'Twas the day before school starts...

Everybody in Washington County started school on Wednesday, August 24th. They do a staggered start to Kindergarten though, where only half the kids attend school on the first day, the other half attends on the second day and then everyone finally meets together for the third day. This gives the teachers a chance to work more closely with each student for those first few days since they only have about 10-12 each day. Abby was assigned to start school on the second staggered day (Thursday, August 25th.) Since Wednesday was her last day of "summer vacation," I let her choose any three things that she would like to do that day to help celebrate her last day of "freedom."

The first thing she chose to do was hit up "Chuck E. Cheese." It was a perfect day to go since most of the other kids in the area were back in school. Abby and Landon both had a great time playing all the games and rides and winning some cheap prizes!!

After Jason came home from work, Abby decided that the second thing she wanted to do was play at "City Park." It was a perfect evening to play and enjoy ourselves before heading off to the third and final event of the day, Maugansville Creamery for some yummy ice cream.

It was hard for me to imagine that my baby girl would be heading off to school for the first time the next day. She was super excited though and we were all glad that we had fun celebrating her last day with us!!

The Last Hurrah...Lakemont

On Friday, August 19th we headed up north a bit to Lakemont, a small amusement park in Altoona, Pennsylvania. This was our last little adventure of the summer before Abby would start school the following week. The best part about this amusement park is the price....for $5 each we got all day "Ride and Slide" passes good for all the rides as well as the water park. Can't beat that!!

Abby's favorite ride of the day were these giant swings. She got to go on it twice, once with me and once with her daddy.

They had about 8-10 different kiddie rides and we hit most of them up. There were hardly any lines so we got to go on a lot of the rides in just a short amount of time!! Here they are trying out their monster truck skills!

Landon also enjoyed shooting "monsters" in the airplane ride (How is it that despite the fact that we have never bought a toy gun for Landon to use, he still manages to make "guns" out of just about every building block set we have. I think it must be in their nature!!)

Landon, Abby and I took a little train ride around the park while Jason and Nolan watched us from afar. (Nolan was a perfect angel the entire day...but that really wasn't any different than any other day. We count our blessings each day that we were blessed with such a great third child!!)

Landon's favorite ride were the bumper cars. We probably rode them about 4-5 times. Abby was excited that next year she will probably be able to go on a lot more rides like the bumper cars all by herself since she was just a few inches shy of the mark this year.

After hitting up the rides for a few hours, we headed over to the arcade to wait out a short thunder and rainstorm. After it all cleared, we spent the rest of the afternoon at the waterpark. The kids were too small to go on any of the slides but they had a super fun pirate pool that they had a great time in. Abby also practiced some of her new swimming skills in the bigger pool nearby.

We had so much fun all day long that we would really like to make this an annual tradition.Thank you Lakemont for providing us a great last day of summer family fun!!

Superheroes!!

After a bit of cutting, taping, tying and A LOT of imagination, Abby and Landon created their own superhero costumes...

They then preceded to take turns flying around the house and jumping off the stairs to show off their superhuman abilities. I just love how creative these two little buddies are! (And yes, those are giant green leaves being used for masks!!)

Lazy Days of Summer

Ahhhh, the joys of sleeping like a baby!!

Nolan had his one month check-up last week (August 2nd). He measured just about 50th percentile in everything and the doctor said he looked perfect. At exactly 5 weeks old, we weighed in at 9 lb, 9 oz and was 22.5 inches long. The crazy thing is that Nolan at 5 weeks still hasn't reached the size that Landon was at birth (9 lb 14 oz!!) We sure do love our "perfect" little boy

Kidfest

Last Saturday we attended another free event at the church down the street from our house. It was a fun "Kid's Fest" complete with a moonbounce, crafts and some fun water games. The people who put on these activities are always so nice and since they open it up to the public, I don't feel bad taking advantage of all their free activities with no intention of actually joining their church.

Abby and Landon really got a kick out of the slip-n-slide. Abby finally caught on how to really go down it, but Landon would just basically run down the length of the slide and then jump into the little pool of water at the end. He had a blast though, so that's what matters most!

Sunday Best

Dare I say it, but I really think we have the cutest kids in the world!! Here they are looking mighty fine in their Sunday best...

Since Nolan was completely out during our little "pre-church" photo shoot, I decided to use the opportunity to get some cute solo shots of Nolan in this handsome little get-up. I actually bought this outfit a few months ago before we knew what we were having. I just couldn't resist how cute it was!!

My Sweet Little Man!!

2011 Ag Expo

Last week we hit up the Washington County Ag Expo on Thursday night. We attended last year as part of our family reunion and this year it was even bigger and better with the addition of some fun amusement park rides.

Perhaps the highlight of the evening were the pig races again. They are pretty entertaining to watch!!

Then we hit up all the animal stalls and gave a few pets to some of our favorite ones...

Landon would have probably spent several hours playing with the corn kernel table if we had let him. You can see in the background that Nolan was enthralled with everything too, behind his closed little eyes of course!!

It was fun to see all of the little baby animals that had just recently been born too. Like these baby chicks...

And the baby pigs (they were only 5 days old!!)...

Abby enjoyed riding around in her own little tractor...

And we finished off the evening with one ride on the carousel and some yummy cotton candy!

It was definitely a fun evening and we can't wait to attend again next year!

Royal Couple

Our local mall has been having a fun activity each week for young kids. It's like story time, singing time and craft time all rolled into one. And because it's free, you know we've taken full advantage of it each week.

Last week's theme was all about "fairy tales" and the craft project at the end was making these yellow crowns. Abby and Landon loved their artwork so much that when they came home they decided to act out the story of "Sleeping Beauty." At one point, Abby told Landon to wait downstairs as she "got ready" upstairs. (Getting ready turned out to be lying in her bed pretending to be asleep.) When she yelled "ready," Landon raced upstairs to wake his "sleeping beauty" and the royal couple then walked downstairs, arm-in-arm.

I just love their imagination and I hope they can always remain such close friends!!