First day for a first grader

Oh, yes. She looked confident.

(and cute too, if you ask me)

Feeling confident was another story. All-day school seemed pretty scary. Emily has been kind of nervous all week, but she knew there was no getting out of it.

Luckily this morning she felt a little better and was even a tiny bit excited, but that was mostly about buying milk in the cafeteria.

"Should I get chocolate or white?

If I get chocolate today can I also get chocolate tomorrow or not?

What happens if I get chocolate every day?

Can I do that?"

I poked my head into the classroom to make sure she was OK. Look! She's OK! She smiled without even being asked to smile!

She is probably thinking about that chocolate milk.

UPDATE:

Emily had chocolate milk for lunch today.

49ers, here she comes!

These photos make me laugh every time I see them!

They're the girls' passport photos and were taken right the announcement that everyone would need passports to fly into Mexico. Our trip wasn't for 8 months but I was worried that there'd be a horrible delay (um, relax, not even the passport office is that slow) and we wouldn't get our passports in time.

Maybe I could have waited a little longer.

Emily looks like she's wearing makeup (she not)

Molly needs some makeup.

That black eye from Christmas Day is still around a month later

Heidi looks like she's heading to a Division I school.

The only time Heidi ever looked like that was the split second when the photo was taken. She couldn't hold up her neck, so I was propping her head up which caused the dreaded no-neck syndrome. I worried about her because she was so skinny. I used to nurse her and then have to feed her a bottle too because she was still hungry! Poor Heidi. Great photo though!

I didn't worry about this one (Guess who!) being too skinny.

Strangely though, she was actually only in the 30th percentile for weight when this photo was taken. The doctor looked at her and said, "I don't really think you need to worry. She looks like she's getting plenty of food."

Ding Dong! Ding Dong!

That's the school bell ringing, by the way.

My school actually had a bell, so it was obviously built in the olden days, back before fun was invented.

Molly started her second year of preschool this week!

Hooray Molls!

Here she is, smiling happily with her sisters.

And here she is happily showing off her RIBBON she wanted to wear in her PONYTAIL! (Well, almost a ponytail. The hair isn't quite long enough.)

Except for the occasional headband, Molly is really, really anti-bows, clips, ribbons, etc. Seeing this was almost as exciting as the big day itself.

Here's to another great year!

Can the Duggers build us some extra bedrooms?

A few months ago, after six years of hard use, we retired the crib.

HOORAY!

Heidi at one. Even then she knew the importance of dental hygiene.

Heidi was only using the for naps anyway because at night she slept in what we call, "the sister room" with her sisters. At first all three girls thought it was tons of fun. Emily was in charge of making sure no one left the room. Molly was in charge of trying to read books in the dark. Heidi was in charge of listening to her sisters, which she did surprisingly well.

Once we took down the crib things changed. We put in a cute double bed in the newly spare room. Heidi was still taking naps there but Emily and Molly decided to start taking turns in what Emily named "the hotel room" - named because hotel rooms are the only times the girls sleep in double beds - and so they're tres exotic.

Molly and Hedgie posing in the hotel room.

Last night was Emily's night in the hotel. Lately the sisters have been waking her up in the morning and Emily, who is really into privacy, was not jazzed about this development. So what did she do? She posted a notice, of course.

Don't mess with Emily.

I love that the sisters in her sign are 1. smiling and 2. crossed out TWICE. I have a sneaking suspicion that the he sisters can't read, but the sign did the trick - at least for last night. We'll see about tonight.

Don't Cha Know

Oh gaash. My kids may be Californians but they sure play golf like good old Minasoodan haaky players.

Here's Molly celebrating her first hole in one.

Heidi and Emily took a nice trip to Japan.

Luckily this was a pretend trip. I don't think I could have made the plane ride. I had my second epidural steroid injection this week. I still don't feel better and can't sit down yet. Grrr.

The golfing girls were pretty calm at first but after they got the hang of it they really wanted to give the ball a good hit. I wanted to yell, "NO SLAP SHOTS!" but sadly, we come from different cultures so instead I yelled other things that took longer to explain.

Stranded at the drive-in,

Branded a fool.

What will they say, Monday at school?

Whew. Luckily my kids don't start school on Monday and I swear I won't quote anymore Grease lyrics. Maybe.

OK, on to the reason for the post:

our drive-in adventure!

Or, actually, our drive-in non adventure.

When we left the house the girls were all pretty excited. They had lots of energy, they knew I had a GIANT pot of popcorn and they were really, really excited to watch a movie OUTSIDE and in their "nests" in the back of the Jeep.

Unfortunately, the drive-in was not exactly down the street and some of the girls got tired.

Here is an action shot of Heidi doing a little texting while Emily slept.

Here's more texting alongside Molly's sleepy head.

I think Heidi's going to want her own phone soon.

And this is why we ended up making a quick exit.

We waited in the line for about 30 minutes with only one kid (the one we'd hoped would fall asleep) awake. We'd already missed the start of the movie and we'd made a serious dent in the popcorn.

We hate to be party poopers and we hated to not see the movie with our friends but we totally decided to be party poopers and take the kids home to bed.

Emily was OK with that decision when she woke up on the drive home.

She was too tired to complain.

Heidi didn't really get what was going on, so she was fine.

Molly didn't wake up until the next morning.

She was a little disappointed that she didn't get to watch the movie with her friends but thought it was kind of exciting that she slept through the whole experience! I have a feeling it will happen more often. Now that she's learned to sleep, I guess she will do it well. It's in her genes.