Preston Starts Preschool!

Preston started all day preschool last Monday. He loves it! He asks, "after breakfast can I go on the bus to school?" Yesiree! He loves riding the bus and then comes home wanting milk and a snack. Then he usually wants to take a nap and says, "I'm so tired." He should be. The bus picks him up at 8:30am and drops him off at 3pm. He has the same teacher, Mrs. Christine, as last year and she's nice. (He was in her class during summer school 2 summers ago and she recruited him for her preschool class at a different school. His 1st preschool teacher was moving so we made the switch.) She really likes Preston so what more could you ask for in a teacher. The class he attends is called flex preschool where there are 4 developmentally delayed kids, 4 autistic kids and 4 typical kids (normal kids from the community). The last 2 years he was one of the DD kids, but since he was diagnosed with autism in April, he now qualifies for all day. He turns 5 in October so he's ready for it. Oh and his glasses broke the day before at Church so he didn't have them for the first day.

Showing off his new backpack he LOVES

And he doesn't want his new lunchbox in his backpack because he likes to carry it. :)

My sidekick wanted her picture taken. (We had just repainted the porch and railing so the table and chairs were off the porch. Doesn't it look nice?!)

His bus driver in the morning is Sid and he's nice. Kate wishes she could ride the bus. This bus doesn't have seat belts and he is doing good so far about staying in his seat. That was an issue before. His first year of preschool he started out in a harness seatbelt then graduated to a lap seat belt. One bus driver was super strict with him. So it's been a journey. He still loves the bus though.

Kate wanted to show her new backpack. She saw this at Target before school, but it was waayyy too much money, more than I wanted to spend on a backpack. Plus, her other one was okay still, stuff was falling apart on the inside, but it still functioned. Well, I was at Target and saw they had backpacks on clearance (we got Preston's then too) so I couldn't resist buying it for her. And they only had 1 of them! It was meant to be. haha! She was SO excited when she came home from school and saw it. 

Coming home from the first day of school! Sherry is his bus driver that brings him home. She is nice and always says hi to Lindsey. It should be a good year Buddy!

2nd Grade Here She Comes!

Kate started 2nd grade TODAY!!! She is growing up! She was excited and nervous to start. Kyle gave them father's blessings last night. It was neat. Kate has the same teacher as last year because they do looping at her school so they have the same teacher for 1st/2nd and 3rd/4th then different one's for Kindergarten and 5th grade. It's actually really nice because she already knew who her teacher would be and her teacher already knows the kids. It was crazy getting ready this morning along with 4 kids and making breakfast (french toast, buttermilk syrup and fresh sliced peaches) and making Kate's lunch. Preston doesn't start school until next Monday so for a couple days I have to take them all to take her to school. At least I just drop her off in front, but today we all went inside to take pictures. (I forgot to take pictures at the Back to School Night last night). Then on Monday, Preston will catch the bus to his school (he goes to a different elementary school) before we leave to take Kate to her school, which is around the corner, so nice.

This picture is funny because in the background Preston came out wearing Kyle's hat saying, "Hey look, I'm Daddy!" 

Mrs. Pedersen and Kate

Mrs. Pederesen has the softest, nicest voice (unlike mine) and she's so nice. She also has a little 2yr old boy, Kasick, who Kate loves to hear about then tell me about. 

At her desk. She usually switches desks a few times throughout the year.

2012 Sabin Olympics

We had a Sabin Family Reunion over Labor Day Weekend with just our immediate family. The theme was the Olympics since we just enjoyed watching the London Olympics this year. My Mom did a good job planning it all. Each family was in charge of an activity or event for our Olympics. We had golf, shot-put, javelin, slip n slide, gymnastics, synchronized water swimming, triathlon (bike, swim, run- with couples), BB gun shooting and the basketball bump game. It was a lot of fun! The weekend went by fast and we all got along too. :)  

Friday evening everyone arrived (well Jeff and Sadie got there early Friday morning) and we had family pictures. Sarah Christensen took them and she was a good sport to work with our active bunch. My Mom wanted them done before Jared leaves in November for his mission. After we wrangled our kids and tried to bribe them to stand still we ate dinner and could relax. That night we had the opening ceremonies for our Olympic Games. 

Each family made their own flag for the opening ceremony. Kate drew our family and I loved it. 

Getting ready to walk our flags in the parade with the torch

Jared carrying the torch and the Olympic Flag my Mom made! The torch was a rag drenched in motor oil then set on fire. haha! It worked! I love the sunset in the background. 

