Kindergarten

I can't imagine any child being more excited than Nate to start Kindergarten. I'm thankful we waited an extra year to send him for so many reasons, and that is definitely one of them. He's more than ready to go, and I'm ready for him to go. His first day of school was, in his words, "My favorite day ever!" It wasn't my favorite day ever, but honestly, it was a very good day. :)

Evie, on the other hand, has missed her brother terribly. I really think she was grieving the loss of him last week. She was sad and depressed all week. I tried hard to plan things for us to do, but any time we were home she was very lonely. This week has been better since her two day a week preschool has started. Hopefully we'll all be in a good routine soon. Here are some first day of school pics.

 Evie woke Nate up early every day last week. My plan was to wake him up at 7:00, but she thought 6:15 or 6:30 might be better. I won't complain too much about it because it did allow them time to play before school. One of their favorite things to do is sit and look at our family photo albums. I've made a snapfish photo book of our pictures every year since 2006. So they love sitting and listening to stories about the pictures. Now they've looked at them so many times that they tell us the stories. One morning last week they sat together and looked through the albums. I think it helped Evie's day to have some good quality time with her brother before we took him to school.

I love the close bond these two have. I pray that it stays this way forever.

Goodbye Summer

Summer is officially over for us. Here are a few final pictures just to catch up:

Evie with her red, sweaty face after playing backyard soccer. Our summer evening tradition has been boys vs. girls backyard soccer. Stephen takes it easy on us, so the girls have actually won a few. Nate cried the first time we won. It's hard losing to a girl! We took these pictures after our final game of the summer. But, we've decided Nate isn't going to play on a team this fall on the condition that we have regular Blan family games on evenings and weekends. I don't think it will be a problem because Nate and Evie both LOVE these games. They won't let us go too long without getting a game in.

I love being this silly girl's teammate!

 Simon is 10 months old. 10! He's moving all over the place. He's not quite crawling, but he can get anywhere he needs to go. He's officially the winner of our three. Nate and Evie crawled and walked late, so it's strange to have a baby moving around the house. But it's also refreshing. He's happy most of the time because he stays so busy exploring.

Nate got a new bike for his birthday. It looks so big for him, but he does just fine on it. I'm looking forward to the weather being a little cooler so he can ride more!

Nate's 6th Birthday

It's been almost a month now, but better late than never. Nate turned 6! We had decided on a Lego cake for his birthday, but as we were looking at some Lego cakes online, we came across a castle cake video. The cake in the video was pink and sparkly - very princessy - but Nate HAD to have a castle cake for his birthday.

So, instead of a pink sparkly castle, we went with more of a medieval castle. I struggled through it. The towers were harder to construct than I thought - especially since I like to use buttercream icing. I know fondant would work so much better, but I guess I care more about the taste of my cakes than the looks. Anyway, here it is. We celebrated as a family by watching the Planes movie and eating at In n Out - Nate's new favorite place to eat. Happy 6th Birthday, Nate!