1st day of Kindergarten!!

August 4th, my sweet baby bird had her first day of elementary school!  

Look at this sweet baby!  I had to wake her up that morning and all I wanted to do was crawl in bed next to her and hold on to her forever!  

She was SO EXCITED about starting big school with Bryce though,so as sad as I was, I was also very excited for her too!  

Walking in....we got used to using the car rider line for everything at May Howard, but the way the school is designed here the car rider line is super slow so I park on the street and walk them to the crossing guard, then they walk across and into school on their own.  I'm not sure how much longer they will allow me to walk them to the crossing guard, they want to do it by themselves!  First day of course we walked them in.  

They go to Dogwood Elementary in Germantown and the mascot is the dolphin.  CeCe wanted her picture made with the dolphin out front.  

She walked straight to her table, sat down and started coloring.  ZERO hesitation about it even though there were two little girls loosing their minds screaming and crying about their parents leaving them. I was so proud of her!   

This day was her phase in day and she didn't know anyone there.  They don't assign kids to teachers until after the phase in days are complete.  She only went to school that one day and then had to wait until the next Monday to go back.  It was torture for her!  Her teacher is Mrs. Bittner and we already love her!  CeCe pretends to be Mrs. Bittner every day at home and it is hilarious!  This picture is before the first day in Mrs. Bittner's class.

A few days before school started we met some of our neighbors (all of our neighbors are amazing, they all came over quickly to introduce themselves and no one came empty handed) that have a 5 year old little girl who was going to be starting Kindergarten at Dogwood.  CeCe and Mary hit it off immediately and we were excited that they would be at school together.  We hoped but never expected them to be in the same class but they are!!  And they sit right next to each other.  It's wonderful!   After trying and getting frustrated with the car rider line the kids decided they wanted to ride the bus home in the afternoon.  Bus riders are dismissed first and our stop is the first for our bus so they are home 20 minutes before they would be if I picked them up.  Bryce, Miller (another neighbor that is in 5th grade and a great kid and friend to Bryce), CeCe and Mary all ride the bus home together and they love it!  Usually after homework they all end up playing in the cove together or swimming at our house.  It's been great for the kids to have made neighbor friends so quickly.  We left a great neighborhood in Savannah and are excited that the new 'hood seems to be great too!  

1st day of 3rd Grade!

First day of 3rd Grade at his 3rd elementary school!  He looks so grown up to me!  He was a little nervous about starting a new school and not knowing what to expect but he shocked me with how easy the transition was for him.  He let us walk him to his classroom the very first day but after that he wanted to do it all on his own.  And no pictures were allowed in the classroom this year (per Bryce!)  He is super excited to not have to wear uniforms and that they go to PE twice a week.  And he loves that his teacher, Mrs. Waldrip, lets them stay on the playground for about 10 extra minutes every day.  I think he really likes having CeCe at school with him this year.  They get to see each other in the lunchroom everyday and usually a few times a week they will see each other somewhere else.  We are all trying to adjust to the crazy time for school here....9-4.  9 is great of course but I'd rather them go earlier so they could get out earlier in the afternoon.  4 is way too late!  

Germantown, TN

We are finally feeling settled in Germantown!  We love our house and neighborhood already.  We closed on the house on a Thursday at 9.  This picture was taken that same day at 11:00!  The kids could not wait to jump into our new pool!  

   

The thing they are jumping from is a nice waterfall.  It only took us 2 weeks to figure out how to turn it on!  We had to have someone from the local pool company come out and teach us how to use and take care of our pool.  

We've spent time in Olive Branch at Cappy and Papaw Ruff's house.  It is wonderfully amazing to only be 35 minutes from them now!  The kids have spent the night there some, Cappy has spent the night here and 2 nights ago they both surprised the kids after school and spent the night here.  So fun!!  This picture is at their house, we were making homemade peach ice cream!  

 Vander and his family gave CeCe an easy bake oven for her birthday and she was so excited to open it up and use it!  

Back up over a month.....

To our last few weeks in Savannah!  

Bryce and Nick at their last home swim meet

 That was the meet that Bryce got FIRST place in Butterfly!!  The times were posted wrong at first and we were all bummed that he might not get a ribbon for that great swim, but things got fixed quickly and he was awarded the blue ribbon!  His time was 24.6!  

 We let CeCe choose the restaurant for her birthday dinner and she chose The Pirates House.  Yum! 

 Our church had the nicest going away lunch for us one day after church.  There were so many people that stayed and our minister said the nicest things about us. It was a very special time.  

We squeezed in all of the pool time we could.  Even though we LOVE our new backyard pool, the neighborhood pool can't be beat and we miss it!  

 Our awesome neighbors had a fun going away party at the pool for us 

 CeCe and Vander were stuck at the hip the last week we were there (so not much different than usual for these two!).  This was the morning CeCe, Cappy and Anthony left.  Vander came over in his PJs and had breakfast with CeCe on the porch.  Oh how I miss him!!!  

Bryce and I stayed in Savannah (stayed with our neighbors since all of our furniture was gone) so he could play in 2 baseball games and compete in the big city swim meet.  The baseball games didn't go so great but the swim meet was AWESOME!  He swam a 100 yard IM for the first time and was so nervous about it.  He came in 4th place!!!!!!!  It was awesome!  He went on to get 9th in freestyle, 2nd in backstroke, 3rd in butterfly, and both relays his team got 1st.  There were 70 7-8 year old boys competing so those finishes are great!  He finished 6th overall in his age group and the top 8 kids get these special All Star towels.  

 After the meet with Nick

Bryce and I left straight from the swim meet and drove to Memphis.  Luckily the meet was over at 12 so it wasn't terrible.  What was terrible was saying goodbye to so many friends at once.  So many of our friends swim on the team so we were all there together.  It was SO HARD.  I miss Savannah and our friends there every day.  It was such a great place to live and the people there are great!