Do you have any of their products? I love them! The books and the manipulatives.

We were given this set of My First Animal cards. Leah loves them. Here are some pictures of her loving the box. She’ll play with it for a long time. LOL

Here is the rabbit card. The cards are very strong cardboard. And on each animal there is a “feel” spot. I’ve been working on one animal at a time while she sits on my lap. This morning was cow and then I’d say moooo. She started saying moo too. She loves feeling the cards also. I love having easy items like this that encourage me to encourage learning in my little ones.

It’s so hard to believe that our baby has turned one! She was born March 5, 2008. Since then she has moved across the country and even flown several times. She is walking everywhere and talking non-stop. We all adore her and I’m so glad she is in our family.

Eating her cake:

A couple pictures taken at Sears 2 weeks before her birthday:

Leah loves cookies! She also loves anything in a box. She is really good at just reaching into boxes and pulling out her own treat.

Last week we were in Idaho visiting Roy’s family – these pictures were taken at his mom’s house (aren’t those gorgeous wood floors??).

Here Leah is..so happy..just walking around and around. Notice the yellow box in the lower right hand corner.

And she discovered the box. The second picture cracks me up…I love the look on her face.

Someone noticed what she was doing and picked the box up and set it on the bench. Course that didn’t stop her!

We’ve starting putting a “whale spout” in her hair. So cute!!

At the park yesterday, Leah sat in the stroller for the first 30 minutes while we watched Alex practice with his team. A bunch of 4 and 5 year olds playing soccer is quite amusing. I’ll share pictures later. After that we moved to the shade and I plopped her on the blanket. She won’t leave the blanket because she doesn’t like the feel of the grass. How long do you think I have?

Matthew’s practice goes for another 30 minutes and when it was over I decided to let the kids play for a bit longer at the playground. (Sam’s practices are on Tuesdays.) Leah had moments of loving it on the blanket..and not loving it. She did love chewing on my water bottle and there is drool to prove it!

Technically we school year round. But we took off a little time around the birth of Leah.  Then there was the moving.  Then we couldn’t find the school books.  Thankfully we had started last year early and then really pushed right before Leah was born.  So besides math, we really did start a new school year.  It won’t be long though and both Sam and Matt will have finished last year’s books and will be ready to jump into the new year.

I’ll be posting some pictures of our first days, and I’ll start you off with Monday morning.  It was around 8am.  We went outside and they had a great time posing for me.  It was already about 150 degrees outside.

Kayla, 12th Grade, 17 years old

Samantha, 5th Grade, 10 years old

Matthew, 2nd Grade, 7 years old

Alexander, K-4, 4 years old

(Why do some say Pre-K and some say K-4.  I know why I do!  Because I would say Alex is kindergarten as he doing work that might generally be done in kindergarten, but he is only 4, and some of the stuff is for younger grades.  Like he really can’t WRITE yet..but can do all the phonics and math.)

Hannah, 2 years old