1st day of school

And finally, the long awaited, first day of school. The girls were soo excited this morning. I also included pictures of Chloe's first day of preschool which was Monday. Here they are on their big day-

Elise getting on the kindergarten bus

They were up and at-em this morning

The big girls

Chloe in her new preschool room

In front of preschool with her backpack and lunch box

Cedar's Birthday

Last weekend we went to Aunt Sarah and Uncle Montez's house for Cedar's 2nd birthday. The girls had a blast as usual playing with their cousins and seeing the new babies. And mommy and daddy enjoyed getting a baby-fix and then being able to hand the babies back so we could go home to a good night's sleep :-)

The following pictures are my attempt to get a good photo for Eric's parents to use for their Christmas cards this year. Getting 8 little girls to cooperate was pretty amusing...

Getting ready for school

After we got somewhat settled in the house, the next task was getting ready for the fast approaching school year. We spent a day shoe shopping, a day clothes shopping, and a day school supply shopping. In some ways it is getting more fun to take 4 children shopping. The girls are getting older, they get excited about things, they have opinions about what they'd like to get. But I must say I don't think I've ever been talked to that much, that loudly, and by that many people at the same time as I was for those 3 days. I had a headache and was exhausted each night! But the girls got all of their stuff and had fun, so I guess that's what its all about. We finished off the week with New Student night at their new elementary school. They were soo excited by the time we left. They got to meet their teacher, see their classroom, and meet their buddy- the person assigned to show them around for the first few days of school. And they got cookies too. Oh and Claire informed me that I couldn't take her picture in her classroom- too embarrassing. I guess we're starting to hit that age now...

At California Pizza Kitchen. They had a great time and declared it was the best food ever. It was even worth being good for- the threat I instated that morning or I'd never take them to a sit down restaurant by myself again... yeah, yeah, I know- but it worked :-)

Emilie in her classroom at new student night

Elise and Chloe in Elise's kindergarten classroom.

The big move

Since the last post talked about the end of life in a camper, this one will pick up with a quick one about the move into our new house. My parents took the girls for 5 days so Eric and I could get the house somewhat in order before we had all of them in the way :-) Sad thing is that even though we were working as fast as we could for 20 hours a day, it felt like we actually got some quality couple time in. (I know, we need a vacation sans children!) We did get the girls' rooms pretty well set up and they were extremely excited about how they turned out.

No post about our move in would be complete without some mention of the mud. We had no sod for almost a week and then since the sod wasn't rooted and we had to water it night and day... Well you can see the results of taking our dogs potty just from these crocs. Now imagine the dogs and the basement floor...

Now we've got a great yard and the fence is installed. The look of joy on the dogs face when I let them out to go potty off leash for the first time in 2 months was priceless. I wish I'd thought to bring my camera :-)

Since we had no kids for the weekend, we took pictures of the cat, who was also glad to be out of the camper and have room to stretch her legs...

Evidently watching the laundry is not only fun for kids, but cats like it too.

Sometimes being the new one in the neighborhood brings good things... like homemade still warm sourdough bread. It lasted about 20 minutes... The girls (and Eric and I) inhaled it.

And as I predicted, this is where we spent a good deal of the next few weeks. Whenever the girls could talk me into an unpacking break.

The end of the camping saga

We ended our time in the camper with lots of rain- makes for muddy dogs and stuff. And worn out mom and dad. Even the kids were getting a little testy the last few days. Everyone was a good sport about the whole thing. But it sure has been nice to be in our new house and have the ability to spread out a bit! I thought these pictures were funny. Let me explain: on the last couple of days of camping, the girls and I spent some time cleaning the camper so we wouldn't have to do that while we were trying to unpack the house. This first picture is of Elise's bunk after I asked all the girls to clean and pack up their stuff.

This picture is of Emilie's bunk after the same request. Both girls were equally proud of the results of their cleaning. Can you tell who the neat-freak in the family is?

We also spent quite a bit of time at the laundromat. The last time we went I did 7 loads of laundry! The girls were good sports about this too. It didn't hurt that the laundromat was a few doors down from an excellent bakery :-) Anyway, so I'm hustling around moving laundry from washers to dryers when I noticed this. The girls had all pulled chairs over to the dryers and were intently watching the laundry spin around as it dried. Who knew laundry could be so entertaining?

The start of some catch up posts :-)

I know that I'm way behind in posting! I'm going to do a bunch of posts and try to catch you up on what we've been up to the last month. So for my first one, here are the girls and cousin Liah at CityGarden. A great art/sculpture park downtown where you are allowed to get in the fountains and play :-)