Preschool Meet the Teacher

Reagan's final preschool Meet the Teacher event was tonight.  Reagan is back at Child's Morning Out at Bulverde United Methodist Church again this year.  Her class is a bit different though.  While it is basically the program's 4 year old class, the name of the class has changed to Kinder Prep (which we prefer to just "4 year old class").  Even Reagan is already calling her class Kinder Prep.  Her teacher this year is Ms. Jennie, and the Kinder Prep class meets Monday-Thursday.  There are only six kids in her class, three boys and three girls.  Unfortunately, she doesn't know any of them yet - but, knowing Reagan, she'll be BFFs with all of them by the end of the first day of school!  Since Peyton has started back to school, Reagan has asked everyday if her school is starting the next day!  She is obviously very excited!

Reagan with her completed classroom scavenger hunt page. 

Reagan and Ms. Jennie

Tonight, we added up all of the different preschool classrooms we've been to for Meet the Teacher night between both Reagan and Peyton over the past seven years.  Grand total - 10!  Of course, those overlapped for a few years!   But tonight made us keenly aware that the end of our preschool "era" is quickly coming to an end. :(  

Making Brownies

Reagan wanted to do something special for Peyton on the first day of school, so she made him a batch of brownies!  She has really missed Peyton this week.  Usually, around 9:30am, she starts asking if it is time to go pick up Peyton yet!

First Day of School Pics

First Day of 2nd Grade

We officially now have a 2nd Grader in the house!  Last night, Peyton set his own alarm clock for 6:15 am and was wide awake the minute it went off.  He excitedly ate his breakfast - "Poptarts" - his choice for the first day of school, dressed, and even tolerated Mommy taking the traditional First Day of School pictures.  We arrived at school super early today - 7:20, and, even at that early time, kids and parents were already pouring in! Peyton walked into his new classroom like he's "been there, done that" a million times already!  And I found out something really cool this morning - Peyton's new classroom is Aunt Stephanie's old classroom from her 2nd Grade days, so it already has many good vibes! :)

 Traditional 1st day of school pictures - with Comet watching us through the window!

Peyton wanted to take Kitty in the car on the way to school.  

Reagan walking Peyton into school.  Next year, this will be her big day as well!  She'll finally get to stay at Specht with Peyton instead of coming home with Mommy! 

Mrs. Patton greeting Peyton. 

Peyton at his new desk - surrounded by old friends!

New Pets

As the kids put it, we now have 8 pets.  We have been talking about getting the kids a fish aquarium for months now, and we finally did it!  Last weekend, we purchased a five gallon aquarium and the necessary supplies from the pet store and then added our 7 new fishies a day later.  We have 2 Marble Mollies (one male, one female), 2 Orange Platies (again, one male, one female) and 3 neon tetra (gender unknown).  Yes, we did intentionally get male and female of two of the species.  We think the Marble Molly might have already laid some eggs!  Hopefully, we will see some baby fish soon!  The kids still check on their fish pets frequently throughout the day.  They have also been very responsible about feeding them several times each day.  Comet has, of course, been very curious about the new aquarium.  Fortunately, he has been smart enough to realize that the ledge where the fish aquarium sits  does not have enough room for him if he were to jump us there.  So he just sits on the floor and stares up longingly at the fishies swimming by....

Meet the Teacher

On Thursday afternoon, we took Peyton to school to see his new 2nd Grade classroom and to meet his new teacher, Mrs. Patton.  

Peyton excitedly walking into his new room! 

 At his new desk with his new supplies!

with Mrs. Patton. 

Peyton was very happy with his new teacher and was happy to learn that many of his friends from First Grade and Kindergarten will be in his class this year.  Unfortunately, at the moment, 2nd grade is practically overflowing with students - 26 and 27 in each one of the four classes.  If everyone shows up on the first day of school, a fifth teacher will have to be added, meaning Peyton probably won't get to spend the year with some of his friends after all. 

