First Days of School!

Our little Leah is finally a Kindergartener!!!  Today was her very first day of school (remember, we’re on year round school over here) and she was really excited!

Sporting her new backpack:

On our way!

The kids all went into the classroom and sat down on the rug.  I snapped a quick picture before I had to leave!  I got a little emotional as James and I walked back to the car, but mostly I’m excited for her.  Leah is so ready for kindergarten and I know she will just love going to school every day.

Annie’s first day of school was last Monday.  Kindergarten started a week later so they could do all the assessments.  Annie was really excited for school to start too.  Her teacher is Mrs. Snearly and she seems really great.  Really sweet and nice.  Her best friend, Kiah, is in her class again.  And one of Annie’s friends from church, Zoe Jenkins, switched over to our school because her family just bought a house in our neighborhood.  So Annie was really excited to see that Zoe was in her class too.  So fun!   

There’s no better way to celebrate the first day of school than with a trip to Yogurt Beach!  Especially when it’s 97 degrees out!  We waited for Dan to get home and then went tonight for FHE.  Yum!

James was being silly singing the song, “If you chance to meet a frown, do not let it stay . . . .

Quickly turn it upside down and smile that frown away.”

Well, here’s to a great school year!!

Maui - The Music Video

Here is the music video my amazing husband made of our vacation.  We all LOVE it!

Maui–Family Pictures

We had an awesome vacation.  Not only was it so fun being in Hawaii, but I just love being with my family.  I love them so much, and I’m glad that these are the people that I belong to.  We have so much fun together.  One night we went out and took some family pictures.  The lighting was kind of harsh, and some of the baby boys weren’t too cooperative, but I think we got some cute ones.   

Maui–Our Last Day

For our last day in Hawaii we decided to head down to the beach in front of Whalers Village where the waves were bigger.  We had such a great beach day!

A wave was coming towards her:

Haha . . . this picture is just too funny not to post!   

This is how Steph rolled for most of the trip.  Her main goal was to keep Savannah out of the sun.

We had so much fun playing in the big waves!

I love how John just slips under this wave:

Halle especially was getting pretty brave with the waves:

Annie wasn’t as lucky . . . . this wave just pummeled her:

Poor girl.  Check out her hair!

Not only were the waves strong, but we had some pretty strong wind gusts as well.  One time a gust was so big it sent a lot of our stuff blowing down the beach.  I missed it because I was sprinting after our floaties that were tumbling down the beach, but apparently Michael performed some superhuman dive where he sailed horizontally above the sand and snagged our tube out of the air that had everyone laughing for like an hour.  And here’s my mom rescuing our umbrella from the ocean:

And we can’t leave Hawaii without doing our traditional sisters picture!!  Love these girls so much.

And I’ll finish off the beach pictures with one of my favorites from the trip:

We packed up our beach day in the late afternoon and spent the evening back at our hotel swimming in the pools.

The kids loved the pirate ship pool!

We wished we had played more volleyball during the trip.  But like every vacation, there’s always too many fun things to do, and just not enough time:)

Sadly, the sun set on our last day in Hawaii.

We finally got out of the pool, got dressed, and walked down to Duke’s for dinner, and one last dessert of Hula Pie.  What a great last day of our Maui vacation!