the seventh day

*kiddos snuggled up in our bed, watching some cartoons

*homemade cinnamon rolls baking in the oven

*sunday school Bible study preparations

*relaxing naps on the couch after church

*getting re-energized for the week....physically, emotionally, and spiritually

oh, how i love me some sundays!!  

if you keep making those faces......

...you're gonna get stuck that way!!  ;)

just a little montage of the funny faces the kiddos throw down on from time to time:  

and buh-lieve me when i say that chandler is fully capable of some seriously goofy face-making.  but this was all he deemed me worthy of on this  particular occasion:  

my kids are such goobers!!   ppsssst.....they get it from their daddy ;)

adventures in ava-land

ava is a night wanderer.  as in, we never have a clue where in her room we are going to find her when we go do our nightly "checks" on the kiddos before going to bed ourselves.  her personal favorite seems to be RIGHT behind her bedroom door.  i don't know if you have ever tried to open a door that has 26-ish lbs of sleeping toddler behind it, but it ain't easy i tell ya!

a close second seems to be in front of her dresser.  this doesn't seem too surprising since that's where her book basket is....and homegirl LOVES to "read" her some books.  (she IS my kid!!)  but every now and then, she stretches her wandering ways and we find her in more interesting locales.  like the closet (only once....i left it cracked open and i guess that was all the invitation she needed) or cuddled up next to her rocking horse.

but the other night took the cake.  i went in to check on her....and she was nowhere to be found.  you know that second or two where your heart races and you think that maybe your child's been abducted by aliens or something???  that moment before your brain kicks in and you realize that the windows are locked, her door was shut, AND the front door is shut and locked...not to mention the fact that you never heard anything open up....and the fact that ava goes everywhere at 90 mph with her voicebox blaring so there's NO WAY she snuck by anyone??  yeah...that finally passed and i realized that she HAD to be in her room somewhere....   it was a scavenger hunt.

and then, i found her.  and i laughed.  and i ran and got her daddy so he could come see.  and then i got the camera and took pictures.  because it was hilarious!

do you see this??  that is a kid who is under a bed with PURPOSE.  that's not a child who rolled outta bed and then rolled somewhat underneath.  that is a child who MEANT to get under that bed.  and who CHOSE to sleep there rather than in the comfort of her own mattress.

so, as i type this, i wonder....where will i find my sweet little gremlin tonight?!?!?!  ;)

snippets.....

last week was fairly calm for it being the first week back at school.  the kiddos all had a great week and i'm pretty happy with how the library is shaping up for this school year!  i survived all of my story time groups and i have to say that i am pretty darn impressed with how much my 1st graders remembered from last year.

they all threw on their "hips and lips" as soon as they walked in the library door, the remembered to sit in their 1-2-3's, and they were able to remember all of the parts of a book that discussed every week last year.  my kindergarten group????  THEY were a different story!!  i'd forgotten what it was like to have to completely train a group of kids on library behavior!  but i have to admit that they seem like a great bunch....and i think that we are going to have a super fun year in story time :)

hannah is in love with 1st grade and i think that she's going to be juuuust fine.  my goal for this year is to let her grow up and be more independent at school.  in other words, i'm going to work very hard to stay outta her business during school hours.  it's going to be harder than i thought....especially since i eat lunch with her teacher ;)  

and chandler....he has decided that pre-k 3 is going to be doable.  he had a great monday-wednesday....and he was THRILLED to get to go to grandma's house for thursday and friday.  he got a special surprise on wednesday when his mia picked him up from school and they got to have a day together.  he was over the moon about it!  

ava girl had a great week with grandma....but i think she was secretly glad to have chan with her at the end of the week.  i think my baby girl thrives on chaos and having a sparring partner is near a necessity for her ;)  

while our week was pretty tame, i managed to create a little havoc of my very own on saturday.  i make no secret of the fact that i am scatterbrained, at best, during the school year.  we got invited to go swimming with some friends of ours saturday morning.  but lemme back up a bit.....

