Well, it happened. Sophie went off today for her very first day of kindergarten.  No surprise, but it was more traumatic for me than for her.  Sending your little girl off to a big (for her and us) school ON A BUS is kind of scary! But, as you’ll see… she loved every minute of it! We had an earlier-than-usual start after a summer of Loafie getting to sleep in until after 8AM, but no more…we needed to be at the bus stop at 8:15!  Just 1/2 a block away from our house, so it’s easy to get to, and once she got on her bus, I drove up to her school, Peter Kirk Elementary, to meet her off the bus and go into the classroom with her to “hand her off” to her teacher, Mrs. Smajic (pronounced “smytch”.)  She sorted her school supplies into the various bins, then found her table with the seat with her name at it and proceeded to start coloring a picture.  Then we all said the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.  I had forgotten all about that… it was neat to do it with Sophie. And, suddenly, it was time for me to go. Ulp, this was when I got the pit in my stomach.  I said goodbye to her and her response was “Mommy! Wait!!  ….What about my headphones?  Do I need them today?” (They were listed on the supply list but ended up being non-essential until later in the year, so I was taking them home.)  Right. So I guess I’ll be going now.  Out to the hallway to leave and boy did I get my sunglasses on fast so no one would see my tears.  Headed off for home where Maxie and I played and basically just waited for the time when 3 hours later Sophie would be coming back home on the bus especially for the 1/2 day kindergarten kids from our neighborhood. What luxury. And also, phew. She made it in one piece.  When she got off the bus, I asked her how her first day was, and can you guess what she said?

“It was AWESOME.”

She regaled me with various tidbits (the gingerbread man led them on a scavenger hunt around school, she skinned her knee at recess playing basketball, etc.) but overall had a great first day getting to know her school building, her teacher, and learning about some general “how-tos” at school.

So, please enjoy the slideshow below…clicking on the pictures will enlarge them and make the captions easier to read.  And by the way, Sophie is known at school as “Sophie L.” as there is another Sophie (Sophie H.).  I knew we shoulda named her Ursula!

Back from the doctors and here is a fast update to Scarface.  He looks really good!  It was a bit tricky getting those stitches out due to the glue our doctor used to hold the tape in place, and was exacerbated by the amount of, err, hair on Max’s forehead, but alls well that ends well!  Max was very good, laid still and Sophie rubbed his leg while it was all happening.  (She did however have to close her eyes when the bandaids came off… I warned her not to say anything in case she freaked Max out…)  We’ll need to use some Neosporin on the tender patches for a few days then I’ll break out my trusty scar gel to make sure he heals up as perfectly as possible. Here are the pics… if you click on them they will enlarge for your viewing pleasure. 🙂  Take a look!

After a lull in the blogging, suddenly we have lots to talk about!  Last friday, during a spell of wonderfully hot weather, we were busy getting ready to go out on the boat for an overnight trip.  Suddenly I hear a thud, followed by a short but ominous silence… then the scream began.  I race towards the sound and Max careens into me.  He’s bumped his forehead.  I can see there is a small lump, so I begin to comfort him then I notice the blood.  Uh oh… this isn’t good was the one thought running through my head.  We get into to kitchen and once I get the bleeding stopped, and Max stops crying, thank goodness…I can see we have a situation here that I probably shouldn’t be dealing with myself:

not for the squeamish…

A quick phone call to Mark to tell him to COME HOME NOW and one more to the doctor and it’s decided we will get over there ASAP so they can figure out what needs to be done. Luckily Mark got home just as we were getting into the car and so Max and I dashed off while Daddy and Sophie stayed home.  Once we got to the doctors office they said right away we would need stitches and we get moving right along in the process.  Max was very cute with all the nurses he had fawning (yes, fawning) over him.  I think the term “Drama Queen” sums it up.  No tears, but lots of fluttered eyelashes and sad faces.  Here he is waiting for the doctor while the topical lidocaine is taking effect:

I’ll be ok, thank goodness I have my bunny…

Fortunately, the wait wasn’t too long and then the serious business of numbing the cut (with a needle… yeeouch! that involved a few tears but can you blame him?) and then stitching it up.  4 stitches were put in (pretty interesting in a gross way to watch) which he handled like a trooper (he did ask a few times if there was “no more hurting”… so I know he was a little worried about the process) a bit of waterproof tape, a nice soft padded Band-Aid and we were done!  All that was left of the cleanup was to go home and soak our bloodstained clothing.  Oh, fun.  On the positive side, our doctor said go ahead out on the boat, just don’t let Max get his forehead wet (which for a guy who doesn’t yet put his face in the water is harder than it sounds, A-hem Sophie the Splasher…)

So, off we went to the boat and got to enjoy a lovely afternoon swim, some delicious burgers Mark cooked up (and he took great pride in being the boat that smoked up the whole bay with his frying grease), a gorgeous sunset and then we awoke the next day to cloudy skies.  There was a swim race in the bay that we watched, and we ended up having a swim later anyway as the water was bath-like warm and then off for home.  All in all, an eventfull but mostly successful weekend!  Max gets his stitches out on Friday… I’ll be sure to post a pic of how he looks once that happens!  Enjoy the boating pics below and a fun video of Daddy and Sophie doing their best Cannonball Impressions.

