My Sweeties are Growing UP!

Here is Hayden with his kindergarten teacher at "graduation"! He had a great year and learned so much! Lainey enjoyed it too.

Here are both my sweeties on the first day of first grade for Hayden! He looks so much older to me than at his graduation.

We love his teacher! She's a very sweet and caring person and Hayden is doing well! It's amazing the words he can read. Along with his weekly homework he's been meeting his Aunt Leslie for swimming lessons! He's gung ho about that as well... jumping into the deep end and diving for rings (in the shallow) seem to be his favorites.

Just a few days after school started he lost the second of his top front teeth. What a lovely smile! Since school pictures were last week, we'll have that gap toothed grin to look at for many years to come.
Lainey is busy being a big girl. She's learning lots of things and wants to be like her big brother. I'm volunteering at school to help his teacher a couple afternoons a week and working in the library during his library time weekly. She goes with me and takes her backpack with her homework (crayons, books, etc.) and a snack. She's always so good and rarely complains while we're there.

I just can't believe how big they're getting!

Finally, an update!

Hayden and Lainey are doing very well! The picture above is at a friend's new home outside Columbia. Her dog, Flash, was the hit of the party!

Hayden is officially a first grader. Below is a picture of him at our friend Becky's wedding in Lupus, MO. Our friend, Chuong Doan, is a fabulous photographer and took the 3 pictures shown. Many thanks to him! We are so lucky to have the pictures he's taken. Our kids are cute, but he makes their personality come out! We started piano lesson for Hayden and he seems to really like them. He also had allergy testing recently and is extremely sensitive to many trees, grasses, pollen, etc. Maybe that's the reason his eyes were so horribly swollen this spring! He's reading like crazy, asking so many questions I can't keep up and catching just about any frog, toad or bug that you can imagine. He'd also like you to know that he currently has 3 loose teeth on the top and can't wait for them to come out!

Lainey is also doing well! She is definitely our injury child. She's good at falling, sitting on pencils (this was a fun one!), but at least we've not made any really recent trips to the ER. The last one was because she got hit in the nose with her brother's head... and promptly had a seizure. Luckily, she was coherent very quickly and they didn't see the need for a CT, etc. Other than that, she now has an imaginary friend named Kiki. She has to do just about everything her "big brudder" does and she misses him horribly when he's gone.

Has it really been more than a year??

I can't believe it's been this long! I'll try to give a brief synopsis of the year...

Lainey is potty trained and in a big girl bed (and has been for more than 6 months). She's very "assertive" and will let you know what she wants (in a loud voice!) BUT she's also very shy and clams up when we're around people she doesn't know. She loves to dress up, have tea parties and read books. She also loves to do anything her brother does! She'll eat most anything except mushrooms (like her dad). She also recently renamed our large male cat, Taco (we're not sure why! His name was Boone, but everyone calls him Taco now.)

Hayden is in kindergarten! He's learning to read and is getting good at it. He spells words to me all the time... (i.e., "I'd like h-a-m ham on my sandwich.") He also loves numbers. He's taking a gymnastics class and is the only boy (which is ideal! He loves the girls!) He's also begun playing with all the boys at school. Legos are his new favorite thing! Before cold weather set in though, it was all about bugs. Taking his bug catcher, catching at recess and bringing them home to show us. He also got two fire-bellied toads after catching a virginia peeper. He was so sad when we let him go that we decided he should get a "real" toad.

We just finished remodelling our basement bathroom. It looks great! Doug did a fabulous job.

Hope the last year has treated everyone as well as it has us!