And the award goes to...

...Amelia! She was chosen "Super Student of the Week" in her Pre-K class. This award is given by the teachers to a student who "makes good choices all week." Amelia got a certificate, and got to choose a prize out of the prize box (a little spinny top). She was quite proud of herself, and we were quite proud of her!Last week was fire safety week at Teddy Bear Daycare, and the students got up close and personal with a fire truck and firemen! Each student received her very own "Ypsilanti Township Fire Department" hat; it's already gotten a lot of wear, but not by Amelia...see below! Every time Andrew puts the hat on, he shakes his arms for a couple minutes. Who knows what that's about, but it's cute!

My Little Ponies: A New Musical by Amelia Jobe

Enjoy this original song Amelia came up with today while playing. Broadway, here we come! ;-)

And so it begins...

Last week, Bryan and I each reached a milestone; I became a soccer mom and Bryan became a coach of his kid's team! Amelia is playing soccer in the preschool-age league run by our township. The first practice/game was quite an experience (Bryan compared it to herding cats)! Amelia had a lot of fun playing, and even scored a goal! Bryan is a great coach and I think the kids will have a great experience being on his team.

Amelia also started pre-ballet and pre-tap class last week, so we're getting kind of busy (thus the title of this post)! She has really enjoyed class the last couple of weeks and informed us that she likes ballet better than tap "because the shoes are prettier. They're pink." So there you go! The class is closed to parents except for the first week of the month, so I'm looking forward to next Thursday when I get to see what she's actually learning. If I can video, I will!

Andrew, of course, is too little for much organized activity, but he's quite a trooper in tagging along and cheering (he can actually dribble the soccer ball quite well!). He has recently started saying a lot of words, including bus, tractor, truck, (do you see a theme here?), cracker (which sounds a lot like tractor), puppy, ducky,doggie...and that's all I can think of for now. Oh, and he calls Amelia "YaYa." I think that's pretty cute, myself. Hope all is well with everyone in the blogosphere! Enjoy the pictures!

Return from a break!

Hello, readers! If you are reading this then you've been very faithful. :-) I've taken a break from blogging over the summer, but now that we're back in a routine, I figured I'd better get back to blogging!

We had a great summer, but we're glad it's fall! Amelia started school again last week, which we're ALL happy about. The Early K program we'd planned to send her to ended up falling through (thanks for pulling the funding, Michigan government), so she's staying where she's been and going to Pre-K every morning. There are two Pre-K classes this year, so she has a different teacher, which is nice and will give her a bit of a different experience. Her class is going to learn some French this year, which I'm excited about since I studied French in high school and college! It should be fun to practice! Amelia will also get to be present for music class at school this year, which I know she'll love. Here is a picture of her first day of school (it was raining, and Andrew wanted to be in the picture too!). Doesn't she look old? :-(

Of course the other reason we're glad it's fall is that college football is back; well I should say Michigan football is back! And BOY, IS IT BACK!!!!! We are pumped about the first two games, can you tell? :-) We have tickets to five home games this year so we will really get to get into the spirit. Here's a picture of us with our friends Anne and Ted Ledbetter after the first game.
And finally, I am taking a cake decorating class! It's the first course in a series of Wilton cake decorating classes offered at our local JoAnn Etc. and I'm really enjoying it! I'm really looking forward to taking a couple of the more advanced classes, but you have to take the 1st course as a pre-requisite. This is the cake I made for the first week's lesson, which was on using the star tip. Nothing spectacular, but it was tasty, and we ate it when we had friends over to watch UM's victory over the Irish! I'll post pictures of the cakes I do each week, so hopefully we'll see improvement!>Happy fall to everyone, and if you're reading, thanks for hanging in there!

We're back

We're back from our wonderful, two-week vacation to Kauai, Hawaii. It was so nice to have two full weeks to be in such a beautiful, relaxing place with our family! The first week we spent on the north shore in Princeville at the Hanalei Bay Resort, where my parents have a timeshare. We enjoyed playing on the beach and in the pool, eating shave ice, watching birds (and the multitudes of chickens), and playing Wii when it rained. The second week we went to the south shore to spend time with extended family at the Mariott Waiohai Beach Club in Poipu. My Aunt Andrea and Uncle Cam Henderson have the timeshare there and used those priveliges to get three units--enough for my parents, Abby, the four of us, the four of them (my aunt and uncle, and my cousins Austin and Brittany), and my aunt Mary Ann--so we could have a little family reuniuon. It really was great to get to spend time with them! I haven't seen most of them in about seven years, so it really was a treat. We haven't spent much time on the south shore before, and we really enjoyed it over there! We also had a lot of pool and beach time there, as well as fierce card playing at night. :-)

The trip to Hawaii was VERY long and kind of stressful but we got there all in one piece, and the trip back was also very long but the kids slept almost the entire way, so it made it much better. We are so thankful we were able to have a great vacation, and as wonderful as it was, we are still glad to be home. Here's a couple pictures, and I've uploaded a whole album on facebook if you want to see more. They're also on kodakgallery but I can't get them to link at the moment! I'll work on that!

Amelia's art

Amelia loves coloring in coloring books and drawing pictures with markers and crayons. The other day at school her class was talking about what they wanted to be when they grow up, and Amelia told me she wanted to be a mom and an artist. Sounds good to me! Another interesting thing is that lately she's been trying to sound out words and write them; here is an example below. She's written PRNSESAS (princesses), U "heart" I (I love) and Amelia (she obviously does this one right!). This translates to "Amelia loves princesses" in Amelian. I am quite proud of her since she spelled "prnsesas" on her own without asking for help. Good phonetics, Amelia! Oh, by the way, on the left is Amelia, then Cinderella, Snow White (with Grumpy and Dopey), and Sleeping Beauty. They're in front of a castle.
And here is a Mother's Day card Amelia drew for me at church last week. It cracked me up. Here is the front:
and here is the inside:
Happy Mother's Day, everyone...thanks for the meatballs! ;-)

Spring

Spring is finally (I think) here to stay in Michigan. Hooray! Driving around in the past couple days I've seen daffodils and tulips all around, so that's a sure sign, right??? It's been so nice to have warm enough weather for the kids to be outside. They get cabin fever with it being cold for so long!

So I looked at the date of my last post and realized I've not posted anything for a month. I've been slacking! Actually, it's probably more like nothing all that interesting or new has been happening, so I haven't felt the need to share. :-) Anyway, hope everyone had a happy Easter yesterday. Below are a few pics of the kids. We were only able to get one picture of them together in their cute outfits before church, as Andrew fell asleep in the car on the way home from church and then had completely soaked his clothes by the time I got him up from his nap. Oh well! This one will do until I stage an "Easter" photo with them another day. Happy Spring!