Over the weekend, we had another “first”… Sophie competed in her very first swim meet! Here she is in the (early) morning getting ready to leave for the pool:

All ready to leave…

I think I was nervous and she was just excited.  We got to the pool, and waited for her coach to arrive.    We found out her heat (when she would be swimming) and then just kind of hung out, got her official team swim cap (the Piranhas) and just went through the basics of how the morning would go.  Sophie was the only one from our gym to attend the meet, so she had undivided attention from her coach Stephanie… and then a 2nd support person (me) to carry her towel, feed her snacks and generally be the nail biter for our group while we were waiting for the race.  As it turns out… Sophie was the youngest (and smallest) person there to race…and this was the first time she ever had swum a pool that was 25 yards long!  The one at our gym is only 17.5 yards long so this was a test for her in more ways than one!  She had to do a warm-up swim (of about 150 yards…sheesh!)  in the lap lane with about 20 other kids all swimming around her and getting knocked around a bit, but she took it totally in stride. She had to learn how to use a block to start from (she was doing the backstroke in her race) and even though she could barely reach the bar to hang from, she wanted to do it instead of hang from the edge of the pool… because that was what you are supposed to do!   Here’s a little video of the warm-up… just to give you an idea of what it was like…

She got to watch some races before it was her turn and thought the butterfly was pretty cool and is looking forward to learning that one eventually.   And then finally, it was her turn to race!  As it turned out, there was only one other girl, an 8 year old who was also swimming in that heat.  Sophie gave it her all… and even though I have seen her swim the backstroke much better before, she came in 2nd… out of 2 swimmers.  🙂  The other girl was finished a while before Sophie touched the wall, but when she did the whole pool gave her a big applause, which made me feel good, and Sophie just seemed happy that she had raced and was a little bummed out that she didn’t have any more races to do that day!  There aren’t any more swim meets until the fall, so she has plenty of time to improve her strokes and who knows, maybe sometime sooner than later she might come in 2nd out of a lot more than just 2 swimmers! Below is a slideshow of the days events… it starts with the same pic of Sophie at home in her purple hoodie… try to start of from the beginning, it will make more sense that way.  Bye for now!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Last week was Max’s preschool “Alleluia” Program.  I think the only “Alleluias” uttered were by the parents after it was all over.  In anycase… Mark and I managed to get a seat near the front and made this bootleg recording (no kidding, as they didn’t want you to record your own- they wanted you to BUY a “professionally filmed” dvd of the whole program!)  I don’t know about you, but Mark and I were mostly interested in our kid, and not so much (ok, truthfully, not at all interested) in the other kids/ classes that performed after Max’s group.  So, after dinner Max got all spiffed up:

He cleans up pretty good, don’t you think?

And of course Sophie had to get in on the action too…

She was a little put out it wasn’t HER concert to be honest…

And up we went to school.  And now, without further ado… let’s get right to the contraband.  You can thank me later…. I condensed this down from 15 minutes of stuff to a mere 4:30.  Enjoy!

Ok, so this is a little late… but here is a slideshow of Easter weekend… Bunnies, and egg hunts and sunshine, oh my!  So, here we are, snaps of the neighborhood egg hunt on the day before Easter, and then lots of pics from my folks house on Easter Sunday where we basically invaded their house and stayed all day from breakfast through dinner.  The weather was gorgeous and we spent most of it outside!!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Well, we made it to Maui and back!  We survived a later that late take-off (blame it on the First Officer who pulled a no-show), A Costco rendezvous (that was pretty fun- stocking up on supplies, and watching Steve and Rachel go bug eyed at our rum stash!) had more rainy weather than we thought Maui was entitled to (Hawaii was hit over various islands with a hurricane and more wind and rain and rough surf than even the locals had seen recently) and of course we got to enjoy some pretty darn nice weather, a few beautiful beaches, drank more than our fair share of Mai Tais, and had a really great time hanging out with Uncle Steve and Auntie Rach.  Now that we are back, of course, we are battling a time-zone change that is making it hard to get up in the AM and also let’s not mention the, ahh, not so spring-like weather we are enduring here in the NW.  During our trip, we swam, conquered two bottles of Rum Ba Bah, we ate some yummy food, took lots of pictures AND managed to come home with suntans!  Sophie was a true little mermaid- she swam everyday and rode some waves and generally spent as much time as she could neck deep in the Pacific Ocean.  Max was a little more cautions as the surf was a bit too rough for him to be able to stand up but he enjoyed playing on the sand and eventually was able to get into the swim of things.  Markie was grill master and Navy Grog maker extraordinaire and I, well, to be truthful, I am not sure what I did. (Please refer back to Mark’s duties by means of an explanation.)  I know I had a good time, though!  All in all- a very successful trip! We can’t wait to go back!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.