Kindergarten Pics

Tying his shoe for the first day of school.





This is actually right before he walked into his classroom and we called him back for one more picture. He just wanted to get in his room and start the day.




Here is Cameron in the parking lot of church, then in the hallway leading to the classes, and finally getting his folder out of his Spiderman backpack. The folder is our lifeline with the teacher. It holds his homework and all other communication with his teacher so it is the first thing he pulls out in the morning. It is really cool.


So far he has gotten all green smiley faces at school. That means that he has done what the teacher said and she didn't have to warn him too many times. She also has paper bears that she uses in the classroom. A green for very good, and yellow for pretty good and a red for we need some improvement. He did tell me today that he got a yellow bear for stepping out of line with another girl. He is already blaming all his trouble on the girls. Ha, Ha! Otherwise he has gotten all green bears. I will say that he already gives me some attitude, that didn't take long, and he asked me why he has to do his homework all the time. His homework is not difficult and only takes him about 10 minutes or less, but he is already complaining. And so it begins.

Garrett has problems of his own. He doesn't know how to play without his brother around. He hardly touches his toys and he is always getting into some mischief or other. Luckily, today we had a play date so he did fine even though he didn't really play with the other boy too much. I guess that I will have to plan more of those to keep him occupied. Maybe, he'll get used to it soon. It is just that he has never had to play by himself before. The funny thing is Cameron has and he came home today and told us to leave him alone for a few minutes because he doesn't have any time to himself. They are such opposites.

My days seem to go so quickly now. First I drop off Cameron and then either go on an errand since I am already out or I come back home and do a few chores while Keira goes for her morning nap. Then it is lunchtime and we eat and at 1 Keira goes down for her second nap. When she wakes up at 2:30 we prepare to go pick Cameron up at school. I have figured out that if I leave around 2:40 then I get there at 2:45 and I turn off the car and have 15 minutes to hand quilt this table runner that I have been working on for a year. I am now almost done because I have 15 spare minutes a day to work on it. This is how I will get all of those hand sewing things done. It is great. Anyway, when Cameron gets out we come home, get a snack (he usually finishes his lunch), do homework, I feed Keira and read Garrett a book and then I have to make dinner. Then the evening caios begins and the day is over. Speaking of that I had better get ready for bed. Have I mentioned that I do not like 6 am? I really do not like the annoying alarm that Mike has that I have to get out of bed to turn off. I guess that I will get used to it someday.

Kindergarten is great

The first few days of Kindergarten have gone very well. Cameron loves going to school and he is not shy at all so he has no seperation anxiety or anything. He doesn't even give me a kiss when he walks in the room. He just says, "bye". I'm glad though. It would be hard if he was emotional. I am trying to get used to the new routine of waking up at 6am. It is not fun. Garrett is also having a hard time adjusting to not having his brother around. I have noticed that he gets into a lot more trouble lately. I am always telling him to stay out of that, don't do that and leave your sister alone. He really misses his brother. The only problem is when his brother comes home then they argue back and forth for about an hour. I thought they missed each other?

Well it was just a quick update to let you know that Cameron loves school. I'll post some pictures a little later when I have more time and feel a little better. I just caught a cold which makes the day even more exciting.

Two days until Kindergarten

It is only two days until Cameron has his first day of Kindergarten. We are gearing up for a very busy week. Tonight Mike and I go to the Parent Orientation at Maryville Christian School. This is where we will find out all we need to know about the school procedures and such. Last Thursday we went to the Kindergarten parent orientation where we met Cameron's teacher. She is very petite and she has a cute British accent. She reminded us of Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady". I think that she will be great. This is her first year of teaching. On Tuesday Mike is taking a half day so we can all take Cameron's boatload of school supplies up to the school and he can meet his teacher. I don't know that I could have handled taking all three kids and the stuff by myself. Good thing Mike gets 4 weeks of time off. Tuesday night I have a TNT (quilt guild) meeting to go to. Wednesday Cameron has his first day of school which is only a half day. Mike is taking off that day to see our first child to his first day of school. That will be emotional. We also start back to our Wednesday night activities at church. At least since Cameron's school is at the church they do not give homework on Wednesday nights so that we can go on Wednesday nights. That's really cool. Cameron's homework should only take 10 minutes a night anyway, mostly reading a handwriting. Thursday is Bonnie day and Cameron's first full day of school. He has to be there between 8:15 and 8:30. That is going to be very early for us considering if I want to go anywhere now I don't get out of the house until 10. I think that God is already starting to prepare me though because for the past week I have been miraculously waking up at 5:30. This is something that I do not particularly like this time of morning. Seven o'clock is my ideal time. Thursday night I have a Threads of Life meeting at church. We are going to start working on some quilts for Paster Fred's wife and daughters and then for the Crow family who lost there daughter in the accident. Friday is the day to relax and then Saturday seemed to be something that I can't remember and Sunday after church Mike is going with a group from church to St. Louis to hand out supplies to the homeless near the New Life Evangelistic center.

