Liberty's first day of Preschool

So Liberty wasn't able to go to kindergarten this year because her birthday is the 6th of Sept and the cutoff day for kindergarten is the 1st. So we were able to get her into the Play and Learn Community Head Start program here in North Pole. Today was her first day, all the while she was gone Lily kept asking where Libby was. She had a great day and the teacher said that she was the biggest helper of all the kids. She was talking non stop about her day when I went to pick her up. She is super excited to go again tomorrow. Here are the pictures.


Liberty asked Lily to take a photo with her.


Liberty and her new backpack.


She is such a ham when the camera comes out to take pictures.


This is the backpack she picked out all by herself. Her teacher said that one of the other kids in her class kept taking it off of the hook and looking inside it. Because if there was candy on the outside there had to be candy on the inside. LOL!


Liberty and her new teacher.

Busy Busy

I think we have been the busiest house on the block in the last three weeks. Between eye appointments for the girls and everyday happenings my days have been full of adventures, but we always find time for summer activities. Although here summer is long gone and autumn has started we decided to take the kids for a hike. As we were on our hike Liberty was noticing the leaves changing color, she asked me why the leaves change color and fall to the ground. I told her in preparation for winter. When she heard the word winter she got all excited about being able to build a snowman. I am glad that my children are so excited about winter, because I am not ready yet. Any way I thought that I would post some pictures because it has been a while so here they are.

Pictures of Wyatt

I was told that I needed to post some more recent pictures of the baby. He has grown a little but is still in Newborn clothes. I am told that I need to feed him more, but if I feed him any more he will be eating all day. Any way, here are the pictures.
Jamie

Adventures on the Trails

Hurray for the great outdoors! So I was talking to Debbie and Tashina last night and we made a plan to take the kids hiking up to Angel Rocks today. We must have been a little loopy last night to even think about taking 4 kids and dogs on a 1.3 mile hike. But we got up and had breakfast and then me and the kids rode out to Tashina's and met mom and had lunch while we waited for Tashina to get home from class. I had decided to take just Ruger last night, but as I was going out the door decided to take Boozer as well. So it was me, mom, Tashina, my four kids, my 2 dogs and Tashina's 2 dogs. Needless to say my Excursion was packed to the brim. We got to the trail head and we were ready to get going. It was a fun hike, the girls actually did really well and Liberty and Tashina actually made it all the way to the top with Boozer, Blue and Jack. Mom and I stayed back with the smaller kids and sat and rested and ate trail mix and drank water (Wyatt decided he was hungry, so we decided to take the break.) They didn't really complain until we were about 2/3s of the way back. I'm sure the other hikers were looking at me like I was insane!!LOL But it really wasn't that bad and I wouldn't mind doing it again sometime this summer. But I will definately have to invest in a hiking backpack for Cheyenne. (Poor Mom carried her most of the way). I forgot my camera, but Tashina remembered hers, so when I get the pictures back I will post the pictures. The best part about the trip, my kids were in bed earlier than they have been the last week and I didn't hear a peep from them after I laid them down. Maybe we wore them out :).

Bumps and Bruises

I had to get the kids out of the house, they had WAY to much energy and were driving me crazy getting into EVERYTHING. So I called my friend and we decided to take the kids to the park and have a picnic and then go berry picking. Between her kids and mine we had 8 kids. We had our lunch and let the kids play for a while and then it was off on our berry picking adventure. On base they have wild strawberries and raspberries that grow in the mountains on the back side of base. It was fun to see the kids get all excited about the berries and end up eating more berries than they put in their bags. We were getting ready to go when Cheyenne who was riding on the underside of a stroller decided to get out on her own and she face planted into the gravel, dirt road. Needless to say she scraped her face pretty good. All that said, it was still a lot of fun and we made sure that Cheyenne got to eat some of the berries. That help to subside the crying at least for a while. She is doing better but as you can see from the photos it's going to take a while for it to heal.

FIRES!!

So I don't think that California can complain as much as Alaskans can about fire season. Over this summer we have had 637 fires started by lightning and other causes. To date we have had almost 1 million acres and counting burned this year alone. Needless to say our air quality is really poor so the kids and I have not been able to enjoy our 75+ degree weather. So for right now it's been a bit of a challenge to keep them busy, but hopefully we will see the smoke disappear from our area so that we can go outside to enjoy our wonderful weather. So for now we will pray for some rain to help put the fires out. Hopefully be able to enjoy our summer before the snow and cold hits. Hope this post finds all our friends and family doing well.

Saying Goodbye to good friends

We have some friends that got orders and are PCS'ing to Colorado. They were our neighbors when we lived on Eielson. They have 2 boys and a girl. The girls love to play with them and the other day I called Jill and asked if we could get the kids together to play a couple of times before they left. She readily agreed and they came to our house to play. It was nice to have some adult conversation and let the kids run out their energy. We have wild strawberries in our backyard and the kids were picking them and sharing with each other. It was pretty cute. Here are some pictures. We sure are going to miss them all.

Kids picking strawberries in the yard.

Thomas and Liberty eating strawberries.

Thomas, Liberty, Ethan, and Lily

Liberty and Abbygail.

Abbygail loves Liberty. She laughs at everything she does.