For the last two years, for K and 1st grade, Peyton has been in the "little kid" wing of the school.  This year, he moves up to a new wing!  They now have bathrooms in the hall instead of in the room.  However, Peyton's new classroom in closer to his SAGE classroom and close to the cafeteria!  Now that he's in 2nd grade, Peyton will start getting number grades on his report cards instead of just and E,S or U.  Traditionally at Specht, the 2nd Graders go to Sea World for their field trip, which will hopefully continue this year!   This is going to be a big year!

Camp San Antonio

A few weeks ago, Dustin had to make a quick trip up to Dallas for work.  While he was gone, my friend Kacie (from McKinney) and I cooked up a last minute plan for her boys to ride home with Dustin and spend the week here with us in San Antonio.  Dustin sweetly agreed to drive back to San Antonio with Thomas and Andrew on Friday afternoon, and we kept our plan (aka Camp San Antonio) a secret from Peyton and Reagan.  Peyton was SPEECHLESS when the three of them walked in the door on Friday night!  He and Reagan were expecting only Daddy but were thrilled when their two friends walked in the door with him!

 Peyton's "Pinch me - I think I'm dreaming!" look a few minutes after they all arrived home. Later that evening, Peyton said, "I've heard of people surprising with toys, but I've never heard of people surprising with people!"

To add to the excitement of the evening, Peyton lost his 5th tooth!  He cleverly asked Daddy if the Tooth Fairy could bring him a million dollars.  When Daddy told him there was no chance of that, he said, "One hundred dollars, then?"  Again, nope.  "Ten?"  He ended up with $1 and a coupon to take his friend to the San Antonio Children's Museum while they were in town.  

We had such a fun week with our friends, and all the kids got along so well all week long!  It was so exciting for Peyton and Reagan to show their friends all around San Antonio!  Here are a few of the things we did during their week-long visit:

 Met Star Wars characters 

Big Lou's 42in pizza - the largest pizza in the world!  We were here to celebrate Mommy's birthday with Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Stephanie, Uncle Brett and Gregory.  All of us stuffed ourselves and we still took home leftovers!

 Peyton can't believe his eyes - these slices were huge!

 Reagan trying to eat a slice of pizza almost as big as she is!

After church on Sunday, we went to the Guadalupe River.

Monday was a busy day...

 Feeding the ducks at the park.

Riding the train. 

After a picnic lunch, we headed downtown to the San Antonio Children's Museum.  Peyton was so excited to show his out-of-town friends to his favorite play place in San Antonio!

 Of course, while we were downtown, we had to visit the Alamo!

 We were all pretty worn out by the time we hit the River Walk for a river boat tour!

On Tuesday morning, we headed to a bowling alley, where I had a coupon for a free game.  Unfortunately, on her very first turn, Reagan tripped, fell, and cut her chin pretty bad as it hit her bowling ball as it collided with the hard floor.  After a few hysterical moments, we were able to get her cleaned up enough and put a band-aid on the wound.  She settled into a chair, and we decided that the boys would finish their game anyway.  They were having such a good time that Reagan finally decided to bowl a few rounds.  After lunch back home, I decided that I should probably take Reagan to a pediatric urgent care to have her cut cleaned and maybe glued.  Daddy stayed with the boys while Reagan and I ran an errand to get some "medicine" for her owie.  We were in and out of urgent care in no time, and Reagan was one brave little girl!  She proudly showed off her glued owie for the rest of the week!  And my "free" trip to the bowling alley ended up costing us about $140 to have her delicate chin "glued"!  Fortunately, that was our only medical incident during the week!

On Tuesday afternoon, we headed to the Witti Musuem for Free Tuesdays and the Witti.  The kids favorite part was the news cast room, where they got to play with a green screen.  They had fun making their bodies disappear, only to have a "floating head" remaining on the screen!

The kids had so much fun at the river that we decided to head back there on Wednesday, this time with cousins Cayden and Brinley.

We spent Thursday in New Braunfels...

 ...at the Snake Farm!

...and at the McKenna Children's Museum. 

 In the evenings, when it would finally get cool enough, we would all go outside to ride bikes and scooters.

Andrew sweetly trying to teach Reagan how to tie shoes.

On Friday, it was time to drive Thomas and Andrew to Temple to meet up with their mom.  We were all so sad that our fun week had come to an end, but we are excited about more Camp San Antonio next summer!