Back to School

Today was a big day for Hayden, he started back to school. He is attending Pre-K this year at the same school that he attended Preschool last year. He only goes on Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 8-11:45 again this year. He has been excited since last week when we went to Meet Your Teacher night at the school. That next morning, he woke up and was ready to go to school. This morning while getting ready he said he wanted to go to Mrs. Bagwell's class (teacher from last year) because they did fun things in there, and he got to bring home the "class pet" -which was a frog stuffed animal. But I assured him that his new teacher will probably have lots of fun stuff too. Luckily, he was fine after that and ended up having a great day. He said he had lots of fun, and said they did a lot of stuff when asked what he did today. Never got any specifics, just that they did lots of stuff. It's hard to believe that the summer is over, and that we are back in the swing of things for the school year.

Kayla wanted her picture taken too:

Camping, Kids, + Rain = Cabin Fever

We went camping over the Labor Day weekend. We (our family and my dad) left on Friday evening after Waylen got home from work. That night, after dinner we sat around the campfire visiting with some of the other families that were up camping too. Then, on Saturday morning, Waylen's parents and brother came up, and all the guys headed off to do some fishing. So, while they were busy catching fish, the women stayed busy visiting and the kids stayed busy playing. Hayden had a lot of fun playing with some of his friends that were up there camping too. They turned an old tree stump into a motorcycle. Later that afternoon, Waylen's sisters and their families arrived too. So, then there were even more kids to play with. Kayla had fun playing with Lexie, her cousin, and Reese, a friend. That evening, Hayden and the rest of the older kids had fun playing a game they called, "Musical Stumps." All in all, Saturday was a pretty nice day and the kids were able to have a lot of fun playing, the guys had fun fishing, and the women had fun visiting. Then at dinner time it started raining, and we ended up eating dinner under the big canopy. But luckily, it stopped pouring rain, so we could enjoy some S'mores and sit around the campfire for awhile. Unfortunately, the rain didn't stay gone and it started drizzling rain Sunday morning. Waylen's family decided to leave that morning, since it was going to be a pretty rainy day. After they left, we went for a little scenic drive up to Chama, then came back to camp. It wasn't raining when we got back, so we sat and visited with some people before it started raining. After that we were confined to the camper for the rest of the night. I really think we need to invest in a T.V and DVD player for the camper for when this happens again. It's hard to keep two little kids entertained for that long. Hayden played cards by himself for awhile until Kayla wanted to "play" too. Kayla enjoyed emptying out all the cabinets and throwing all the blankets and pillows on the floor over and over again. She turned into a wild animal by the end of the night (that's her eating her hot dog). We played Phase 10 after eating dinner, and then ended up going to bed around 9. So, Sunday ended with everyone getting "Cabin Fever". It had stopped raining by Monday morning, but everything was pretty wet. But we still decided to go on a little hike. Hayden enjoyed finding what he called "salt mushrooms" and stomping on them. Kayla was her independent little self, and walked part of the way, which led to her falling several times, but it didn't stop her. After our hike, it was starting to sprinkle, so we finished packing up and headed home.

Our trip would have been much better if it wouldn't have rained, but I guess you never know what you might get when you live where we live. I was thinking back earlier today that our first camping trip of the summer (Memorial Day) got delayed because of snow, and our last trip of the summer was a rainy one, unless we decide to try to go again one more time this month. I guess we'll have to see what the weather is like these next few weeks, you never know!! It's already starting to show signs of fall, and it seems like summer just began. Ugh!!

She-Devil

The other day, Kayla found this old costume in one of Hayden's drawers, and wanted to wear it, and then she came prancing out wearing a pair of my sandals. It fits her personality perfectly. If you can't tell it's a Devil costume.

Hayden used to love wearing it too. Notice how clean his Cars shoes were.

Enjoying Ice Cream

Just thought these were funny pictures of the kids eating their ice cream.

Our Little Vacation

Hayden had a dentist appointment over in Pueblo on Tuesday, the 5th, so we decided to leave on Saturday morning and have a little vacation for a few days. We left on Saturday morning and headed up to Denver for my nephew's birthday party. Hayden had a lot of fun at the party - slaying dragons and pinning the fire on the dragon.

After the party, we headed back down to Colorado Springs, and went and ate at Old Chicago with some of Waylen's family. Then after eating, we went and checked into our hotel. Hayden had been waiting all day to go to the hotel and go swimming. It was a little disappointing because the water was ICE cold. Kayla didn't like it at all, and it was way too cold for me and Waylen too, but it didn't seem to bother Hayden at all. So we sat and watched Hayden jump off the side into the pool. Kayla acted like she wanted to jump in, but she'd get right to the edge and stop, I guess she didn't want to FREEZE!! We let Hayden play for awhile, then went back to the room when he was ready for a nice hot bath.

The next morning, we got up and went and had the kids pictures taken at Sears. It was a bit of a challenge, since Kayla did not want to cooperate at all. It just wasn't her idea, so she didn't want to do it. But the photographer was really patient and you'd never know she was being a little stinker by the looks of the pictures. After the trial of picture taking and some shopping, we went back to the hotel and Waylen took Hayden swimming again, while I stayed in the room and had a little nap with Kayla.
That night, we took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese's for dinner, we hadn't told Hayden we were going there because we didn't want to have him ask a hundred times when we were going to go to Chuck E. Cheese's. So, he was pretty excited when he noticed that we were going there, and he had a lot of fun.

Kayla loved it too, she had so much fun going from one ride to the next.

Waylen and I joined all the fun and helped Hayden win as many tickets as possible. I got lucky on one of the games and won him 50 tickets, 3 times!! Jackpot!! He ended up winning over 400 tickets, so he picked a miniature basketball and some candy for his prize.

On Monday, we went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, and of course the kids loved it. What kid doesn't like seeing a bunch of animals?

They both liked the giraffes. We got there right when they were letting the giraffes out, so we were able to see all of them as they walked by.

We went back before we left, so they could feed the giraffes some crackers. Kayla ended up throwing hers at the giraffe, but a little girl standing next to her, gave her one so she could FEED it to the giraffe.

Another favorite for the kids was watching the bears play, and Kayla was ready to jump right on in with them and every other animal. We should have left her with the monkeys!!

After the zoo, we went to the mall and had lunch and did some more shopping (we were still looking for some shoes for Hayden), then we headed down to Pueblo that afternoon. We got to Pueblo, and went to Kohl's where we finally found him a pair of shoes. Thank goodness!! --We spent the night in Pueblo with Ben and Kaley, then took Hayden to his dentist appointment Tuesday morning. After his appointment, we went and had lunch at Hayden's favorite place, McDonald's, then we came home. We had a lot of fun on our little vacation, but it is always nice to get home!!