Labor Day & the First Day of Preschool

It's been a busy two weeks! We had a fun Labor Day weekend. Dave and I got to go to the temple Friday night and do some family names from my Dad. It was great! I always enjoy when we get to go. Saturday we had a Plastow Family gathering at our house. It was small, but we had a great time visiting with family. Logan had so much fun with his cousin Lindsay, he decided they should move back into our basement so we can play more often.

 Monday we took a day trip up to Park City and made our maiden voyage in our new canoe! The boys loved it! The whole time they were either sticking their hands in the water or telling us what they saw from the boat. Logan named the boat Fox, and Dustin just calls it boat (he likes to keep it simple). We rowed for about 2 hours and had a picnic lunch on the lake (we were going to get out on shore, but the boys didn't want to).

There were a few sail boats, canoes, and other various boats out there. The weather was perfect!

 While Dave was tying the canoe on top of the car, the boys decided to go "wading". They had fun watching the waves, throwing rocks, and watching the other boats.

It was great to get out and enjoy the warm weather! Now it's cooling down so it was good to have one last warm adventure before the Autumn.

Thursday Logan had his first day of Preschool! He was so excited to go to school, but didn't understand why we couldn't just go to the Elementary School across the street.

He wanted a silly picture too, so here he's acting like a Dinosaur.

Dustin (who needs to do everything his big brother does), of course needed to take pictures too. This is his "nice" shot.

And his silly shot! He loves sticking out his tongue.

 
Logan will be going to Miss Margene's Preschool Tuesdays and Thursdays for two hours in the morning. We weren't planning to send him to Preschool, but Dave and I decided since change is hard for him, it might be good to do something part time to transition him into Kindergarden next year. And the first day was a very hard day. He cried a lot and wouldn't follow directions or participate in any of the activities. So Dustin cried when we left his brother, and Logan cried because we left him with strangers, and I cried because Logan didn't have a great first day. I guess Dave's the only one not weepy.

But the second day went better. He told me he had fun and brought home the projects they had worked on. His teacher said he participated in all the activities and followed directions. We had talked a lot about why school was hard over the weekend and had him come up with ideas to solve those problems. Ex. he is shy and he was nervous when they broke into groups because he didn't know anyone. So we asked his teacher if he could be in his friend Briggs' group so he would know someone. It really helped, as did carpooling with Briggs. I'm sure we'll still have hard days, but I'm so relieved the second day went better!

We also went to cheer on Dave for his second half marathon of the summer! I didn't expect much a difference in score a month later, but he finished this one in 1 hour and 49 minutes (13 minutes faster than last time).

We loved cheering on Dave! His parents had Logan spend the night Friday night with his cousin McKay, so they came to cheer too. It was crowded, but we were right by the end arch.

We also got a fish this week! The boys just love it. Logan calls it 7th and Dustin calls it Timmy (after his cousin we suspect). The boys love feeding it, and will climb up by the counter to watch it swim around. It's a feisty little guy! He swims all over the place. 

Although Logan loves the fish, I think Dustin loves it more. He talks to it, says bye bye to it when we leave, good night, and when we are away from home he talks about how "fish home alone!" with such a forlorn voice. It's pretty cute.

Dustin has also gone through a language explosion lately! He's using small sentences and I'm always surprised by what comes out of his mouth. He's so convicted too. He'll tell me "Mom! Need Cheese, come!" and he drags me to the kitchen for a snack. Most of the time we can figure out what he is trying to tell us, although he is having a hard time when the answer is no. He's such a cute little guy!

In which we play. A lot.

This week we did a lot of fun stuff! It was a busy week, so I'm sure I'll forget stuff, but it was a good one.

I finished my last three dish towels for the Super Saturday class I'm teaching. I was going to design 3 Christmas ones too, but alas, I'm burned out. But I loved how the bunting/banner turned out! I'm excited to teach the class. I also decided (after putting this together) that I'm going to start up a block of the month quilting class in my ward. I convinced a little old lady in the ward that shares a building with us to help me teach, and I think together we'll have fun! I've been wanting to do something like this since I quit my monthly quilting class, and I think I'm ready.

Dave and I also discovered mormonflix.com a few weeks ago. It's a website that has ALL Mormon movies you could ever want, and you can watch them for free. Old ones like Johnny Lingo and Saturday's Warriors and newer ones like The Saratov Approach and 17 Miracles. We've watched a few, and are looking forward to seeing more. If you want to try it, after choosing your movie from "our collection", don't click on the stuff on the right, just click on the big play button on the image in the middle of the screen. That's how you view it for free. Then if you want you can pay to download and keep it.

Saturday morning we got a phone call from the Poulson's (old time family friends and my brother's in-laws). They wanted to give us their canoe! Oh man am I excited to take the boys out canoeing this weekend. I have fond memories of going canoeing as kids (with the Poulson family), and I can't wait to share it with my boys. It's a good thing we have a long weekend coming up, because I'm ready for water!

That afternoon we took the boys to the Children's Museum at the Gateway. Dave's work gave us a free family pass so we thought we'd check it out. The boys had fun! Logan's favorite was a huge ball machine where you stick balls in a tube and air shoots it up and around the room. He probably spent a full hour on that alone. Dustin's favorite was probably the grocery store. They had fake kids food on the shelves and you filled up your baskets and could check out too. There were some bigger kids pretending they worked at the store. They would tell Dustin "the bread is in isle 2". Dustin would nod and keep shopping. He filled up his basket until I distracted him by taking him to another section.

They had a water table, magnetic blocks, a wind tunnel thing you could put stuff (pipe cleaners, paper, etc) in and it would act like a hurricane sucking the stuff away. They also had a play house with fake food to cook, a lawn mower, cars, etc. Logan also loved the helicopter you could get in and "fly" as well as the construction tools (with working crane). I think we were there for 3 hours! Dave and I had to drag the boys away because we were done and hungry.

Sunday after Church and nap time we logged in for the first time to Family Search. I've wanted to get into Geneology, but it seems there's always something else occupying my time. But after our 3rd hour lesson on Sabbath activities I thought it would be a good one to add to our list. So as a family we got online and added our pictures to our profiles. The site was so slow that that took about an hour! And with two little boys that's about as much as we had the attention span for. But now if you are related to us and look us up, you'll notice each of our family members have a head shot.

Monday we were invited to Logan's friend Brigg's Grandma's house to go swimming! It was so much fun. I was a little nervous to navigate a pool with two little people that didn't know how to swim, but they had so much fun. Logan (in water wings) swam around the pool like a little fish. His friend Abby was also there so he kept switching back and forth between being where Abby was or where Briggs was. Dustin was pretty brave too! He spent a lot of the time swimming right beside me in his water wings. They had a blast, and I was exhausted after chasing them around.

That night we had an FHE lesson on modesty and private parts. It was totally awkward for me, but Logan and Dustin weren't phased. Logan was very factual about it, and I think he got the point of the lesson. He'll be starting preschool next week and will be going a few hours two days a week , and I wanted to cover the subject matter before he was out of our influence and around kids whose parents I don't know.