i got a wild hair on thursday and decided to make some dinner rolls from scratch.  now, i'm not exactly betty baker over here.  i mean, i make a pretty darn good meat loaf and i've FINALLY figured out my cinnamon roll recipe...but otherwise, i just plain don't have the mental fortitude for baking.  but, we didn't have any rolls and i wanted some.  so, i made the dough, rolled them up, and baked half of them.  the recipe makes 24 rolls....we don't need that many.  so i put half the dough in the fridge.  it will keep for about 24 hours.  well, i forgot about the dough until saturday morning.  i didn't want it to go bad, so i popped them in the oven so they would cook before we left for the pool.  'cept here's the kicker....i never took them out of the oven.  

here's what my rolls SHOULD look like:

here's what they'll look like after 1.5 hours in the over:  

see the difference?  

on the bright side....the house didn't burn down AND we now have projectiles in case anyone sinister attempts to approach the house.  i'm not kidding y'all...the rocks david used on goliath have NOTHING on these bad boys!!  

in other news:  we signed hannah up for soccer on saturday.  i'm not sure how this is going to go for my princess ballerina.  she's already asking about ways to "fancy" up her uniform.  i wonder if bedazzling her shin guards will be against the rules???  i can't wait to see how it turns out!!  unfortunately, chandler missed the cutoff date by 13 days.....so we'll have to wait til next year to get him in.  i KNOW that he'll love it!  dirt, kicking stuff, and running.  riiiiight up his alley :)

S is for SCHOOL!

the kiddos headed back to school yesterday....hannah to the big, bad first grade and chandler to the k3 preschool class.  i can't believe august is already here...and i can NOT believe my kids are one grade closer to graduation (yeah, overly dramatic....but that's where my head is right now).

of course it was inhumanely humid on the first day of school, so all of my shots are cloudy due to my not having a good 2 hours to acclimate my camera lens to what can only be described as "pea soup" weather.  so, don't judge me (or my precious betsy louise) on the following pictures.  mmmkay?

here are chan and han in all of their first day of school glory:

 naturally, hkay was bedecked in her signature colors of purple and pink.  wouldn't have it any other way!  and chan?  he was cool with whatever...so long as he got to wear his light up fire shoes ;)

we dropped off chandler at school first.  he has not been exactly what i'd call "excited" about school this year.  i told him he would get to play with his friends and his response was, "i don't need to play with my friends.  i wanna go to grandma's house!".  luckily, he's backed off on that a little and has decided he DOES want to play with his friends:

his first day went well.....he got a good report when i picked him up in the afternoon.  and he has decided that he likes his teacher a "little bit....but not too much"!!  he's such a stinker!!

hannah took on first grade like a total rockstar!  she actually allowed me to walk with her to her classroom and take her picture.  although i was held back to ONE shot outside of her classroom door! she IS in first grade now, you know.  she can't be having some overbearing mother following her around with a camera ;)

 
she had a SPECTACULAR day and absolutely loves her new teacher, mrs. bailey!  although the first thing she wanted to do in the afternoon was scoot down to mrs. dickey's class (her kindergarten teacher) and tlel her all about her first day.

and ava girl?  she had grandma all to herself....which apparently is not something she's accustomed to.  she cried for mama, for daddy, and looked for brother and sister throughout the day.  (she was  MUCH more okay with it today though!).

so, the 2011-2012 school year has begun.  i sure hope it's as great (academically) as last year....and i SURE hope it's better health-wise than last year!!!  

back to reality....

this week, reality has gotten ALL up in my face and said, "ready or not, here i am!"

in other words, i had to go back to work.   

we've been working furiously to get ready for school......clothes shopping, haircuts for everyone, school supplies, all that jazz.  AND, since my girl is heading to the 1st grade , we decided to let her have some big girl fun....so hannah got her very first  pedicure :)  

toes "before"

she perused the various colors....looking for JUST the right one.  first, she settled on purple.  then, at the last minute, she changed her mind to velvet red.  i was a liiiiiittle worried about such a "grown up" color....but with her rainbow jewels added, it looked really cute on her!  

and she absolutely loved the experience!  the colored lights in the water, the bubbles,   and having her toenail polish actually being just on her toenails and NOT all over her feet (*ahem*....so maybe i'm not the BEST at painting toes...but it's not all MY fault.  she has really tiny toenails!). 

