Two down and many more to go...

See this...this is a smiling mom with her two great kids. Now why is mom smiling, well, her 1st had a great week at school. We are so proud of him and now know that he can do anything that he sets his mind too. (Our first week was a little ruff.) Anyway, Hooray, Hooray, Hooray! Now we hold great hope that the rest of the school year will be just as great.

As for the 2nd son - he always aims to please so does very well in school!

Happy 6th Birthday Tyler

My baby turned 6 today! Where has the time gone. He is getting so big and so independent, it makes me sad sometime, but the upside is he is getting to be so good at helping out and doing things on his own.

We started the festivities of his birthday early in the morning with opening presents. He got an LMax (Leapster), Legos (of course), and a game for his LMax. He was happy so all was good.

These are the cupcakes we made for his class. We saw the picture of them on the back of a cake mix box so Tyler decided that is what he wanted.

Tyler decided that for his cake he wanted all of the candles right by each other like dynamite. It looked pretty dangerous and we are glad he didn't burn himself while we were singing to him.



So Happy Birthday Birthday Tyler! We love you very, very much!

First Day of School

Mackay's teacher is Mrs. Beeson and Tyler's is Mrs Karakus

Today was the first day of school. I don't think my kids were too excited though because I couldn't get them going this morning. I had to drag them out of bed and even get them dressed. Once that was done things got a little better.

Here they are in their classrooms. Don't they look so handsome!

On our way to school!

Anyway things went pretty well at school! Tyler's teacher just found out she was teaching this particular class on either Tuesday or Thursday of last week and so she felt totally disorganized, but I am sure she will be just great. She said Tyler had a great first day. Mackay when I asked him said that he got his name on the board. Can you guess what for? Yep, talking. This kid is just way to social. It will pay off I am sure someday.

Here is what the kids had to say about their first day:

Travels

We decided to take off to Utah for a couple of weeks. It was nice, definately cooler than where we live. We started our trip in St. George, thanks to Justin's sister we dropped the kids off at her house and went to dinner at the Outback and then to see Footloose at the Tuachaun. The food we had was so so and our play got cancelled after the intermission due to rain, wind, lightening, and thunder. We were pretty bummed, but on a positive note we got to watch a fantastic lightening show.
We then headed up to my parents home near Salt Lake City. While there we decided to go and visit the visitor center at the Kennicot Copper Mine. It was interesting and the kids had a lot of fun. They even found a grass hopper to torment, as shown in one of the pictures below. It was also fun to see how deep the mine is, play in the old mine cart, and view a movie about the history of the mine.

On Sunday we headed up to Lyman, Wyoming and spent a couple of days with Justin's twins family. We went to church with them and went in search of fossils (no digging though, because that is against the law). The next day we rode a motor scooter and hiked the Uintah Mountains. It was so beautiful. We hiked 6 miles in all and the kids did great, even better than me. Our last day there we just hung out, the kids swam, jumped on the tramp, rode a zip line, floated down the canal on tubes, and just had fun. We also went out for pizza. We had a great time with them!

The day after we returned to Salt Lake we went to Hogle Zoo with my sisters and their kids. It was so much fun. We were able to see so many baby animals too. Our favorites were the new baby giraffe and the meerkats. The kids loved being with their cousins and were very fascinated with their new cousin Cooper. He got a lot of attention. They got a chance to pet a snake too, ew! We also watched a bird show that was very cool. The birds fly right over your head and you feel like they are going to land on you. Mackay won a ticket to ride the train by answering the question "Which bird is the most expensive bird" The answer was a chicken. Thanks to the cheat sheet that someone holds up over the wall he got it right.

Other things we did while on our trip were attending a Mackay Family Reunion, which I forgot to take pictures of, went school shopping, the kids had a sleep over at my sisters house, we went through the Oquirrh Mountain Temple, the kids built a club house in my parents raspberry bushes, and we visited Parowan for a couple of days. Wow! We did a lot! It was fun and we are glad to be home. This is the first time that we returned home and wished that we lived closer to family. We miss them so!

Today we watched "The Errand of Angels" about a sister missionaries experience. It was an okay movie, but in one part it was raining and Mackay said, "When Heavenly Father is sad his tears are the rain aren't they". I thought that was cute. Later his head was hurting and he said, "I am having brain damagged because my head hurts". Poor kid, hopefully he doesn't have extensive brain damage.