How is your Sunday going?

Mine has been...well, see for yourself:

Let this be a lesson to you all.  If you are potty training your child, and you think to yourself, "I should see if they need to go potty..." but then you get distracted with the needs of your other children, ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS IGNORE THE OLDER CHILDREN!!   Otherwise, your 3 year old will come to you 5 minutes later with poop on their foreheads and everywhere else you can think of, and lead you into the bathroom to this lovely scene.  

I love Texas!

Okay I'm still playing catch up here.  This trip was back in July!  

Josh's sister and her husband moved to Amarillo, TX about a year and a half ago.    They have 3 boys also, about a year younger than each of our boys.  Needless to say, things get crazy when our two families get together!  I wish we could live closer to each other so the cousins could grow up together.  The trip to Texas was so the boys could play together, and so we could see what Texas was all about.  I am ashamed to admit, I have never been further east than good 'ole Arizona.  Not through any fault of my own!  My family didn't start taking awesome family vacations until I was moved out and on my own.  And by that time, I was a poor college student, then a poor newly married woman, then a poor mother with small children.  None of those are conducive to travel opportunities!  Oh well, life happens right?  Anyway, I was pretty excited to finally "travel"!  

The drive to Texas was probably the most boring drive EVER, in the history of the universe.  Desert, desert, and more desert.  That's what you will see when you drive through Arizona and New Mexico.  Anyway, 10 hours later (which I drove by myself because I rock!) we were finally there!  Driving into Texas my first impression was...this place is FLAT.  Seriously, it was weird.  I never really thought of Arizona of being mountainous, and it's not, but compared to Texas it might as well be the Rocky Mountains!  It was a little disorienting throughout our week stay.  I never realized how much I depended on the mountains to know where I was at any given moment.  Still though, I found it absolutely beautiful.  Look at that sky!  

The boys had SO much fun with their cousins.  We figured that between all 6 of them, we had a 1 year old, 2 year old, 4 year old, 2 - 5 year olds, and a 6 year old!   

Mostly they played with bugs.  Really gross ones.  Which I might as well say now, might be the one part of Texas I most definitely DO NOT like!

Those are potato bugs, or "roly polys" all over his hands!  Yuck.

Then the boys were collecting the potato bugs, and putting them in this old trash can, making a sort of "habitat" for them, if you will.  

Oh, and don't let me forget about the snail collection...

Boys are gross right?  But they sure are cute in their excitement!  

There were a lot of trips to the park:  (and a lot of failed attempts to get a picture of all the boys together)

And a gun safety lesson.  Because after all, what is a trip to Texas without handling a gun right?

And a couple trips to Palo Duro Canyon!  Can you believe all that red rock/dirt?  I thought they only had that in Utah/Sedona, AZ.  I was wrong.  It was really cool!    

Palo Duro Canyon was beautiful!  But once again...I was reminded that Texas has bugs.  REALLY gross ones.  Like tarantulas and millipedes.  Lots of them...

 Anyway, we pretty much had a blast!  And should the opportunity ever arise, I think I'll take my chances with the disgusting bugs, and move to Texas!  Everyone was so friendly there, and I just love my SIL and her family.  I know the boys would be in heaven to live near their cousins.  Built in best friends, right in the family!  Now if only we can find a good job out there and sell our house here in AZ in this crappy market...well a girl can hope right?  

First Day of School

Okay at this point, I'm so far behind that I feel silly doing a first day of school post almost 3 months AFTER school has started.  But I don't care, I need to catch up and I might as well start somewhere.  

School started August 11th.  This year I have all 3 boys in school!  Can I get a "WOOT WOOT!"  It worked out so that I have 3 days of 2 hour time blocks during the week with no children at home.  So I thought to myself, "Yes!  Now I can finally get some projects and deep cleaning done around the house!"  I even made a HUGE to-do list of all I was going to accomplish (I LOVE making lists), and figured it would take a month or two to complete.  Want to know how many things I have crossed off that list?  A BIG FAT ZERO.  Turns out, that time flies by!  As in, I have no idea where it goes.  By the time I sweep the breakfast cereal off the floor, do the dishes, and run an errand or two, my time is up.  It's all very disappointing.  Oh well.  Maybe I'll be more productive in a couple years when all 3 boys are in all day school?  I'm not keeping my hopes up.  

Anyway, all 3 boys are also in 3 different schools.  I opted to put Trey in a half day Kindergarten program, which meant I had to get a boundary exception and put him in a school in the neighboring city.  It also means there's no busing and I have to drive him to and from each day.  But it was definitely the right decision for him.  He is NOT ready to be in school all day.  In fact, I think it's fair to say he is barely ready to be in school even half a day, based on the fact I was called into a meeting with the teacher the first week of school and have since been to two more parent/teacher/school psychologist meetings.  But what can I say?  I'm not surprised.  It was a rocky start, but I feel like he's doing much better now.  And wasn't he just the cutest thing ever on his first day? 

He was VERY excited:

Then started to get a little nervous:

Now here comes the saddest picture I've ever taken:

J.J. had ZERO problems starting school this year.  You might remember the hard time he had last year.  Well, this year it was a completely different story.  Not only did he know what to expect with riding the bus, but he ended up having the same teacher as least year too!  She was a substitute for half the year due to his regular teacher going on maternity leave, and the school ended up hiring her permanently for 1st grade!  I really like this teacher so I was very happy too.  And can I just have a bragging moment for a sec?  J.J.'s teacher called me a couple weeks into school to tell me that during the beginning of the year placement tests, on the math portion he "blew it out of the water" and was "heads and heads" above the rest of the 1st graders!  And that it was "unheard of" for a child to score that well at the beginning of the year!  (sigh)  My little genius...

Now for Samuel.  He qualified for a development preschool this year because of his speech delay.  I felt a little strange having him start school and only being 2 years old.  He's just so little still!  But this is to help him "catch up" on his speech and other delays.  I've heard great things about this school from a neighbor of mine, and was very impressed with the campus and his teacher.  Believe it or not, after only one week of school I swear he started saying more words!  He has definitely progressed and I feel confident he will start Kindergarten in a few years with no problems.  

I love my boys.