Thursday, August 20, 2009

First day of 1st grade

Today was Kristen's first day of 1st grade and she had a great day! She loves her teacher, she was excited about having PE, recess, and eating lunch there. None of her classmates from Kindergarten are in her class, so I was a little sad for her about that. I asked her a million questions when I picked her up and when I asked who she sat by at lunch she said "Boys...I was boy trapped." Too funny :) The little girl who sits right in front of her has the same last name, it's just spelled different. I think she's going to have a great year!!





Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Last day of summer vacation

Tomorrow is the 1st day of school and Kristen has mixed emotions. She's excited, but she's had such a blast at her daycare this summer she doesn't want the fun to end. They went on field trips or swimming 2-3 times a week. They went to the Play Zone, the park, Little River Zoo, the Community Center gym, a RedHawks baseball game, Toy & Action Figure Museum, Stafford Space Center, Incredible Pizza, Sam Noble Museum, Science Museum, roller skating, to El Chico for a tour and lunch (little stinker got a hamburger), and the last day was to the park and to Braum's for ice cream.

Tomorrow will be a little hard for Mommy, because Kindergarten was only half a day and now she'll be there all day for 1st grade. She'll do fine and I know she's going to have a great year. She met her teacher at Open House last night and saw her classroom and her desk. Here we go!!

Friday, August 14, 2009

Newspaper article

Yesterday when I was taking Kristen to daycare I hit a bird. She said "you're probably going to be in the newspaper". Wow, she was right!! Who would've thought! Guess it was a slow news day.

I did contact the editor and let them know that the article had an error...the bird was killed. They did a follow-up article.


OK, really it's not THAT boring around here. My sister put these together on a website for doing fake newspaper articles. Shhh...we don't have to tell Kristen it's fake :)

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Tonsillitis

Time for a little Kristen update. She's had tonsillitis this past week (for about the 3rd time and she's also had strep before). We almost took her tonsils out a couple of years ago when she was getting tubes, but decided against it at the time. I guess I'll need to talk to her ENT again about it and see what he thinks. She hates going to the doctor with a sore throat because they swab her throat to test for strep...she refers to it as a "strip test" :) So when I was on the phone calling the doctor she wrote a not so nice note for me and stuck it on the desk in front of me.



It says "Dot Wunu Go to the Dodr" - Translation is "Don't Wanna go to the Doctor"

Instead of taking ballet classes this year she decided on Cheer & Tumbling class and tonight was her first class. She LOVED it!! I'm loving the fact that I don't have to buy shoes for the class :)


Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Tennessee vacation

After a 9 day trip and 2200 miles, we got back home from Tennessee Saturday afternoon. We were both worn out but had a great time. We spent the first night in Memphis, then drove to Chattanooga the next day. We stayed with my cousin and got to meet and play with his new baby. We also went to Lookout Mountain and rode the incline railway up to the top of the mountain. Then we took a beautiful scenic drive to Cherokee, NC where we stayed the next night. Along the drive we saw the area where the white water rafting events were held for the 1996 Olympics. Kristen made a friend when we were swimming at the hotel swimming pool. The girl said they were going to Santa's Land the next day and asked if we were going. I had no intention of doing anything in this town, it was just a stopover for the night, but it was the neatest, most beautiful place so we decided to spend a few hours looking around the next morning then I took her to Santa's Land. It was a small zoo and theme park so the girls found each other quickly and had so much fun riding rides together. The other girl was not afraid of any rides so that was a great motivator for Kristen to ride things she otherwise would NEVER ride. She rode the roller coaster (aka Rudiocoaster) FOUR times! I rode with her because it was not a little kiddie ride, it went pretty fast and threw us around enough to bruise my back. She also rode the ferris wheel a couple of times. Check out the picture of them together, her friend is only one month older than her :)

We then drove into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from the south entrance straight through to the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area where we spent the next two nights. We spent an entire day at Dollywood and had a blast. It was miserably hot, though. They had misters around to help us cool off, and plenty of water rides. Kristen surprised me again by riding rides I never in a million years would have guessed she would ride.



From Pigeon Forge we headed back through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park around a different loop we had not toured previously. It was a little one way road that went very slowly, but it was breathtaking, even though we had some rain. We saw a few deer, but no bears. We drove to Nashville once we got through that part of the park. The next day we spent the day in the Nashville area, going to Franklin to the Franklin Factory for some shopping, then to the famous Loveless Cafe for lunch, then for a tour at the Grand Ole Opry. While we were at our hotel we had run down to get something out of the car. There was a Hummer limo pulling into the parking lot and I was pointing it out to Kristen, when the driver stopped and asked if we wanted to see inside. It was a woman driver so I felt safe. She said she had a few minutes to kill so she drove us around the parking lot. We opened the roof and I held Kristen up through it to look around. Too bad I didn't have my camera with me.


A few hours of shopping at Opry Mills Mall and we left Nashville and headed for home. It was so great to get away and relax and have fun together. All those hours in the car and she didn't fall asleep even once while driving. She had plenty of things to keep her busy and she was the best little traveler.