Weekend News

We went over to St. Charles and The Mills on Saturday to take advantage of the tax free school supply weekend. We bought Cameron some jeans to wear because everything from last year is too short. Keira also needed some cold weather clothes. She had none. I bought a few things for her. I also bought some material to make Cameron and Garrett two pairs of pants a piece.

On the way home we stopped by the Tye Dyed Iguana in O'Fallon, IL to ask some questions about Teeter our turtle. Come to find out she needs a much bigger cage and more water filters. We will be looking into that when they get the tanks in stock. It is a little pond and dry land space for her about 4ft by 2ft by 1ft. She is supposed to be much bigger than she is right now and having her in the small tank causes her bones to become brittle. Things we did not know.

Sunday after church Mike started the demo on the bathroom downstairs. He tore out the ceiling, the toilet, the fixtures and some of the tub parts. We found some mold behind the tub. We thought that we would. It is now a construction zone. I am really excited about a new bathroom down there. I just hope that it doesn't take more than a year to complete.

I updated the page background in honor of Cameron starting school in just two weeks from yesterday. I can't believe it.

Family Fun Times

This past week we did two family events together. On Wednesday we went to Six Flags with the family. We took Memaw and Pop along for help. Unfortunately, Mike convinced his Dad to go on the Batman ride first thing and he was out of commission the rest of the day. Cameron would have gone but he was not tall enough. Cameron is a definite thrill seeker like his Daddy. He went on every roller coaster he could. Those were the Tony Hawk (twice), Screamin Eagle, Evel Kenevel, The Boss (twice) (I screamed the whole time), the Mine Train and everything else that was a thrill. Garrett spent most of his time in the kiddy section because he couldn't go on much else. Hey Pam, I just wanted to let you know that they must have new management at Six Flags this year because the park was much cleaner and there were flowers everywhere just like we remember from when we worked there. It was much different that last year. There was a new rule which was kind of a pain though. You couldn't have any purses of any size on the some of the rides and they charged $1.00 for lockers by those rides which were only for use during the rides. I got all the way on the Mine Train ride with Cameron and they told me I couldn't have my wallet purse on there so we had to get off. Luckily, the lines were very short that day. At 4:00 Memaw and Pop took Keira and Garrett back to their house to spend the night while we kept Cameron with us to close the park. We had been wanted to go out with just Cameron for a while. First thing we did after the other kids left was to eat. Our diet must be working because we bought three kids meals at the moose lodge and we were each full from one kids meal. Later on in the night when we watched the glow in the dark parade, which was really cool, we had some ice cream but each of us threw away half because we were full. Next time we will know to only buy one. All in all it was a very fun day.

Yesterday, was our other family fun event. We went down to the arch grounds because Franklin Graham was putting on an event called Rock the River. This was more of Mike's music than mine but it was such a nice day to sit in the shade in our chairs and enjoy the day. The two bands that Mike wanted to see were Red and Skillet. It was seven hours of bands and Red was the first one so we missed it and Skillet was next to last. The kids did very well considering we were there so long. Mike would take one of the boys over to see the bands and then com back to get the other one. We brought our chairs so I sat there in the shade with Keira. It was back a little bit so it wasn't too loud but I could still understand everything. We brought a picnic dinner and just had a good time. Of course good times right now take a lot of work with young kids but I hope that we are making memories that will last a lifetime. Out of all my childhood the memories that stand out the most are the times we spent together as a family. Even now Mike is amazed that I can remember so much of what we did on each of our vacations.