first day of school 2013!

On August 28, 2013 the girls had their first day of school in our new town, and it was Anna's first day of Kindergarten! The girls are loving their school and teachers this year!

The day before we got to check out the Kindergarten classroom and we explored the school grounds.

Then the big day arrived!

Our Kindergartener!

Our Third Grader!

They go to a school by the beach with a surfer for a principal. The first week of school I saw three different dads at pick-up barefoot. Welcome to Carlsbad!

And then it was time for Anna to go to class! The woman leading the line is her wonderful teacher whom Anna loves dearly.

Anna's teacher just took the kids in and got started, no lingering parents in the classroom allowed. :) The most tender moment happened right after I snapped the picture below. Anna looked at me, smiled and signed "I love you." About did me in.

How is this girl in 3rd grade already? Slow down, sweet Cate. You're growing too fast.

cape cod summer 2013

I'm sitting down today and getting some pictures up from last year. forget the messy house and grocery shopping, this just needs to happen! let's travel back in time to august 2013, right where we left off, shall we?

after many, many years, the maenads moved the annual cape week from sandwich to falmouth. the house was giant and lots of fun, with a big yard and right in town. it had a different feel than what we're used to, but it was so much fun and we're glad we gave it a try. there was a giant park across the street that was great, although we weren't able to use it much the first morning because…

…the Flamouth Road Race ended half a block from our house! we ended up hosting thousands of people that morning. it was crazy but fun! and, since we were there early, we were able to take advantage of all the free food before anyone got there. it was great!

I think this was probably the very best thing we saw at the race. Sweet cousins.

So, I actually didn't take a ton of pictures at the Cape. I was in vacation mode, apparently. But we do have some!

One of the advantages of being in town is we could rent bicycles built for 6. Owen would hold his helmet on for the whole ride, despite laughing and loving it. The kids loved this thing. If you want to get a real feel for how awesome it was, click here to watch a now classic Maynard video. 

The kids' table.

We experienced haute cuisine all week, including these hamburgers made out of cookies.

At one point, Nate, Jane, Cate, Pat and Herm were abducted by pirates.

Jane decided to drown her fears with a little partying. Who knew pirates liked Bud Light?

Who me? Too much to drink?

Don't worry. I won't accidentally fall overboard. I got this. 

Who gave Cate the cozy?!?!

Okay, it wasn't Bud Light. It was Diet Coke. Pat and I had a little too much fun with the cozy. Also, it was really embarrassing taking all those photos. We felt really dumb but we just couldn't help ourselves.

Back on shore, Sara was teaching Cate and Abby how to be cheerleaders.

We hired a pack mule for the week. It was really helpful.

The park across the street had a baseball diamond, which ended up being home to some of the best softball games the Cape has ever seen.

Behold the Great Cape Cod Flopper. No, seriously. Owen just kept randomly dropping to the group during the softball games. It was hilarious.

Norman brought his kite board and killed it.

He was getting so much air Owen got bored and went back to building sand castles.

For the talent show (I thought I took pictures, but I guess not? I can't find them!), Anna did a "Science Experience." We loved her mis-use of the word and just went with it.

Here's the shot of the whole crew! Thanks for a great week, everyone!

owenisms

just a couple things that owen says that I don't want to forget.

when he's hungry he's always too hungry. it's never, "I'm hungry" or "So hungry" - it's always "too HUN-gry, mom." cutest thing ever.

on a related note, he is always "too excited" and "so excited" - he says both of those all the time when he's anticipating something. the very first time he said it was on our back porch several months ago. it was after around his birthday, so I think he was catching onto the fact that boxes can have good things inside of them. we had gotten an amazon delivery and as I started to open the box he exclaimed, "so excited!" it's been a favorite phrase ever since!

owen always says thank you to us for EVERYTHING. when we were in utah in october, in the middle of the night he woke up crying in jess's room. jess went over, he was standing up and upset. she got him settled back down with his binky and bissy and he said, in the saddest little voice, "thank you." it is seriously so cute. he says thank you all the time for everything and we can't hear it enough.

when he wants us to hold him or pick him up, he always says, "Hold you." oh, my heart is melting just typing that out.

we sure love this little guy.

why christmas was so merry...

the very best part of today was first thing this morning, when we came into the living room to see what santa had brought. the girls had both asked for american girl dolls and were really happy when they saw the dolls waiting for them, along with a pile of presents in santa wrapping paper. but before they got to their own gifts, they stopped and watched owen toddle across the room to his stash. they could tell what he had received by how it was wrapped and followed owen across the room. they were soooo excited for their brother to discover his gifts, more excited than even finding their own. funny enough, owen wanted to open the small gifts he saw first before tearing the paper off the giant present waiting for him. the girls patiently waited and watched him open his presents, shouting exclamations of joy the whole time. when he was done with those gifts, they helped him to unwrap his train table, with more shouts of joy. finally, after owen's santa gifts had all been unwrapped, cate and anna turned around to open their own gifts.

I basically cried through the whole thing. how are nate and I so blessed to have such amazing little people in our family? watching cate and anna with owen was by far the best christmas gift I could have ever hoped for.



merry christmas!