Our Kindergartner!

Since I'm not sure who's more exhausted after the first day of kindergarten...Ella or Mom, I'm going to make this a quick post! Here's a chronological look at one of the biggest days in our Ella-Girl's life!

Here she is... so excited to head out the door this morning!

Walking towards the school...
a picture tradition in the making...
walking into school with her daddy...

finding her locker...
Ella and her sweet teacher, Mrs. Mooney...
settling in...
Ella and her friend, Duncan...
She's more than ready for this! Not so sure Mom and Dad are ready, though!
Our last shot as Michael and I were walking out. She was getting to work!
After picking her up at the end of her first school day, we celebrated with ice cream and friends. What a great ending!


A few highlights of her first day...

-She came home with much of her lunch untouched.

-"All they did was talk about rules."

-When asking about her 6th grade lunch buddy, I asked Ella what her name was..."No, Mom, it's a HIM!"

-"She was at school a LONG time"

-"She can't wait to go back and do it all again tomorrow!"

a weekend away...

To end our summer, the five of us ran away to the Wild Oak Ranch for a few days. It was wonderful... especially this fake beach that fed into the Rattlesnake River (a lazy river with nice clean, chlorinated water). We spent 90% of our time here just playing in the sand and floating the river. Did I mention that it was wonderfully relaxing? Yep, that's right... our family vacation was relaxing for mom and dad, too!
our crew just after we arrived and were exploring the grounds...
hugging on my boy...
sunglasses are a must every minute for Will! He'll tell you he has sun allergies?
snack time by the pool....(also our only family photo shot of the weekend...oh,well!)

sand fun...


Cal wasn't as crazy about the sand so he usually hung out in the water while the others played in the sand. And I usually joined him!

Ella mastered swimming around the Rattlesnake River...
It's so rare that we have a shot with all three of our kids together and here's three in a row. Photography success!


Big Cal posing for the camera practicing saying "eeese"...
I think this is a lost sheep,
and this is the shepherd going to find it. You just never know when kids will choose to act out Bible stories:). love it!
We ended our last night with s'mores. Perfect!

and quite messy!
What fun! It's so hard to see summer coming to an end! We had what was probably our very best summer ever. Now we've moved onto things like school shopping, sleep training (I just thought I was finished with that when my kids were babies) and gearing up for our Ella to turn six. Life is busy but thank you God, so very blessed!

Great Wolf Lodge

We had a BLAST spending some days at the Great Wolf Lodge with Grammie and Poppa. Our kids are the perfect age for this place and soaked up every minute there! They loved the bedtime show and story time, the wave pool, watching the bucket drop (though no one was brave enough to get under it), the tube rides and the not-so-lazy river. Ella also had a blast doing their MagiQuest which was strange yet slightly intriguing in my opinion.

These first two pics are random but our crew was a bit obsessed with having their picture taken on this bear. Oh and they were a bit obsessed with what was inside the bear's store, too....ice cream and candy!

We stayed on the treetop hall...a.k.a. the penthouse! Our room had an upstairs loft which was super exciting to our children!
We ran up and down this hall about 30 times a day! Sorry neighbors!
Ella and Cal...
The only shot of Grammie and Poppa with the kiddos. They were dressed and about to head back to Austin while we stayed and played a few more hours.
Will...
A barely blog-worthy family photo, but figured every once in awhile I should give photographic evidence that these children do have parents!
Sweet siblings...
So much watersliding fun...
Cal loved the blue and yellow waterslide in the little kids' pool. Up and Down, Up and Down, Up and Down until we could finally distract him elsewhere!

Ella and Will loved the big kids' slides!



And on a final note, here's Baker making his landing. Why did I include this random pic, you might wonder? Well, this is the perfect shot of his different sized feet, of course. Love you, Baby!
I would highly recommend GWL for the preschool and elementary age kids. Such fun! Thanks Grammie and Poppa for our great time away with you guys. We love you!