Audrey and Kate go to a charter school, so they get to wear these cute uniforms.

Simon didn’t want to be left out of the photo ops and really how could I refuse him when he looked so awesome in his high water Lightning McQueen jammies.

This is Audrey and Kate’s first year of going to the same school and it has been so fun listening to them make plans of meeting each other “on the bridge” at recess.

They learned tae kwon do.  In the first picture, they were meditating which Kate has told us is said, “Moy-en” in Korean.  They did such a cute dance showing off all of their martial arts and I must say, that I am quite impressed with Kate’s push ups.

At the end of this portion, their teacher brought a board for each of them to break with their foot and then they were presented with a new belt.  It took Kate a few tries, but she did it in the end.  Their teacher told us they had never done this before so it’s pretty impressive that they were all able to do it.

The costumes for the dancing and singing were so cute.

They did a few more songs once they were dressed in their gowns.  They sang, “I’m proud to be an American,” and someone may have got a little teary eyed in that one.  Scott would have too if he hadn’t been so busy making fun of me and trying to catch the teary-eyedness on camera.  When they got to the line, “And I proudly stand up next to you and defend her still today,” they jumped into this defensive pose that just cracked us up.

Each of the kids got to go up to the mic and tell what they want to be when they grow up.  Kate said she wants to be a mom.  Phew!  I haven’t completely ruined it for her.

Before the whole thing Kate was giving me a run down of how things were going to go.  She said, “After Miss Cynthie gives me a piece of rolled up paper, I’ll stop on the X and in case you don’t know why I’m standing there, that’s your opportunity to take my picture.”  She gave me ample time to get her picture.  I had to give her thumbs up a few times before she realized she could move on.

Congrats my little Grad!

She started on a Monday.  This is Miss Honey (just like the teacher in Matilda -Audrey pointed that out).

When we went back on Wednesday, Miss Honey flattered me by telling me how smart Kate was, going on and on…. “No, I mean, she’s really smart.  You can see her thinking things through.”  Anyway, she told me they had a kindergarten at this school too and asked me if it was okay if she had the kindergarten teacher test Kate.  So, when I picked up Kate that day, both teachers informed me that Kate would do great in kindergarten.

So on Thursday, Kate had her first day of kindergarten.  This is Miss Cynthie.

Here she is in her karate clothes.  This school has been so good for her.

I can’t remember what she cut her eye on a day or two before this, but I do remember my lack of sympathy.  Not seeing how bad the cut was, but just hearing the wailing, I told her she better stop crying or her tears would freeze to her face (we were in the car at the time).  Once I saw how bad it was, I gave her some sympathy.  I’ve heard the “tears freezing” warning come from both Audrey’s and Kate’s lips since then.

Our back to school festivities started with a fashion show put on by Audrey and Kate with all of Audrey’s new clothes.

Kate’s still a bit awkward with striking a pose… and finding matching clothes.  This really isn’t her best picture, but it cracked me up too much to leave it out.

We started off the night with our annual Back to School dinner complete with cafeteria trays and a bus cake.  It was so fun to have Grandma and Grandpa Baldwin there to join in the festivities.  After dinner, we had a fun safety FHE.  We made a bunch of  safety signs with different scenarios on the back of each one.  The kids would read the scenario and then tell us what they should do.  It was pretty cute.

On Audrey’s first day of school, she took off on her bike before I could even get a picture of her, so I settled for taking one at school.  If you look at her knee, you can see a white mark from her crash on her way to school.  She was too excited to care about it though.

Kate’s first day of school was about a week after Audrey.  She started at a preschool where she gets to do gymnastics part of the time.  She absolutely loves it!

Simon cried when we left Kate on the first day.  Then, when we went to pick her up, he squirmed out of my arms and then ran and hugged her.  Since then, he has waved, “bye, bye” to me several times in hopes that I would leave him there with her.  He can’t wait to get in on the action.

Audrey brought home a packet from school listing out all the rules and regulations involved in conducting an appropriate project. I was appalled with how restrictive the rules are. For example, no live specimens could be included – but if anything (non-picture) is part of the display, it must be completely contained in a plastic box which is sealed thoroughly. Thanks school for the opportunity to be creative…ugh.

I digress. The school did suggest a great web site for project ideas and the ideas were categorized by complexity (which was exceedingly helpful). We whittled down the options to 3 projects:

1. How do seeds get dispersed by the wind?
2. How do plants drink water?
3. How many seeds do different fruits produce?

Audrey selected option #2 (as did another girl in first grade), and got to work. Jeana thought it would be a great idea to video the little scientist in action. Here is the coverage of her experiment.

Audrey and Jeana are still finalizing the presentation of the display for the fair, but so far it is coming together nicely.

