First Day of School

 The first day of school picture in front of the fireplace.

Ally, my 4th grader!  Where has the time gone?!

Drew is in 1st grade and ready to go to school all day!

Everyone was waiting outside of the doors to go in before school.  Notice, the kids are wearing long-sleeves!  It was chilly for the first day of school!

She is growing up way too fast for my liking! :)  Although, she is getting to be more fun!

Drew is quite a character!  Good luck Mrs. Colter!

Drew's new classroom.  He has a lot of his friends in his class, including Lia!

Ally's classroom-Mr. Tabor's 4th grade.  She didn't want to look at me.

Megan had fun walking Casey to school to pick up the big kids.  It's just the 2 (or 3 with Casey) of us now!

Drew had a great first day!  He's excited about 1st grade!

Ally had a great day too, and was relieved to have a lot of her friends in her class.

We are excited about a new school year here in the Washburn house!  It's going to be different with Drew in school full days now.  Megan and I will have lots of time together.  The kids have wonderful teachers and have already made a lot of new friends.  I think this will be our best year yet (hopefully!)!

Ally turns 9!

Ally turns 9 today! I can't believe it's been 9 years since she came into our lives. She is such a sweet, loving girl. Looking back at pictures of her over the years really makes me see how fast time goes by! It's so hard to think that she's already halfway to 18! Ally is a wonderful, creative, loving girl who loves her family and loves Jesus. Happy birthday to my sweet girl!

Ally as a newborn

1 year old

2 years old

3 years old

4 years old

5 years old

6 years old

7 years old

8 years old

9 years old

The things they say...

Yesterday while we were walking down Main Street, Megan saw a car and exclaimed, "Mommy, wook. A banana car!" It was a yellow car! Now whenever she sees things that are yellow, she calls them "banana" for the color. Makes sense!

Whenever Megan sees something that she likes, she says, "Dat's puufect!" or "Dat would be puufect." It's hard to say no when she says that!

This morning Ally was talking about the weather (which was 23 degrees, high of 31-yes, on March 24!). She said, "Well, if we had gotten snow during the winter storm yesterday, then this temperature would be great for sledding. But we can't sled on leaves! And it's cold enough for the ice to iceskate, if only there was ice in the ice rink. I guess we'll play inside this afternoon." Oh, how we are ready for spring in these parts!

What better way to carry your baby than in your coat!?!

All green on St. Patrick's Day-Drew loved it because green is his favorite color!

Ally and Nana on the bus to the Ford Rouge plant. I'll try to do another post on our visit with Coach and Nana.

There's grass!?!

We have had a ton of snow this winter! There have been several times where the snow has just about melted away (except for the massive snow drifts), when we get hammered with more snow! Needless to say, the ground has been white for a long time (with patches of grey dirty snow).

During the last "melt down," Drew came running over and exclaimed, "Mom, there really IS grass under the snow! It's REALLY there! And it's actually kind of green!"

Hopefully we'll be able to see a lot more green in the near future. We came close yesterday, but 3 inches of snow overnight took that vision away, at least for a few more days! This is Michigan after all!

Loose Tooth

I realized that I have been terrible at keeping up with this blog. I keep thinking that I need to do fancy posts with pictures in order of what we've been doing. Obviously I have not been very good at this though. The kids do so many funny things, and I don't want to forget them. I think I'll put the stories up as they happen and then fill in pictures later!

Today, Drew has one of his best friends, Lia, over to play. These two are quite a pair! Lia has her first loose tooth, and they are both so excited about it! Drew immediately gave her an apple and told her to keep biting it so the tooth would get looser.

The kids were playing upstairs, and then Drew ran downstairs, almost panicked, and said Lia's tooth almost fell out! (In reality, her tooth is loose, but not "falling out" loose!) They then found a tooth pick (I've never heard of a tooth pick being a losing tooth tool!) and headed back upstairs. I overheard Drew tell her, "Lia, we need to go into the bathroom over the sink. When your tooth falls out, there will be a lot of blood, so you need to be over the sink!"

After a few minutes they came downstairs looking sad. Here is our conversation:

Drew- "Mom, is there anything I can do to help Lia lose her tooth? Could I tie a string to a door and then to her tooth and slam the door?!"

Me-"No! Don't worry Lia. Just keep wiggling your tooth, and it will come out when it's ready. Sometimes it takes time for a tooth to come out."

Drew (as they walk out of the room)- "Ok Lia. We'll just wait for an hour, or maybe a little less, and then it will be ready to come out!"

I think we need to work on learning patience and the concept of time!

I love listening to the conversations between these kids!