Momma's boy

While Emmy is such a daddy's girl, Zach is more of a momma's boy. It's pretty cute most of the time. He puts up with Emmy most of the time (although has started hitting her when she gets in his way) and is great at sharing and playing and reading books.

Emmy "decorated" him with stickers one time. He was a good sport about it.

He has figured out how to take pictures on my phone and I have several foot selfies of his chubby little feet. Ha!

He also has mostly enjoyed meeting the characters at Disneyland. He was enthralled with Dug and kept wanting to give him hugs and kisses and high fives.

Yes, we do put him on a leash at Disneyland. He loves his monkey backpack! Although he doesn't like it when we have to pull his tail. :) Now we just need to find Russell one of these times.

And I just really love palm trees.

This girl

This girl. She drives me crazy. She is 5 going on 15. Most of the time I don't know what to do with her.

A couple of weeks ago I took her out on a mommy-daughter date. And it was so fun! We went to dinner at Chilis and to the pet store to look at the animals. Seriously, it was just what I needed to not go crazy. We are going to start making this a regular habit. It was really good for me to be able to connect with her one-on-one and not have to worry about Zach (who always runs away when we are in a public place).

Don't mind that we both look like ragamuffins.

One day she wanted to play Monsters Inc and wanted me to throw Cheerios into her mouth and then put the Cheerios on a newspaper for her to eat like Sully does to Boo in the movie. What a crack up!

She sure has a sweet tooth. Uh-oh!

She has really been loving meeting the characters at Disneyland. And she's been having fun with my old autograph book. I love that we actually have more time to do this now. Before we were so focused on going on all the rides that we didn't take as much time to stop and interact with the characters. We try to meet one or two characters each time we go and see one of the shows. And I love it! They are so cute with the kids and the kids are in awe of them!

Why does Elsa always look so weird in "real life"? Every Elsa I've seen just looks awkward.

Anyway, I am really trying to enjoy Emmy and trying not to be frustrated with her so much. I really hope it's not this bad when she's a real teenager...

Emmy goes to kindergarten!

Emmy started kindergarten this week! I'm so excited for her! (and me!) She was excited to pack her lunch and put it in her backpack and take some pictures at home. She also was excited to pick out her clothes to wear. The day before, at orientation, she said she needed to wear her fancy clothes to meet her teacher. Ha!

Then when we got to the school she got really nervous. I gave her a little chipboard heart to keep in her pocket and told her that she could reach in her pocket and touch it when she got scared and that it would help her to be brave. She thought that was a good idea.

This was her nervous face.

Then I told her to smile and this was her nervous smile.

But when it was time to go in, she went in and followed her teacher and didn't look back. She said she had fun. The second day she was nervous again and had a hard time going, but again when she got home she said she had fun.

Then the third day she went right in with no problems. I really like her teacher so far. I hope she makes friends and has a good experience. She is so shy and she said she was scared to talk to the other kids. I hope she finds some friends! I think she'll really like school once she gets used to it.

I feel bad saying this, but I'm so excited that she's in kindergarten. She and I have really been struggling lately and I think it will be really good for both of us to have a break from each other.

The last of summer

Although the summer weather is far from over, Emmy started school this week so we tried to fill up the last few weeks of "summer" with fun stuff. We hit the beach and Disneyland a few times, and went swimming. We put Emmy in another round of swimming lessons, and we ate lots of berries! We had a torrential rainstorm that was as good as any pool, and we finally found a shave ice place.  Happy Summer!

 We love our berries around here!

 We've been going to Disneyland about once a week or every other week. So fun! We even met up with Auntie Ginxie one day who took the kids for a few hours so Matt and I could have a Disney date. Thank you!!

 Emmy was super excited to meet Minnie and Olaf. She has been having fun with my autograph book too--getting all the characters' autographs. Zach was so cute with Minnie. He kept wanting to kiss her nose. It was adorable...I wish I would have gotten a picture. He also loved Olaf's carrot nose and wanted to kiss it too!

 We had a giant rainstorm and Emmy played in it like it was a swimming pool. She LOVED it and was so excited to put on her suit and go nuts.

 We found a raspberry patch and picked $20 worth of raspberries and then proceeded to eat them all within about 4 days. Delicious!

 Emmy spread out all the blankets on the floor and they had a "dance party". Ha!

 We finally found shave ice within 20 minutes of our house! I was dying with no shave ice all summer.

We put Emmy in another session of swimming lessons. This time she was brave enough to jump off the diving board. She has made some great improvements. I am excited to see her learning to swim.

And that about wraps up our summer.