After dinner, we went to Audrey’s school to meet her teacher.  Since it’s a new school, we went to a ribbon cutting ceremony last week and snooped around the school a little.  When Audrey saw this classroom, she wanted it to be hers so bad because of the castle in the back corner.  What luck!

Everything went smoothly getting out the door, this morning.  The new school is so close she gets to ride her bike, while I run along beside her.  Kate rode her bike over to the school afterward to pick Audrey up with me.

Even though we missed her, Audrey had a great day of school.  She played with friends from last year and was eager to tell us all about her day.

And the day was finished off perfectly with a surprise rain storm.  We have had an extremely dry summer and after days and days of praying for rain, it finally came.  Audrey and Kate were so excited that they couldn’t help themselves from running out in their new school clothes.

The assembly was in the morning, so the whole family went to drop Audrey off at school…which means Kate had to wake up way too early.  She was a very cranky girl for most of the morning.  After trying to entertain her for a couple of hours, I decided we needed to get out of the house, so I loaded her into the jog stroller and took her running.  She threw tantrums for the first ten minutes of the run and then pulled her hat down turned her head and zonked out.  It was a very enjoyable run after that.  These kinds of things just don’t happen any more.

Okay, I just have to toot my own horn here for a couple of things in these pictures.  First of all, that sweater Kate is wearing – pretty darn cute, I’d say.  I knitted it for her for Christmas.  Poor Audrey; I’m still working on hers.  She was given a ball of yarn for Christmas with a note saying it was going to be a sweater too.  She got really excited and said, “Are you going to teach me how to knit?”  It’s amazing what little things will excite your kids when you do a homemade Christmas.

Now the second thing I have to toot my horn about is I went running being just two days shy of 37 weeks.  That’s longer than I’ve ever continued running with the other pregnancies.  Just to qualify things – my running consists of a run/walk combination with the run part being extremely slow…but still.

Okay, one more picture to add.  Since you can’t see my belly very good in that picture and I try to avoid belly shots for the most part, I decided I should at least have one picture documenting my hugeness.

Considering I avoid pictures, it’s amazing that I agreed to be the front prego for this yoga add.  Jamie found out about a fitness place opening that needed models for some adds.  She got picked and then told them that she had a friend who teaches yoga and is pregnant and asked if they wanted me too.  Then later, Brenna also got added in.  So here we are in all of our glory.  We still haven’t seen Jamie’s pictures though.

Since I’ve already gone off on quite a tangent from what this post first started as, let me continue on just a little bit longer.  Just FYI, it’s okay for pregnant people to call themselves huge.  It is not etiquette however for someone to say something like, “When’s the baby due or should I say babies?”  It’s also not okay to say, “I don’t know much about pregnancies, but when I saw you, I thought, man is she having twins?”  It’s also not okay to say, “Do you have twins or triplets in there?”  Yes.  All of these things have been said to me.  My brother, Brad told me that the proper reply to all of this is to say, “What are you talking about?  I’m not pregnant,” and then walk off.  I’ll try that next time.

I made pancakes for breakfast and then Jeana took her to school. We went to a Back to School night at the school to meet Audrey’s teacher last Friday night. We really like her and the classroom. Kate was excited to play on the Kitchen toys that Audrey’s teacher had. I walked around the classroom with Audrey and Kate looking at all the pictures and displays on the walls. Audrey looked so ready to jump in and get going with school. We walked by a paper mounted to the wall that had the classroom and cafeteria rules on it. Audrey started reading the page out loud. I’m so proud of her for how well she reads.

I worked from home today so that I could be here when Audrey got home. Jeana and I watched out the windows for the bus to arrive so that we could run out and meet Audrey. Apparently there are multiple buses which service our neighborhood, so we were disappointed when the first bus we saw didn’t have our daughter on board. An hour after school was dismissed, Audrey’s bus arrived. The bus driver told Jeana that they had already been by once, but Audrey didn’t speak up to get off.

Audrey was a bit sad walking home from the bus because she wanted to walk home by herself. Maybe after a few days of figuring out when she’s supposed to get off.

I was full of questions and would have kept asking and probing if Jeana would not have reminded me to not overwhelm Audrey. As the night went on she told us more and more about what happened at school. Some kids got to play on the kitchen toys, some got to spend time on the classroom computer – reading on a site that Audrey has done at home: starfall.com.

Oh I forgot to mention how excited Audrey was when she discovered there was a library at her school! She blurted out, “I can use my library card at school!”

The family home evening was simple. We discussed basic safety issues for Audrey to remember, and finished by everyone getting a father’s blessing (except for Jeana, who just received a normal priesthood blessing). To help get Audrey more familiar and comfortable with her school we drove over and played on the playground toys.