Grandma Weekend

When Zack goes out of town, what better thing for us to do than head down to the Springs to spend a weekend with my mom and sisters!  Girls weekend!! We had good food, good talks, and great hang out time.

One morning, we went to an awesome park right next to Garden of the Gods.  It was also next to a little creek and hiking trail. 

Emmy was practicing pumping herself on the swing next to Grandma

 Football with the boys

 Tiny hike

 The next day, we went to Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.  WHAT AN AWESOME PLACE! I absolutely love this zoo.  Besides Emmy not feeling and acting her best, we had a great day.  It was nice and cool too, so we weren't burning hot.

 Feeding the giraffes lettuce is seriously the highlight of any outing.  It's hilarious watching their huge tongues grab the food right out of our hands.  They all loved it and were so brave.

 Emmy kept pulling her hand with food in it back, and giraffe followed it.  I love Nell's expression in these.

 Sisters are the best!

 Thumbs up to the lion lounging on top of the statue

 This guy came right up to the window to say hello.

 There was a huge bridge around the elephant exhibit that overlooked all of Colorado Springs.  It was such an awesome view!

 Flying an airplane

 Checking out the trout and bear

Smith's First Day of Preschool

My little Smith Bug started one morning a week of preschool a few weeks ago.  He absolutely loves it.  He wanted to stay and play in Emmy's preschool class every single time we dropped her off last year so he was ready.  He loves wearing his new backpack.  He even hangs up his own stuff and empties out his snack, etc.  

I love hearing his cute stories afterwards too.  They're usually about sharing, not sharing, who took a toy from him, how recess was, etc.  He's getting so big!!!

He still loves doing thumbs up.  All the time!

This was another day, walking in.  All bundled up. 

Catch up

Where does the time go?  How is it possible that the kids have already been in school for over a month?!?  Summer is over ands it's officially fall.  I'm glad to be back into our routine and I think we are all doing well. 

Here are some pictures from the past few weeks...

We have a great little park near our house that we can walk to.  It has a baseball field too, so the kids like to go out and take turns batting and playing outfield.

 Smith watching while on his phone. Haha.

 Time with friends is the best...

 This was our first day with Molly back, after she was home with Jord for 2 months!!  Park day of course.

 Here's some of Emmy's recent writing.  She's learning how to sound out words.  Its too cute.  She is pretty motivated to learn to read and write so she wants to practice a bunch at home.  She's been writing letters to friends and family.  And she loves mailing them out.

This one says "I like playing with my doll."

 This one says, "I miss you and please come on Christmas break.  Love Emmy."

She even wrote Zane's lunch note. "I love you.  Ps. Emmy wrote this"

 Smith, lately, is so hard to get around with.  He just decides out of the blue that his legs don't work anymore and just sits or lays down.  The other day he refused to walk and when I asked him to come, he answered, "Mom, can't you see my legs are broken?!?" :)

 We got to go to a Padres/Rockies game as a family.  It was an absolutely beautiful night and everyone was so happy.  It was awesome. We all had our Padres gear on.

 Waiting for fly balls with their gloves

 Yep, worn out on the way home!

 Museum of Nature and Science - the new kids' area is super cute...

 They were checking out the cockroaches with magnifying glasses

 I LOVE this photo bomb that Zane did.  Molly was taking selfies of her and me and Zane leaned his head right in.

 Oh this cute thing.  We had one day a couple weeks ago when we woke up to SNOW!  We bundled the kids in winter gear and then the next day is was right back to sunny normal.

 We did the Denver ALS walk this year.  We wanted to honor Rita, Ben's mom, who has ALS.
We started the day with pancakes.

 Judi and Bob were there...

 We joined Jord, Ben, and Molly too.

 Just another one of Emmy's costumes.  The girl loves dressing up!!!!

 As one of Emmy's room moms, I get to help plan lot's of fun things.  Since her teacher is super pregnant, we planned a baby shower for her.  Each student decorated a onesie for the baby.  Emmy took so much time on hers and it was beyond cute.  She was so excited to celebrate with her teacher.  She even packed a dress and tights and dress shoes in her backpack to change into for the party. LOL.

 Baby shower!

 Here are a couple from an earlier wedding that I thought were cute that I missed earlier.  Zane was taking a picture of Smith sound asleep on my lap.

 Dancing with my sweet boy.

 Cuteness.