Mother's Day

Mother's Day was a little different for us this year.  My grandparents were in town (I don't think they have ever been in town for mother's day), so we got to have a little extra celebration.  Ian made breakfast in the morning and let me stay in bed a little longer.  Even though I was already awake, it was nice to just enjoy the warmth of the bed that I never get to.  Breakfast was awesome and then we thought about what to do from there.  We were not expected at my mom's house until the afternoon.  We decided to go for a hike.  It is something we had not really done with the boys ever before, but was an awesome experience.  Ian and I decided that we would like to start hiking at least once a month with them. There was no fast pace, and we stopped to look at a lot of rocks, plants and bugs, but it was a really great morning.  We traveled to my parent's house where we shared a great dinner with the family and had a wonderful time just hanging out and having fun.  It was really nice to have my grandparents there to celebrate with us, I wish they could have stayed longer.

Reilly's 2nd Birthday Party

This last Saturday we celebrated Reilly's 2nd birthday by throwing him a little birthday party.  We were so glad that everyone was able to make it.  The theme was dump trucks and it turned out super cute, the cake was made in an actual dumptruck and although the kids were not over the moon about it I think the adults wound up really liking the cake (much to all of our surprise).  Overall it was a really low key fun day.  Thank you to all our friends and fmaily that came out to help us celebrate, we loved seeing all of you, and missed those of you that couldn't be there. 

Time flies

I started this blog in an effort to stay more up to date on the happenings of our life, but as usual time got away from me and I am once again behind.  So much has been happening, and so little all at the same time.  We have been busy, but nothing out of the unusual, unless you count preparing for kindergarten next year!  That's right I said kindergarten, Patrick will be 5 this September and the time has come for Kindergarten registration.  We are having some trouble with this though.  Not your typical parental stress of the first child going off to their first big kid school, no, we are having school trouble.  Our home school is in what they call program improvement.  This means that the school is not performing well in their end of year testing.  As a matter of fact our home school is an extremelly low perfoming school (none of their test scores were above the 50th percentile in ANY subject, some were even as low as the 30th percentile).  Because of this the district has to offer all parents the option of changing schools.  Obviously we were goign to take this option.  We were given two choices, and then one was promptly taken away from us (which we were very unhappy about).  Long story short we have had to file choice paperwork and will be moving Patrick to a different school.  We have two schools in mind, we went to visit one last Thursday and were pleasantly surprised by the school and the principal.  The principal took all of the incoming kinder parents ona tour of the school.  he presented us with materials showing what they would be learning in the upcoming year, showed us all of the classrooms, the cafeteria and the library.  He was very open to questions and comments and gave all of us the feeling that he is open and loves to interact with his parents.  I think this would be a really great option for Patrick.  We still have one more school to tour later in the month, I hope it is at least as nice as the one we visited last week.  It is proving to be a much more stressful experience then I anticipated, but I hope that we wind up making the right choice for him.  Other than kindergarten stress things have been moving along the same as always.  Busy days and weekends, but nothing too eventful.  Below are some pictures from around the house and our weekend fieldtrip to a kids craft festival thing.  The Craft fest was down at liberty station over the weekend.  It is nice to see the old NTC being used for something while still being preserved, it is an amazing site.  We may make treks down there more often.