Xavier's First Day of Preschool

Xavier is going to be attending the Dublin Community Preschool on Tuesday and Thursday mornings for a couple hours and today is his first day!  He is glad that it's chillly out because he LOVES his blue shirt with a hood and really wanted to wear it today!

 I think the girls are ready for him to go, too!

First Day of 5th Grade

Isabelle's first day of 5th grade is here!  The neighborhood has breakfast on the first day of school, so all of the kids enjoyed it!  Donuts, fruit, and juice boxes...what's not to like!

Obligatory picture by the front door:

 The little kids enjoying a 2nd breakfast!

 All of the neighhborhood kids:

 Isabelle and Mac (the only 5th graders) lead the way!

Building a Dinosaur

Brian has been moving dirt to fill in around the shed where the skunks, oppossums, and raccoons have been living.  Xavier has been helping and finding "fossil bones."  Today, he decided he had enough bones, so he was ready to build a dinosaur.  He was pretty confused about how to get the bones to stay together, so Brian explained that since we're just regular people and not archaeologists (or paleontologists), we just lay them out and someone else nails the bones together.  He got out his Dinosaur encyclopedia and started building...

Xavier and Anna's books:

 He started by lining up his "fossil bones"

 Trying to figure out how they go together:

Anna did a little more research while Xavier checked out what he had:

 He was very confused about why he couldn't just build a dinosaur...

Anna's "First" Haircut

Xavier got his hair cut last week and Anna has been asking to get hers cut ever since.  She's getting a lot of broken hairs from the hair ties that I use, so I thought a cut might be good.  She can use clips now instead of putting it in ponytails!

LONG hair...

 The excitement wore off as soon as she picked out her chair!

 Soooo not excited...

 Once we got home, though, she LOVES her short hair!

Pretty Pink Toes!!

Isabelle and Katie wanted to paint the girl's toes the other day and they were both VERY excited!

 Anna's first polish on her little stubby toes!

 Xavier finally allowed us to cut his "claws"...

 But, only on the condition that he could get pink toes too!

Pretty pink toes for everyone!

Picnic in the Park

We had a really nice day a few weeks ago, so I packed up the kids and we had a picnic in the park.  The kids played for a while and then we ate lunch.  It was Wednesday, and I forgot that the sirens ring from the park at noon every Wednesday.  Anna was pretty scared by the noise, but actually handled it pretty well.  We also had no potty accidents!  It's pretty nice taking everyone to the park and not having to worry too much about wet pants!
Of course the first thing Xavier wants to do is climb as high as he can!

 Anna & Mady could have swung ALL day!

 Climbing UP the slide is much more fun than going down!

Katie, Isabelle, and Xavier eating lunch.

 Lunch Time!

 Although Anna was the only one scared, everyone had to protect their ears from the sirens!

Landscaping

We had a pretty exciting week this week!  One of Brian's friends from college has a landscaping business in Columbus, so we asked him to design our front landscaping.  I think we not have the best looking landscaping in the neighborhood!

This is a picture of the front of the house when we had our inspection.  It basically looked the same when we moved in, so it's the true "Before" picture of the transformation!

 The camera had dead batteries after the first day, so I don't have any pics.  They put in the retaining wall on Wednesday and brought in LOTS of top soil.

 On Thursday, about half of the plants were in.

 Finished product!  We LOVE it.  Let's hope it looks this nice next year!

 I LOVE this area.