 

she also got her very first haircut.  that's right.  my 6  year old has never had a haircut!!  actually, it was a trim....but we'll call it a haircut ;)  leia took about 2 inches off....and it's really SO much healthier and shinier now!  she was a little upset that she didn't get to sit in the haircut chair, but her hair was too long and leia couldn't cut it from the chair!!   

then, on monday, i had to actually wake up before the sun :(  vacation's over folks!  the kids have been having a blast at grandma's house all week while momma's been working her tail off in the library.  we had open house thursday night and hannah got to see her new classroom and meet her new teacher.  i think we are REALLY going to like having mrs. bailey this year!  she's a tough teacher...but she loves her kids and she expects great things from them.  

and the library?  it's coming along.  actually....it's darn near completely ready.  just a few little things to take care of on monday (which is okay since i won't technically open until tuesday anyhow.  just a couple of story times on monday).  i didn't change a ton of things, decoration-wise.  although i DID add this:  

to the story time room.  isn't she fabulous???  the funny thing is....i really don't sit down when i'm reading to the kiddos.  i generally stand up the entire time so they can all see.  BUT, i am still loving my stool.  which is a good thing since i took me the better part of FOUR DAYS to paint the thing ;)  

hopefully i'll remember to take my camera to work on monday and i'll snap a few pics of the rest of the library. it's WDE's 50th anniversary as a school this year, so we are going to have a TON of fun and exciting activities in the media center...and all throughout the school.  i'm really looking forward to this new year.  mainly because i kind of, sort of, in a way have a CLUE what i'm doing this time around!!!  i still cringe at the thought of my first week last year.  man was i clueless about elementary school.  but this year starts anew and i cannot wait!!  (well....at least i think i can't.  check with me again after next week. lol)

in other news this week....hannah lost a tooth on wednesday :)   so, she got a second tooth fairy visit...complete with note and two shiny quarters! also, ava girl is working on some new words.  her current faves:  "ah duh"  (all done), "yamma"  (grandma),  "bahk bahk"  (back pack.  it sounds like a duck when she says this one!), and "puh pul" (purple).   very exciting times around the shoaf household!!  

little miss twinkle toes

hannah  capped off her summer with a week of ballet camp. this is her second year at camp....and she loved it just as much, if not more, this year!!  the resident ballet company photographer was asking my mother when hkay would be in 3rd grade because he thinks that she NEEDS to be in the ballet academy (we'll cross that bridge when we get to it).  she just absolutely loves everything there is to love about dancing.

and y'all...she is good at it.  i mean, even at just 6 years old....when she marches, her knees are high, her head is held tall, and her hands are right on her hips:

and when she does her "plie leaps"...well, i think this picture just speaks for itself.

and her curtsy???  seriously, it is perfection!  just as graceful and beautiful as any "real" ballerinas.  and no, i am not just saying this because she is mine.  it's absolutely true :)

she had a week of ballet crafts, dress-up, and lessons....and it all culminated into their annual friday end-of-camp performance.  they got to choose their own costumes (shocker...hannah picked purple!) and do a little routine for the parents.  it was seriously cute and you could tell the girls all had a great time.  her actual lessons begin this coming week and she is thrilled to be a "blue girl" this year, which means she's in the class with the blue leotards.  this is a BIG deal....to her.

a few more pictures from her day:

as always....a special thank you to her mia for a wonderful birthday present!  ballet camp is such a fun experience for her and she LOVES it :)