Brooke's first day of 4th grade!

Someone needs to freeze time! I can't handle the girls getting this old! Brooke started 4th grade today... she was excited for school to start back up, but it's a little strange to not have the girls at the same school anymore. Since Kara is taking the bus, we put Brooke on the bus to her school too! Hopefully this will save us time and gas this year!

Brooke before school:




















Brooke walking to the bus stop:




















Brooke waiting for the bus to come (and Amber thinking she's going too!)















Brooke getting on the bus!

Kara's first day of 6th grade!

Today was the first day of 6th grade for Kara! She is getting so old and I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it! She started intermediate school and has to switch classes for each class. Needless to say, she's been very nervous about this day for the past week or so.

Here are some pictures from the morning:

Pretty girl!




















Walking to the bus stop
















Kara was panicking yesterday about the bus making her late. After about a half hour I finally convinced her that the bus would never make her late. She wanted us to watch her wait for the bus from our driveway, so I snapped this picture of her waiting. After the bus was over 10 minutes late, we finally decided to drive her. Good thing too, because as we were pulling into the school we saw her bus leaving! As you probably imagined I made some calls to the transportation department at the district and to the school letting them know that the bus skipped this stop this morning! Hopefully that never happens again!!!!
















Kara running to get to school after we dropped her off in the "drop off zone".

County Fair!

The fair came to town! And we went to the fair! Although this fair was different than my expectations, we had a TON of fun! :) The best part of the fair was the admission was FREE!!! The girls loved looking at the animals and the exhibits. Kara & I have a ton of things we want to make and enter in to the fair's home arts competition next year! The biggest hit of all at the fair was the free stilt walking they offered... the girls now want to get stilts!

Some pictures!

Jeff & the girls had fun posing in the silly backdrops:






































The stilts:


























































The animals (the horses, the goats & sheep were VERY exciting to the girls. The girls now want both a sheep and a goat so they can make goat milk, and yarn out of the sheep wool... and all animals seem to LOVE Brooke - the goat kept following us around and stuck it's head out at her and licked her hand, and the mule came right up to us for Brooke's attention too):

Fun before school starts

Kara & Brooke participated in the summer reading program at our local library this summer. The last two prizes they earned were free passes to do bumper boats and miniature golfing at a local family fun center. When we first got the passes, Brooke kept talking about how she got a "free minute" of miniature golf... so cute!

Here are some pictures of the girls are getting in some fun before the heat set in for the day! (and I think we only had a few meltdowns during miniature golf, which was much better than expected - although Brooke yelling about Kara being a cheater for five minutes and swinging her club around wasn't much fun.)

USC trip

While we were in Caliofrnia last week, we made a trip to the campus of University of Southern California (USC) where Jeff is currently attending school working on a Master of Arts in Teaching degree. We had a great time and got to see a lot of neat things!

Since our camera was in the shop during this trip (and we forgot to borrow Grandma's), we used our phones to take pictures so I apologize in advance if some of these pictures are a little blurry.

A view of the building that houses the school of Education (tall one on the right):















Jeff in front of that building (three times):





















































In the building:














A view of the water fountain sculpture on one side of campus (and you can see the Shrine auditorium in the background):
















We visited two of the libraries on campus... one of them is famous and has been used in several movies including for a scene with Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate.

Outside of the two libraries:
















































Inside the libraries (and you can see Jeff pointing to some books in the education section of one of the libraries):

This is the famous room (the first one is blurry):











































































A cool giant globe in the library:




















Walking through the old books in the archives:




















The old card catalogs:






























Now we leave the libraries and continue around campus... here are some pictures of us standing near statues.

First, with Traveler the horse:





























Next with Tommy Trojan:



























































There was a room called the "family room" right near all of the eateries on campus. This room was one of Kara's favorites since it had lots of reading nooks and secluded areas to lounge in. This is a picture of the fireplace and the giant stone carving above it:

















We had a great day! We can't wait to go back and visit again for Jeff's graduation next May!