The flag was put on the flag pole and Paige sang "God Bless America". It was darling.

The kids in our uniforms for the Olympics. These t-shirts turned out cute.

 Cute Baylor with his onesie and black eyes...he's serious about these games!

These two 2 yr olds were funny to watch. Mainly Lindsey wanted whatever Reagan had and Reagan would back away. Lindsey thought she owned everything at "mama's" house.  Sadie did the girls' hair in the morning to match. And Lindsey was perfectly still for her too! That doesn't happen for me. Too cute!

One hot prego Sara with the cute toddlers! ;)

Learning some golfing skills

Just a random picture of most of us in our uniforms

Gymnastics- balance beam routine

Funny!

Chelsea and Baylor chilling. They are only like a little over 2 weeks apart. We thought it was funny how Chelsea was in the boy bouncy (the one my Mom has at her house) and Baylor in the girl bouncy (used to be Reagan's). 

A giant slip n slide. It was fun and the kids loved it too. The guys ended up putting big tubes underneath to make a jump and so we all tried it. The guys could fly over the jump and my Mom got some pretty cool pictures of Jared and Derek.

Our family did this event- BB gun target shooting. You had to shoot from standing, kneeling and laying on the ground. 

We went to Church on Sunday, ate, rested, then all the guys shared their experiences on their missions. They came prepared with souvenirs and pictures to show. It went along with the Olympics and learning about places around the World. Dad- New Zealand, Chris (Marci's boyfriend)- Missouri, Kyle- New York City, Kevin- Puerto Rico, Jeff- Indianapolis, Indiana, Derek- Tijuana, Mexico. Then we had the closing ceremonies where we got our gold medals and we were ALL winners. :) Once all the kiddos were in bed we played Guesstures. Fun times!

 We decided to go into Tri-Cities to see my Grandma Joyce who is in a rehab center. Jeff and Sadie came too and then left for Idaho after that. My Grandma has Parkinson's and it's taken a toll on her lately. My grandpa is so good to sit with her every day from 8am-8pm and keep her company. I wanted her to see Chelsea again. We then met up with Dee Ann. She's been out of the hospital for a couple weeks now and is doing better. We went to Red Robin to eat then went to Melanie's to see her and the kids. It was Dane's birthday so we gave him his gifts. Then we took Dee Ann to her sisters house where she is staying until she moves in a couple weeks to her new rental house. Then we headed on the road. Kyle and I were so tired on the way home. The kids crashed and I got some cat naps in. Kyle usually does fine staying awake while driving home but this time he was exhausted. We made it home around 12:30am. Going into Tri-Cities tacked on an extra 2 hours to our drive time, but it was worth it to see everyone.

Our Week

We've been staying busy this week...

Monday- For Family Night we went to Picnic Point Beach with some other families. It was nice to visit and let the kids play.

Tuesday- I took Chelsea to get her picture taken at Penney's in her blessing dress. We got a cute picture of her. She's a very good baby. Later I swept and mopped and vacuumed. It's always stressful to clean while kids are up and around. I feel like I'm picking up or cleaning and it doesn't look like I've done anything. I also did a bunch of laundry today. It was kind of a hard day today.

Wednesday- I took the kids to the zoo. We got there right when it opened. It was not busy and that was so nice. We strolled along and got to see our favorite animals. We were on a path and this pick-up needed to get by and the zoo worker was asking us to move out of the way. They were nice about it. I quickly got the kids and we moved out of their way. Well this lady gave us these tokens for a free carousal ride for being so nice about it. The kids were excited for that surprise. We got home in time for lunch and naps. Then Chelsea and I left around 4 to meet up with my Mom, Sara and Marci down in Puyallup. Well, the traffic is horrendous at that time of day so it took me 2 hours to get there. Ugh. We ate dinner at Olive Garden and went shopping to Charming Charlie's (a jewelry mecca). It was fun. The drive back was much better and I got home in an hour. :)

Thursday- I did some organization of my closet, got the kids ready and then headed down to Ikea to meet up with my Mom and sisters again. We put Kate and Preston in the play area and shopped away. After Ikea we went to Chipotle to eat- yummo!- then to DSW for some serious shoe shopping. By that time my kids were very tired and even though I wanted to keep shopping with them I needed to head home. It was nice to have 3 nannies helping me with my kids though! Lindsey fell asleep minutes into our drive home. When I got home, I put her back down to bed and Preston went and took a nap too. I ended up waking them up around 6 so they'd eventually go to sleep at night.

