The First Full Week

It seems even superheroes get exhausted once in a while too. After baths tonight, Spencer decided to don his Robin costume (he was going as Spiderman earlier in the evening, however, no camera was at hand). We came downstairs to watch Lady and the Tramp and he barely made it through the opening scene before crashing.

For those of you wondering, Spencer had a great first full week of school (he went Wed-Fri of last week too). He likes riding the bus and going out for recess. Since Christine leaves around 7am and I'm off shortly after, we needed someone to look after Spencer before the bus comes at 8:45am. We've "hired" our next door neighbor, Miss Lyla, for the job. Spencer goes over to her house and gets to play with their dog Skylar before school. We are very fortunate to have great neighbors like Doug and Lyla!! (by the way, they're Canadian too!!) Thanks Bruce's for being great neighbors!!

Couldn't forget to add a picture of Syd too.

First Day of School!!

It's too bad school doesn't start at 6:30am because Spencer was ready to go that early! According to Christine (I was still asleep), Spencer had gotten out of bed, put his clothes on, came downstairs, proceeded to feed himself breakfast (a fresh package of Brown Sugar-Cinnamon PopTarts) and put his shoes and backpack on. He was ready for the bus at 7:08am. Unfortunately for him, the bus doesn't pick him up until 8:45am! Needless to say, it made for a long hour and 37 minutes. While he waited patiently (and, at times, not so patiently), everyone else got up and dressed and had some breakfast. Despite Spencer's wishes, he had quite the audience for his voyage to kindergarten....mommy, daddy, Syd, Grandma Marilyn and her friend, Dorothy (they drove down from Canada on Tuesday).





Looking cool for school at the bus stop!









Here comes the bus!







See ya later, mom! By the way, the bus driver was great. As Spencer was about to head up the stairs and to a seat, he made Spencer stop and turn around for a photo op. We're pretty sure he has experience with first time kindergarteners (and first time parents looking to capture the moment!)







There's Grandma Marilyn and Syd. It was a perfect day for your first day at kindergarten.

Here's our boy getting off the bus. According to Grandma, he was smiling from ear to ear when he got off. We don't know if he was more excited to go to a new school or just ride the bus with the other big kids! We're pretty sure he had fun either way!

One week and counting

On Wednesday, August 20th, Spencer officially starts kindergarten. He's very excited about a new school, new teacher and new friends. Last night, we attended the kindergarten open house at his school, Covington Elementary. His teacher had us do a scavenger hunt to find things in the classroom and throughout the school. Then Spencer and the rest of the new kindergarten kids were taken to the gym and watched a video and talked to the new principal. While the kids were doing that, the parents stayed in the classroom and his teacher, Ms. Boyer, covered what the kids would be doing, lunch routines, recess, etc. We're sure Spencer's going to have a great time this year! I'll post some pictures next week of his first day.

Another feather for Christine's academic hat....

Today, Christine became an adjunct faculty member for the local university, Indiana-Purdue University @ Fort Wayne (IPFW). In other words, she's now a university professor. She'll be teaching Biology 100 to select students at her high school for college credit. This "promotion" will have a two-fold effect:
1) it'll look great on her resume and gets her closer to a PhD in Education (she already has her Masters in Ed. and her Administration license)
2) it gets me closer to retiring because of all her salary increases!!!

Way to go CK!!!

Zoo

We made it to the zoo this morning. We haven't gone as much as we did last summer; we've just been busier this year than last. It was a nice day and we packed a picnic for afterwards. As is tradition on nearly every trip to the zoo, we had to get a picture on the orangutan statue. This one actually turned out okay....we usually get eyes closed, a frown, someone else's kid in the picture, etc. The seal lions seemed interested in Spencer today, as you can see in the photo. The one would swim right up to the glass and stick almost half its body out of the water and just look at Spencer. We were lucky to snap a few quick shots before it headed off.

Smoke on the water

When I got up this morning to get the paper, I couldn't resist taking a snapshot of the pond across the street from our house. The water was absolutely calm with a little "smoke" on it. I thought it was cool, you?

Over the river and through the woods....

Roller coaster at Wonderland (that's Spencer & Ryan in the second car. Check out the bass player from Def Leppard behind them. Nice hair dude!)

Dinosaurs at the ROM

Spencer and Mikaela

Syd and Christine



....to grandmother's house we go. Here are a few pictures from our most recent bi-annual trip to Christine's mom's house (Grandma Marilyn) who lives in Markham, Ontario (suburb of Toronto). This was the first time we tried to do some actual vacation-y type activities with the kids. We took all of our bikes with us, went to the Royal Ontario Museum and Canada's Wonderland (Canada's version of Six Flags, Cedar Point, etc). We went with Christine's cousin Beckie, her husband Bill and their kids, Mikaela, Ryan and Adam.




The Nickelodeon characters were a big hit with the kids, as were all the rides. The park has a whole section dedicated to kids. Us bigger kids rode some of the rides with the kids and had a good time, but never made it to the 'adult' rides. We'll have to save that for next summer! All in all, it was a great time.

Spencer & Syd

I know it's been a while since some of you have seen the kids, so here are their first posts on the blog. Spencer is almost 5-1/2 now and still growing like a weed! Sydney is 2-1/2, going on 15. She is strong-willed, hard-headed, and able to hold her own against her big brother. Here she is with daddy on the merry-go-round at Canada's Wonderland last month. I'll post more photos from that trip later.

Christine

Here she is with her nephew Owen (he's her brother's little guy). Good aunt and great mommy!

First Timer

Hello all. This is our first attempt at getting a blog/website together, mostly for photo sharing. Sending photos via email is cumbersome and slow at times, especially for those of you who are still on dial-up. We hope those of you who take a peek at the blog occasionally will leave comments on posted stuff, the photos, or whatever. Please be patient with us as we tweek settings and layouts. You may see changes to previous posts as we try to make it as user-friendly as possible. Thanks for reading!
Jason