first day of first grade!

Last Saturday Seth's teacher assignment came in the mail, and he was thrilled with who his teacher is!  Tuesday night we went to Open House, talked briefly with his teacher, and checked out the classroom (smartboard in the room this year, yea!).  Wednesday we ran errands around Clemmons, on the hunt for a specific type of pencil case.  Otherwise, we already had everything on Seth's school supply list.  Thursday morning, we were all up early and ready to go!  We all walked Seth in on his first day, which is just how Seth wanted it. 

New shoes!  (Both he and his daddy wear 13s right now.)

 New backpack:

Seth was a little thrown off when there wasn't a specific place to put his backpack.  We worried that the changes from kindergarten would upset him.  But he has come home the first two days talking a mile a minute about the things they are doing in school.  His teacher is fantastic, and we have already received three emails about what they are doing in class.  I hope the feedback continues!

Seth has the corner seat of the table, and he told me the girl to his left is new to the school, having moved here from South Carolina.  He sweetly told me how nice he was going to be to her, since she doesn't know the school.  He has his first homework project to bring back in tomorrow;  a Me Bag to help his class get to know him!

animal pancakes

Lisa and Michael gave me swanky pancake mix and these cool pancake forms for my birthday.  We had pancakes for supper last Sunday, and tested them out! 

 Very cute, and very easy!

 And in true Beery gift-giving fashion, very messy!

I went ahead and made the whole canister of mix (approximately a quintuple batch) and now we have a bunch of monkey, elephant, and lion pancakes to start the school year off right!

end of summer fun with friends

Some None of our friends are as early risers as we are.  So for the last two weeks we have had several early morning playdates to help our friends get used to getting up in time for school.  We had two marathon McDonald's breakfast playdates.  They were already serving lunch by the time we left.  Last week, we went to play putt-putt:

The golf place also had an arcade, and BUMPER BOATS.  Amelia was the only one not tall enough to ride, but she had a great time watching and getting attacked by their water guns!  Seth has been the lone male at all these playdates and has held his own with the girls.

Nickolas now has a zip line in his front yard, and we were invited over the other day to try it out. Seth was nervous at first, but then had a blast!

And would somebody please remind this girl that she is only three years old!  She HAD to do the zip line, too.  The first time I held the rope to slow her down, but she figured me out.  So I ended up running across the front yard countless times prepared to catch her if she lost her grip.  In sandals, no less.

We also squeezed in one last pool day.  In the midst of all this playing, we've done a lot of errands, and I have started the pre-consignment organization.  Rarely a dull moment around here!

called AND ordained

On August 13th, the kids and I made a day trip to Columbia for Lisa and Michael's ordination.  If you've ever been to a Lutheran church service with something special added in (baptism, confirmation, etc), it was pretty much like that, with the ordination after the homily.  Here they are, looking all official:

And here is the group picture.  The color of the day was red.  Guess who wasn't faissez-attention when he read his invitation?  (Love ya, Bry!)



Myrtle misc.

The last of the beach pictures.  Amelia didn't like the beach last summer.  BIG change this year:

 Nathan's land shark:

 The water park where we were staying:

 Beach football!



sunrises

See what you miss if you sleep past 7am?

 

tidal pools

Every morning at low tide, the ocean left us lots of tidal pools to play in, which was nice, because it had just been Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, and Nathan and I weren't too keen on getting in the water.  We'd find little fish and shells, or just puddle hop to see which dip was deepest. 

The grown-ups' inner nerds were fascinated to watch the pull of the ocean slowly take back the water through one tiny stream.  One day we helped it along by making a ditch back to the water, but that dried up our play area in no time!

vacation eatin'

Our condo had a full kitchen...which had about enough cooking accessories that maybe you could cook a  pre-prepared meal.  So we ate out a lot.  After Build-A-Bear, we ate at Johnny Rockets, and had our first-ever kids' side of the table...as you can see, it went well:

We took the kids to a Japanese steakhouse for the first time ever.  They loved everything about it and ate like champs!  I need to get some soup spoons like this, they both ate every last drop!

And they mastered modified chopsticks!

One our last full day of vacation, we ate at Margaritaville after the boys finished a round of mini golf.  Our kids wanted spaghetti.  This is not how Seth normally eats his noodles, but he was a little worried about the hurricane that swirls in the ceiling, so I let it slide:

Myrtle Beach

I've told people before that we can adapt to whatever type of beach environment we visit.  We're just happy to be at the beach.  Some people think Myrtle in too commercialized, but we stay away from the main drag and always have a good time.  This vacation was much more activity-laden than usual.  It was sooo hot, so we really couldn't spend all day at the beach or pool.  We spent a lot of time trying to find indoor things to keep cool.  Our hotel was in a primo location, between Barefoot Landing and Broadway at the Beach.  After we checked in Saturday, we headed to the closest seafood buffet.  We probably should have been more choosy, or at least fibbed about the kids' ages, because they definitely didn't eat their money's worth at the buffet, but it really is neat to watch them expand their horizons.  Amelia LOVES seafood.

We had our very first Build-A-Bear experience Monday morning.  Loved it! 

Amelia created Bun the bunny, and Seth created Max the brachiosaurus.  There was a deal going on, basically half price when you bought an animal, an outfit, and shoes.  We let the kids go all out. 

