Butterfly Festival

Hannah has been asking about the butterfly festival all summer.  We missed it last year and she wanted to be sure we didn't miss it this year.  Both girls dressed in butterfly shirts for the occasion.  Hannah wanted flowers in her hair to attract the butterflies and Olive wore antennae so maybe they would think she was one of them.

 We spotted a piano!

Olive's First Ferris Wheel

Olive's first ferris wheel ride was inside Scheels.  She wasn't scared at all.  Scheels is a sporting goods store that opened south of us and we didn't even know about it.  Emily clued me in.  We'll definitely be back this winter to explore it some more!

First Day of First Grade

Hannah was excited for school, but a little hesitant to leave me.  She actually made me count up the hours each day that she would spend with her teachers vs. time with me...and it turns out it is more time with teachers. :(  I was a little sad at that.  Although when you throw in weekends, of course she will spend more time with me.  But still.  It's tough to transition to the "big time" of full-day school.  I knew once she started school she would be too busy having fun to give me a second thought.  Which is what happened.  She came back with lots of stories of the cafeteria and funny things her teachers said and meeting new friends and playing with old ones at recess.  She is so proud to be a first grader!  I know I'll miss her more than she'll miss me this year.

They used to have the same color hair.  Then Hannah started getting blonde highlights.  I think she might just be called blonde now.

This year she has two teachers!  They do a job share so one teaches Monday and Tuesday and the other teaches Wednesday and Thursday.  Then they alternate Fridays.  It is an unusual set-up, but I've only heard positives about them.  Hannah doesn't seem to mind at all.

She was so excited to have a real DESK this year!  I tried to get her to take a picture with her teachers, but didn't want to do that.  One of them is standing behind her though. :)

Last Day of Summer

Well, that went fast.  And yet, we didn't much of anything this summer.  No camps.  No real vacation, just a few days at the lake.  No sports teams besides swimming lessons.  I don't think we'll ever have a summer this free again until the kids graduate!  But even though we didn't have a lot going on, we weren't bored.  We filled up the summer with playing at parks, hanging out with friends, landscaping our house, and lots and lots of swimming.

Ready or not, first grade starts tomorrow!

Prairie Village Parks- Part 2

We are very familiar with Harmon Park because it is right next to Prairie Village Pool (our other home in July and August).  These are bad pictures, but there is a cute community garden behind the sign and the park itself is up on a hill and you can see for miles.  The playground equipment isn't anything special.  Notable highlights are the elusive merry-go-round, and an old school metal slide that scalds toddlers.

Right beside Harmon Park is Santa Fe Trail Park.  It has a disc golf course, shelter house, and not much else.  It also, as you can tell by the name, is on the site of the Santa Fe Trail.  You can still see the dip in the land.  Pretty cool.  The girls decided to play "old times" in the park.  I asked what that was.  They said it is when you eat from nature.

Weltner Park has been redone recently.  Our favorite things are the stumps, animal sound machine, climbing wall, and slide built into the hill.

Taliaferro Park is special to me because Hannah played here the day before we had Olive.  It has trails that are great for bikes, two play structures, swings, merry-go-round, and sand box.  Plus it has Hannah's favorite (zip-line) and Olive's favorite (rolling cylinder).  It is also currently under construction and stumps and other things will be added in the fall!

Prairie Village Parks- Part 1

I had a fun idea to do a "park day" where we went to all the parks in Prairie Village.  I forgot to factor in how kids never want to leave parks...so we ended up only doing two or three each day before swimming lessons.  

First up was McCrum Park.  It turned out to be one of our favorites.  We really liked the car race game, spider web, tree stumps, and sand box with digger.

Porter Park has lots of green space that includes baseball and soccer fields.  Our favorite things were the tire swing, U-shaped ladder, and shaky bridges.

 Windsor Park also has lots of green space including trails that go over several bridges.  It would be fun to bring bikes to this park.  Olive's favorite thing was a rolling cylinder (which I can't believe she could do by herself!), and Hannah liked the zipline best.

 I'm in a picture!

At Home

We did lots of reading this summer.  Hannah read at least one book to me every day and then they listened to me read about five more.

They also made me teach "Mama School" in the summer.  They set up chairs to as desks and wanted to do workbooks.  This day there was also a baby enrolled in classes.

Swimming Lessons

This was Hannah's third year in swimming lessons and Olive's second.  Olive said, "I love swimming lessons as much as you love me!"  Both girls learned so much in just two weeks!  Hannah learned to dive for the first time.  Now she can also tread water for a minute and swim across the short side of the pool.  Olive went all the way underwater for the first time and even opened her eyes underwater.  Her confidence in the water improved so much this summer.  She now LOVES swimming with a life jacket (when last year she HATED it).  She wants so badly to swim as well as Hannah that she goes in the deep end to practice treading water.  I am so proud of how hard they both work to learn new things and become better swimmers.

Grandma got these cover-ups for the girls and they wore them every day.

Hannah was the only one in her class, so she got private lessons!

There were three other kids in Olive's class.  She was so excited to make friends!

Hannah jumped off the diving board by herself for the first time!  (Last year the instructor was in the water to help if needed.)  She even tried a kneeling dive off it!

I am so bummed that this is our last summer with our pool.  It is closing for good at the end of the summer.  I loved taking lessons from this pool because it was so close to the house and the class sizes were super small.  I recommended it to everyone I knew.  Hopefully we'll be able to find another pool next year that is just as good.