadie is the one with the blue backpack and purple shirt. Also, she is the one RUNNING to the playground

When her teacher opened the door, she was gone!

One of the first kids in the classroom

Ryan and I tried not to be hovering parents, so we hung back by the fence and just waved goodbye. I think we did better than some of the parents, but I couldn't resist a little sneak peak just to make sure she was finding her way to her seat. She did perfect.

 

She found her seat all by herself and just waited for the day to get going

Ryan and I walked home mostly in silence. Some of my thoughts were of the melancholy sort...OK, I was holding back the tears. Gone are my days of chillin' with my little buddy all day long. But, some of my thoughts were of excitement. I am excited to see her learn and progress and to make new friends. And, near the end of our walk home a few little thoughts of relaxation and relief snuck into my head. 3 whole hours of only one child...and hopefully that one will be asleep for most of those 3 hours. Just think how much I am going to accomplish! Today I got in a run, a stress free lunch and a few minutes of completely mindless, uninterrupted tv.

 

At 3:15 I headed back up to the school to get Sadie. She came out much the same way she went in: the first one out the door. Her eyes got wide when she saw me and she yelled, "Mommy!" and ran over to me. It made me feel pretty good. I was glad that she had a good day and was still excited. I am also still (a little selfishly) glad that she is excited to see me and isn't too embarrassed by me yet. I will cling to what I can for as long as I can. I am starting to realize just how fast these years fly by.

 

The whole way home we chatted about her day. She sits next to Alex, Jack and Mackenzie. Her favorite part of the day was playing on the playground and going to P.E. She earned a pink sucker. They read some stories about the first day of school and her favorite one was called, "First Day Jitters." They learned about the number zero and she didn't finish coloring her picture so she needed to do that when she got home. I was pretty impressed by the report because the only thing I got out of her after preschool was, "I don't know."  Like, I would say, "How was preschool today?"  Sadie: "I don't know." Then I would try, "What did you learn?" Sadie: "I don't know." You get the idea. What she did all last year at preschool is pretty much a mystery to me. So this report on the first day of kindergarten was pretty much mind shattering.

 

So, there you go. I would count day one a success. I let her know tonight at bedtime that she would be going to school again tomorrow and she said that tomorrow she would be scared because today was her very last day of being brave. We shall see. I think seeing the playground might change her mind. Here we go. KINDERGARTEN!

 



Snowpocalypse 2012

Oh, what do you do on a snowy day, when all the world is white?

Do you work on GenTax?

Or, build a fort to relax...

... And watch some Tinkerbell?

Do you play a board game?

Or, first place claim, in a obstacle course contest?

Do you get your craft on, with some scissors and glue?

Or, go out in the snow and hope your lips don't turn blue?

Do you paint the snow red?

Or, take a ride in a laundry basket sled?

Do you throw snow in Dad's face?

Or, just lay still in one place and watch the snow flakes fall?

Do you make pizza for dinner?

Or, talk about winter, and how it will never be over??????

Is that what you do?

So, do we!


15 inches in our drive.

"I am a BIG Sister!"

Sadie loves babies. Even before Alyssa was born Sadie loved babies. So, I wasn't too concerned about how Sadie would adjust to the new arrival, but there was still room for concern. Sadie is used to being the center of attention and having my undivided attention.  But,Sadie is the best big sister ever!

She loves to hold Alyssa and wants to hold her multiple times every day. She is super helpful. She gets diapers, wipes, and burp cloths. She keeps track of where the binky is. And, if Alyssa gets fussy Sadie is the first one to alert me that "she is hungry for milk!"

Sadie does get a little upset when Alyssa cries, especially when we are in the car. But she is getting more patient with it and learning that that is just how babies communicate.

Sadie meeting Alyssa for the first time

Sadie wearing her "Big Sister" t-shirt on day 2 in the hospital. She would run over to the door whenever any doctors or nurses came into the room to inform them that she was the BIG sister and that her baby was Alyssa who "grew up out of mommy's tummy." 

So excited to have mommy and baby sister home from the hospital

Getting to know one another

My beautiful girls

I love my girls and I love that they love each other!

3 + 1 = 4

Photo courtesy of Christian Photography

Alyssa Brynn Johnson

Born September 20, 2011

8 lbs 1 oz 20 in

Elder Johnson Revisits The Lonestar State

Ryan served his mission in the McAllen, Texas mission. He has always talked about going back some day and after his stories of gangsters and dogs and front porch bbqs and tortillas, I really wanted to see it too.

Every year Ryan's work has a big meeting for all of it's employees and they bring along spouses and families just for the fun of it. This year the meeting was in San Antonio, Texas. Being so close, we just couldn't pass up the opportunity to stay a little longer and revisit some of Ryan's old mission areas.

We started the week at the JW Marriott for Ryan's work meetings. This hotel features six acres of heated pools, fountains, waterfalls and rivers so you can imagine what Sadie and I were doing while Ryan was meeting-ing it up.

