No More Preschool

After 3 years of preschool - this kid is ready for the big leagues (or Kindergarten)!  Zane had his last day of preschool yesterday - he started out his preschool career at Rainbow Learning Center and finished it at the Newcastle Montessori Children's School House.  Had I known more about Montessori schools before - I would have had him in one all along.  Rainbow was great to him and did fabulous with his Diabetes, but I think he learned more in the 4 months he was at Newcastle than he did in his 2.5 years at Rainbow.  Needless to say, Landon will be in a Montessori preschool as soon as he's potty trained!


Congratulations buddy - you did it!  Kindergarten, here you come!!!

Zane & Miss Janell

Pirate Underwear Party

Zane's good friend Luke had his 5th Birthday party today - it was Jack and The Neverland Pirates themed!  The party was held at Magnusen Park in Seattle and their shelter area was equipped with a little wading pool...very cool - except it was raining.  None of the kids brought swim suits due to the poopie weather - not sure what us adults were thinking because rain doesn't stop kids - just their wimpy adults!  So we did what any other normal parent would do - let their kids strip down to their undies and go wading!  I did thankfully have one swim diaper in the car for Landon - so that saved him from having a 50lb diaper at the end of the party!

After drying off and getting their clothes back on - we had dinner and then the kids all took place in a treasure hunt - way cool (thankfully the rain held off for the hunt)!

I don't think I have ever been to this park - its HUGE - we hope to go back and explore it more before summer is totally over!  If not, then its definitely on our summer bucket list for next year!

Happy Birthday Luke!  You are one cool pirate and we were so thrilled to be part of your awesome day!

Dark Hole Meet Key

I took my car to Honda to get an oil change yesterday and they never want my big bulky key chain - they just want the one key for the car.  I picked up my car right as I was heading to pick up the boys, so never put it back onto my big key chain.  Got home, set them down on Landon's blanket while I was getting him out - then picked up the blanket to give it to him and cling, clang, clunk my keys fell right down the drain that my car was parked next too.

Whoops.

The boys thought it was cool.  I did not.

Thankfully Josh was already up when I got home, so he could fish it out for me...by fish it out, I mean litterally!  A magnet on the end of an old cat leash...yes, I said cat leash, haha!  Anyway, worked like a charm!

Thanks babe, you're my hero!

The Rockets

Zane has been "playing" soccer since he was 3, but its always been indoor and never really had games against other teams - it was more just learning the game and learning how to listen to a coach and play well with others etc.  Tonight was his first night on an outdoor U6 league team and he was so excited! When I picked him up from school his teacher said that that was all he talked about all day!  I will admit I was very excited myself - I have wanted to be a soccer mom since before I had kids - my time has come!  That is assuming he sticks with soccer...but I'm pretty sure he will - he loves it and is pretty good at it!

This new smile of his kills me - I LOVE IT!

Kind of a crazy stance, but they were playing freeze and thats how he froze, haha!

A sweaty mess!

School Shopping

When I was a kid my mom always set aside a day to take each one of us school shopping and I looked forward to that day all summer long!  I am having a lot of anxiety about Zane starting Kindergarten this fall (that's a whole other post) - but the one thing that I was so excited about with him starting was taking him school shopping!!  He's a boy (duh) and most likely will not love shopping for long (not that he loves it now, but he enjoys it) - so I am going to relish in the fact that he was so excited about last Sunday as I was!  We had a whole day with just us!  I will cherish these moments...the moments where he likes to spend an entire day with just mommy, the moments where he still likes to hold my hand in the mall, the moments that he still lets me strongly encourage what clothes he should pick out, the moments where he is just mine and no one else's!

We headed down to Southcenter for our adventure!  I have been buying school clothes for him all spring/summer as I'd see things go on clearance or sale that I thought would be good for him - but I still wanted to take him to experience an actual "school clothes shopping day".  We made sure to buy quite a few items in his next size as we all know that kids grow like weeds!  After heading to one store, we stopped in the food court for lunch!

After doing our damage at the mall, we headed over to Nordstrom Rack and that's where things got a little crazy...due to all of our fundraising for his team, Zane earned $140 in giftcards for Nordstrom. Last year the gift cards came right before their big sale in July...but this year they came the day after it ended (of course).  I was going to save them for next year's sale because that is the only time I shop at Nordstrom, but then I remembered Nordstrom Rack!  I let him pick out pretty much whatever he wanted there and we headed up to the counter to pay - I was thinking we'd have a little extra left over for another day...haha, funny!  Remember our gift cards totaled $140 - want to know how much we spent...$139.96!!  I couldn't have done that if I tried - I told the lady to "keep the change" and she got a good laugh out of that (but I was serious...didn't need a gift card with $.04 on it), haha!

We had a great time and he scored big time!

I love you little man and hope that even as you grow up, you will still want to spend this one day every summer with your mommy!

After shopping, we met up with daddy and Landon and saw the movie Planes...this was Landon's first theatre movie.  He did ok - not great, but ok!  I think he would've done better had there not been 45 mins of previews before the movie started, ugh.  Its been awhile since I've been to a movie, but seriously - I do not remember there being SO MANY previews before the movie.  Next time we take him to a movie, we will show up 30 mins late and probably be just on time for the actual movie!

We headed to dinner and then since I obviously carb counted wrong at dinner - Zane got to enjoy his first ever Twinkie to treat his low blood sugar, haha!  We stopped at my mom's between shopping and the movie and she had a box and I had recently just been telling Zane about them, so she gave him one. At the time his blood sugar was way too high to warrant it, so we saved it...good thing, came in handy :)  Twinkies are probably one of the most unhealthy things you could ever ingest and I will never buy them for my own home, but I think they are a right of passage for a kid - so I let him have it and he loved it!

Tonight I drug out all of the bags of clothes I had stashed away that I had bought over spring/summer and the ones we bought last weekend and layed them all out.  Zane wanted to inspect them all (most of them, he had never even seen, haha) - thankfully he liked them all!  I have a bad habit of buying things and stashing them away and not paying attention to how much I've bought and then I pull it all out and realize I went overboard (I do the same thing with Christmas gifts) - thankfully everything we bought was on sale or clearance AND many of the things will not fit him until winter anyway!

The goods.

These were all his doing - he is really into button up short sleeve
shirts right now and specifically asked for some while school shopping.
Apparently I'm raising a preppy lad!

He asked me to take this picture - he can't wait to wear his new shoes.
Not pictured...his new soccer cleats - but he starts tomorrow night, so you'll get to see them then!

Railroad Days

The cute little town of Snoqualmie had their annual Railroad Days Festival last weekend and of course we didn't want to miss out on the fun!

First we headed to the Firehouse Pancake Breakfast...

He looks like he's in pain here - but this is his "fake" smile!
So hard to get an original from this kid!

And he can't seem to ever look at the camera - drives me nuts!!!

Love the look on Landon's face in this picture - he was so excited!

They really enjoyed the old fire truck.

Landon was a little obsessed with his balloon!

Little better - but still so fake!

Then we headed into "old" Snoqualmie to check out the street fair and parade!

Built all out of Legos - very cool!

Watching the parade!

Ooh, look mom a "cool car"!