Then we went to the aquarium.  The kids were hugging each other waiting for Nathan to buy tickets.

I'm not going to post a lot of pictures of the aquarium, you know what fish look like.  Here are the kids in front of one of the first tanks:

Our hotel was within walking distance to Apache Pier. One morning we paid $2 and walked the end of the pier.

We spent a lot of time at Broadway at the Beach.  One evening we let the kids ride the carnival rides on the boardwalk.

We also saw The Smurfs (movie) one afternoon, played mini golf as a family, and twice Amelia and I went shopping while the boys played more golf.  Seth has finally started putting correctly, and the boys had a great time!

early August

Okay, that didn't take as long as I thought it would.  We have been BUSY in August.  After a morning of errands, we started our month off with Aesop's Fables at one of the local libraries.  These two ladies kept changing costumes to portray the different fables. 

The next day, we headed to SciWorks with a bunch of our friends.  We packed a picnic and stayed all day!  It was a great way to beat the heat!

At this point, Seth's hair was out of control.  I didn't want to cut it until after vacation.  This is the only day he wanted to spike it.  It was so cute!  Wednesday I'm pretty sure we had a pool day, but I can't remember.  Thursday was our tenth anniversary.  I took the kids to Gram and Pops' house, and Nathan and I had a nice date night.  We went out to dinner and then to the movies.  Here he is making a silly status update while we waited for dinner.

That Friday started the tax-free holiday weekend.  Nathan and I had another date for lunch, and I spent most of the day shopping solo.  It was so nice not to have the kids with me, because I was looking for something to wear to a specific event, and I probably tried on over a dozen dresses at half as many stores.  We picked up the kids Saturday morning to head out on our first and only vacation of the summer!

blog break

Yeah, so that may be the longest I've ever gone without posting.  Right now I'm in the process of uploading and organizing pictures from my camera and my phone.  I'll be up and running again soon, promise!

swim team banquet

Saturday night the swim team had a nice potluck dinner at the shelter followed by this year's awards.  It was hot, but it was fun!  Each swimmer earned some sort of superlative.  Seth's was the "best critic award".  Once he learned how to dive was able to consistently get his body in the pool in the following order:  arms-head-body-legs, he began commenting on his teammates' dives ("That wasn't a dive, that was a bellyflop.") 

Coach Abby asked to have her picture taken with Seth.  She is a college student and she loves her some Seth!  Every time Seth had a meltdown about some injustice he suffered from a teammate (which seemed to happen about once a week), by the time I made it across the pool, she was carrying him and offering him something from the snack shack.  Mean ol' mommy usually said no.  We want the tears to go away, not encourage them!

Seth loved his first summer on the swim team.  I'm sure he'll want to do it again next year.  As of last night, Nathan and I are officially in charge of something pool-related for next summer.  It's pretty hard to fly under the radar when you wow all the coaches and board members at City Meet!  I knew it was just a matter of time before we were helping in some capacity.  We both enjoy it, so it's no big deal!

even better than last year

Thursday morning I woke up with a weird rash all over my arms.  It didn't itch, but it felt like pinpricks.  Annoying!  I spent most of the day at home, waffling over whether I was going to go to the doctor or not.  Benadryl and topicals weren't helping, but at the same time, I didn't feel bad.  Weird.  That night, Nathan and I went out and got my new phone.  My contract had expired the day before, and my poor phone had been on borrowed time for awhile.  Meanwhile, Seth was cooking up big plans.  See, Friday was my birthday, and Seth put himself in charge of it, because he said my birthday wasn't very fun last year.  So Nathan took the kids for a last-minute run to Target.  (Which left me alone in the house for only the second time since preschool ended...that was a gift in itself!) 

Friday morning, the kids "let" me open my present right away.  Seth picked out new pj's at Target.  I love them.  (And they were on clearance, 50% off.  That's my boy!)  He also made me this card:

Unfortunately, I still had the rash, so I decided to go to the doctor just to make sure I wasn't contagious.  I wasn't, and the rash was gone by that afternoon.  Figures.  Then we went to the last swim team practice of the summer, came home to pack up, and headed back to the pool with all of our neighborhood buddies (my idea, not Seth's).  We ordered pizza (Seth's idea), and had cupcakes (made by me, picked out by Seth).  I spent a lot of time in the deep end, supervising diving board jumps.  I got jumped on by one of my favorite 5-year-olds.  (It was only her second time ever off the board.)  It must have looked pretty bad, but all it did was shake my contacts loose.  Once I put on my goggles, I was good to go the rest of the time.  I didn't get a lot of great pictures at the pool, but here is Wild Woman jumping off the diving board.  (On Saturday she started going off the diving board without a float.)

For dinner we went out to a local restaurant we had never tried before (I had a groupon).  None of my friends had taken their kids there, but figured it was okay if we went early.  We dressed the kids up a little bit and told them we were sneaking them in as grown ups.  The ploy worked!  They were perfect!  The restaurant had a kids' menu, so it was no big deal.  In fact, Amelia's chicken tenders looked awesome.   Then Nathan and I went out to see Harry Potter.  The kids were still up when we got home at 10, they don't get baby-sitters very often these days, and they were lovin' it.  I had a fantastic day, even better than last year.