School

First Day of Preschool! I laugh at this picture b/c he'll stand like this and say, "look, I'm a pickle!"
Julia wanted to be in a school picture too
First day of 1st Grade! Still trying to work on natural smiles...
Cardale, Caleb, and Isaac riding bikes at the campground
The frog cupcakes Isaac is bringing to school for his birthday treat. They're supposed to be frog eyes peaking out of the water if you can't tell!
We actually did get a picture of Julia by herself!
The Jongsma family


This is our second week of school and things are going well. Caleb wasn't nervous at all about starting first grade. We felt a little bad that we made him ride carpool the first morning and didn't take him ourselves, but it didn't bother him. He has 10 kids in his class, 5 boys and 5 girls. I don't mind smaller class sizes. Unfortunately the little trouble-maker from last year is still in his class. I figure this is a good learning experience for Caleb b/c there will always be people trying to influence him in negative ways. Hopefully he can learn young to make the wise choice! Caleb was a little bummed to hear he would have homework every night, but it takes him about 5 minutes to complete it. He heard that 1st graders get to do science experiments and he is excited about that.

Isaac started preschool this year! He is going to a local preschool four afternoons a week. He wasn't sure if he was excited about school or not. The first couple of days he clung to my hand when I dropped him off and had that 'don't leave me!' look. However, he is now singing songs he has learned and talking about classroom jobs. Tomorrow he gets to bring his birthday treat which is very exciting for him.

Julia REALLY wants to go to school. She loves Isaac's classroom. On the first day she was ready to stay when Isaac wanted to head out the door with me. Julia often says, "I go to school when I'm big?" When Isaac is in school Julia takes a nap and my house is quiet for a couple hours- awesome!! We are potty-training Julia. It is much harder with the 3rd child. It is more difficult to stay home all the time and focus on potty-training. There are just more places we have to go. With the older two boys I did not use pull-ups. I was all about going cold turkey from diapers to underwear. Now, we use pull-ups for when we're going somewhere. Potty-training is still my least favorite parenting task. :)

Last weekend we went camping with Cardale's family. It was slightly rainy, but we all had a good time. The boys played hard the whole weekend. Cardale shows Nate and I more affection now and it just warms my heart. For the past 2 years we've tried to not "push" ourselves on him and let him interact with us according to his comfort level. Now he'll come up to me and snuggle on my lap and say, "I love you." Puts a big ol' smile on my face. Cardale has a little brother, Abe, who is 5 months old and such a cutie. Cardale is a great big brother. The boys are constantly asking when we will camp with Cardale again!