Friday- We had the leather repair guy come to our house by 9am. We had a rip in our leather couch, probably from the kids climbing on it. He stitched it up, patched it, painted it and dried it. It was actually interesting to see the process. I've never seen how they fix a rip in real leather. The place we bought our couches from actually paid for it to get fixed since they are only 1 1/2 yrs old. Very nice of them. Hyak's Leather Furniture Store in Lynnwood...if you're wondering. :) Then I loaded up the kids and went to Winco to get some things for the ward picnic (Kyle's in charge of getting all the food for it). After lunch while the younger kids were napping, I got out the pool for Kate and Preston (brrr, but Kate wanted it, whatever), organized my emails and did some laundry. After dinner, Kyle took the kids, minus Chelsea, to the Church to pick up paper products for the picnic tomorrow. Then later, some young women and leaders met here so we could make a poster and take it along with cookies I made to one of our young woman who is moving away. After that I ran to the mall to pick up some things. Now it's the weekend. :)

Demo Derby

The demolition derby in Moses Lake is yearly family tradition. It's held during the fair. I've never been, but this year I got to go thanks to Kyle's Aunt Sunni! She babysat our kids at my parent's house so we could both go. My Mom had never been either and she was debating about going, but Kate was so excited for Sunni to babysit her. My Mom got trumped by Sunni, too funny. Sunni even brought her own toys for the kids to play with. The derby was so much fun. It's pure white trash at its finest. :) Ladies walking in with a cell phone and pack of cigarettes tucked in their bra. Classy. My Dad said it's like going to Walmart. haha!

The group that went: Chris (Marci's friend), Marci, Me, Kyle, Jared and then Sara (she was taking the pic) and my Mom and Dad were there too.

It was SO loud. These cars are loud and zoom around in the dirt and bump into each other. They have to go around 4 times and first one to do that wins. It's intense because they will crash into each other or a big pile up will happen and trap the other cars. Sometimes they get stuck on each other's bumpers. It was funny. There were several different groups of cars that raced. It went on for a few hours.

Lots of cars didn't make it so tow trucks came to drag them away.

They had quick fireworks and then did the demo derby part where they just crash into each other and wreck their cars. I was told it was lame this year compared to previous years because there weren't very many cars that participated. 

This red and yellow car was so trashed. It was hilarious.

Goodbye's are Hard

Our neighbors and good friends, Mat and Darbi Ryan, moved last Monday. It was a rough day. Actually, it was hard when they told us about a month ago that they were moving. I was depressed. Since we've been neighbors, Darbi and I practically spoke every day. We joked we needed a bridge over the road between our houses because we would run back and forth so often. Our kids played together all the time. Darbi and I met 7 years ago when they moved into their house. We had just moved in a few months earlier and saw this cute family coming to check out the house. I remember thinking "I hope that family buys it because they look nice." Well sure enough they did and the next spring we met outside. We didn't meet until then because of the cold winter months and neither of us were out much. But once we met we became friends fast. We've been though a lot together with having kids, sharing heartache, dealing with mean neighbor issues, watching each other's kids, picking up each other's kids from school, borrowing food items when we ran out, sharing desserts and recipes, sharing magazines, sharing life's problems and just talking about everything. It's rare to find a neighbor that you get along with so well. We talked about that a lot. We were lucky to have each other. I will miss her a lot!

They are moving to Alaska. I know crazy! Mat is going to be the director of the Fred Meyer store in Fairbanks, Alaska. Darbi really wanted to move there because she likes adventures and because it's a jump career and pay wise. They have a 5 yr commitment and then might be back down in WA after that. Best Wishes!

Big ol' moving vans rolled in front of their house and made it all too real. Their house is the one with the tree in front. This picture is the view from our yard. We were right across the way. Too convenient, huh?

On Sunday night, the night before they left, we had them over for dinner. 

Logan liked playing with Lindsey and would push her in the swing and play with her.

I put together a going away bag for them.

Top row: Anshu (another neighbor girl, good friend of Logan), Logan and Lindsey

Middle: Dallas and Kate

Bottom: Preston and Asher 

Darbi and I. It was hard to say goodbye. 

Mat and Darbi with their kids Logan (10), Dallas (8) and Asher (6). Their dog, Koda, is behind Asher. 

Kate with their dog Koda. All my kids liked Koda. He was good with the kids all over him. They will miss him. I told my kids they can play with Koda all they want because there's no chance of us getting a dog!