Ryan & I at the Formal Dinner

When the work shindig was over we visited the Alamo and the Riverwalk and then headed South to the border. Our first stop was Laredo, TX. 



At The Alamo



All of Ryan's mission journals and contacts are packed away in a storage unit in Utah so he didn't really have anyway of finding the people he would have liked to have visited. But because of the transitory nature of border towns and immigrants, it was highly unlikely he would have been able to find these people even if he did have any contact info. So, we didn't get to visit with anybody Ryan taught. But we did get to drive by his mission apartments and drive by the houses of some people he taught. As we were driving by he would tell us stories.

In Laredo we got to see the house of a woman he taught and baptized. She worked as a live-in housekeeper for a family and was trying to save money to bring the rest of her family from Mexico.

Next we went to Brownsville, stopping in Harlingen and San Benito on the way. In Harlingen we saw the apartment where Ryan co-habitated with a porcupine. This porcupine just happened to be a thief and stole his Christmas presents. 

Trying a Mexican Sucker. This one is flavored with Chili Powder.

In Brownsville Ryan served in Cameron Park, which at the time was the poorest neighborhood in the entire United States. Ryan's best mission stories hail from Cameron Park. There are too many good ones to relay here, but if you want to know just ask Ryan about the dogs, the gangsters and the mayo-covered corn.

We took a few days leave of absence from the mission trail and visited South Padre Island. We spent most of the time on the beach.

Our Little Beach Baby

While we were in South Padre Island we went on a dolphin watching tour which was AMAZING! We found a pod of dolphins within just a few minutes of being out on the water. The dolphins were swimming so close to our boat we probably could have touched them if we tried. Our tour guide was also really knowledgeable. He was able to point out the baby dolphins, who, he said, still had their birth wrinkles, making them no more than a few days old.

Dolphins. Coincidentally, they are hard to photograph.

We headed back up to San Antonio and spent our last day down on the Riverwalk. We had lunch on the Riverwalk with some overly friendly birds. There was a duck that kept biting my leg because he wanted food. Sadie still talks about the mean birds in Texas. We also took a little boat ride down the river and saw the sites. San Antonio is a very beautiful city architecturally. I loved it!

This was a fabulous family vacation. I couldn't have wished for a better time!



Fieldtrip Friday: They Do Still Exist

Yes. Sadie and I still do try to get in our weekly activity known as the Fieldtrip Friday. I have just been woefully terrible at picture taking and blog posting. So here are the fieldtrips I did manage to capture over the past 3 months.

January: I enrolled Sadie in a gymnastics class which was every Friday for 6 weeks. She absolutely loved it! And she still asks to go to gymnastics.

The Foam Pit. A class favorite. You could run and jump into it, go down the slide into it, or swing from the rope swing and drop in.

Sadie would not even attempt to climb this ladder at the beginning. By the last day she wouldn't even let me come within arms distance of her because she wanted to do it all by herself.

 

Sorry. Camera phones make for blurry action shots.



Sadie would often raise her hands in the air and exclaim "TA DA!" every time she finished an exercise.



February: I enrolled Sadie in a 4 week ballet class. See my Ballerina Girl post to see how that went down.

March 4th: Butterfly Pavilion

The Pavilion was awesome! You enter a rain forest type atrium that is filled with tropical flowers and plants and over 1,600 free flying butterflies.

 I didn't get a picture of my favorite butter fly (The Blue Morpho) but it was so beautiful! There were literally thousands of every color and size.

Unfortunately, it was a long drive from our house and we arrived just about at nap time. This was one of the more frustrating experiences of my mothering career, starting with Sadie running (away from me, in a very fun game of keep away from mom) around the pavilion and ending with me pulling her through the parking lot by one arm as she screamed and dragged her legs. At least the pics let me imagine that we had a wonderful time. I called my mom almost in tears when I got home and she just laughed at me. Apparently I put her through the same thing a time or two. (How sweet revenge can be) :)

March 11th: The Wildlife Experience 

A much better experience than the previous week! Although, I forgot the camera. We started the day off with an IMAX film, Animalopolis. The film covers the real-world activities of a variety of animals but the narration is done "Dr. Seuss style."

Next we headed to their live Frog exhibit. Sadie had a lot of fun trying to find the frogs in each tank. Some were huge! Others were so tiny and so well camouflaged it took us while to find them. Did you know that there is a species of frog that is metallic silver?

We ended the day exploring their Globeology exhibit which simulates a journey through the major biomes of the world, such as the Tundra, Rainforest and the Coral Reef.  Sadie really enjoyed the falling snow in the arctic area and the snapping crocodiles in the African area.

March 18th: Dropped in for a one day gymnastics class.

March 25th: We had friends in town last weekend and we visited the Colorado Railroad Museum,

The Nature & Science Museum and the Children's museum. So, I think we might just take it easy today. Perhaps a little pedicure? I shall post pics if that is the route we take.

Happy Friday to you!