Interview With a Preschooler {And a School Picture too}

When Olivia turned four, I started doing yearly "interviews" with her asking her all about her favorite things.  Well, my precious baby girl, Sydney, has just turned FOUR and so it's time to start this tradition with her.   Is she not the cutest stinkin' thing?!

Favorite color: purple

Favorite toy:  Ryder and figurines from Paw Patrol

Favorite stuffed animal: Ryder from Paw Patrol

Favorite thing to sleep with: Mommy {no joke}

Favorite fruit: cantaloupe and watermelon

Favorite cereal: Kix and Strawberry Yogurt O's

Favorite things to eat for breakfast: Kix, scrambled eggs, and donuts

Favorite thing to eat for lunch: chicky nuggets and fries

Favorite dessert: ice cream

Favorite drink: apple juice

Favorite animal: giraffe

Favorite song: Let It Go {Frozen}

Favorite book: Paw Patrol: Pup, Pup, and Away

Favorite game: Hungry Hungry Hippo

Favorite tv show: Paw Patrol 

Favorite movie:  Frozen

Favorite thing to do outside: swim

Best friends: Hailey, Jade, Sage, Brooke, Olivia

What she wants to be when she grows up:  a doctor

Interview With a First Grader {And a School Picture}

I think I slacked a little bit on Olivia's yearly interviews, since I just did them almost 5 months after she turned 6.  {But, seriously, WHATTT?  Didn't we just have her party?}  Her answers have not changed all that much from the last 2 years - see year 4 here and year 5 here - mainly because she is still a picky eater.  :) Oh man, can you even handle the cuteness of that smile in her 1st grade picture?!  {But, seriously, WHATTT?  Didn't we just bring her home from the hospital?}

Favorite color: rainbow

Favorite toy:  Claire {her doll}

Favorite stuffed animal: Ellie the Elephant

Favorite thing to sleep with: Liberty of London pillow and the owl pillow

Favorite fruit: strawberries and blueberries

Favorite cereal: Trader Joe's Strawberry Yogurt O's

Favorite thing to eat for breakfast: donuts, cinnamon rolls, pancakes

Favorite thing to eat for lunch: noodles with parmesan

Favorite dessert: Dairy Queen ice cream

Favorite drink: pink lemonade and gatorade

Favorite animal: elephants and pandas

Favorite song: Takes Heart To Be a Hero {school song}, Uptown Funk, Ghostbusters

Favorite book: Velma Gratch and the Way Cool Butterfly

Favorite game: Princess Yahtzee and Guess Who

Favorite tv show: Paw Patrol and Peppa Pig

Favorite movie:  Inside Out

Favorite thing to do outside: swing and swim

Best friends: Ava, Riley, Kendall, Brooke, Sage, Jade & Sydney

What she wants to be when she grows up:  a teacher and a dance teacher

That's a Wrap on August

Only two more months of intense heat in Arizona!! Whooohooooo!!  My dad will disagree, but I know that it was the beginning of November last year when we could be outside all day and not break out into a sweat.  Thank goodness for our pool and air conditioning!

Here's a few other things we've been up to this past month:

➸➸  These girls have no idea how good they've got it.  I pick them up from school, right outside their room, and then pedal them home while they sit back and eat a popsicle or frozen yogurt tube!  I'm dripping in sweat by the time I get home, and Liv had the nerve to tell me she was too hot to open the garage door for me the other day!  Ha!  (It may be short, but it is definitely a workout pulling 75+ pounds in 100+ degrees!)

➸➸  Liv is turning in to quite the fashion model these days!  Not really, but I did have a couple little poses from her to post here.  :)  She's a pretty lucky girl to have friends whose mamas sell adorable kids clothes!

➸➸  Sydney celebrated her birthday at school with sprinkled donuts for her class!  The kiddos were SO EXCITED to eat their donuts!  I loved seeing her showered with love and attention at school!

➸➸  The night before her birthday, Sydney and Olivia got matching pajamas and slippers for themselves AND their dolls.  Oh to be a little girl in our house!  They all looked so cute in their outfits.

➸➸  On Sydney's birthday, she chose to go have lunch with her sister at school!  What a sweet girl who just adores her big sister and her big sister's friends!

➸➸  Olivia had two early release days for Parent/Teacher conferences -- holy wow is she knocking first grade OUT OF THE BALLPARK!  Love my little learner so much.  She was so excited to be able to pick up her sister from school and visit her old preschool.  She got to go in to her old Pre-K room and give her teacher a big hug.  I couldn't resist posing my girls together in front of the stone column that has been the back drop to SO MANY of their preschool pictures.  

➸➸  Olivia was chosen as the Hull Hero (Student of the Week) this past week.  We spent last weekend working on coloring her poster.  She did such a great job making it super colorful!  She took in her Ellie the Elephant and her favorite book (of the moment) which is Velma Gratch and the Way Cool Butterfly.  It was a book she had checked out from the library when she was 2 and memorized the big words like metamorphosis and migration.  She wore red, white, and blue (school colors) all week and on Friday she took in sugar cookies with red, white, and blue sprinkles on the icing!  In case you didn't know -- Mama Loves a Theme!

➹ Her three cool facts were that she is good at legos, she can do a helicopter, a b-kick, and a cartwheel, and that she has been to Disneyland 8 times!  ➹

➹ After school on Monday, we took her to Bahama Bucks and gave her a small lego kit. She's living the dream! ;)  ➹

Sydney Turns Four!!!

For Sydney's fourth birthday, we wanted to do something simple and fun.  And, with the temperature still in the triple digits, there's not many choices besides swimming.  Good thing that sweet girl is a fish in the water and loves to swim!

We decided on a little hawaiian luau theme, with fun decorations and then Chick-Fil-A for dinner.  We planned a nice afternoon of swimming, food, treats and a piñata, but sadly a thunderstorm came in right as we were getting out of the pool and we had to postpone our piñata for another afternoon.

We watched her birthday video (which I still need to upload) and had cake before giving the girls their little party favor bags.  I thought they were cute...little Hawaiian bags that could be used whenever they come over to our house (because they are always forgetting/leaving things) filled with cute beach things like flip flops and candy. 

Sheri and Riley got her this giant Ariel balloon and made her this gorgeous Ariel dress.  She loves them both!

Sydney had a blast celebrating her big day with her friends, and I just can't believe that our baby is FOUR years old!  We love her so much.  She makes us laugh every single day!  What a gift she is to us!

Getting Into the Groove of School

Well, we are officially four and half weeks into the school year!  Isn't it crazy?!  If I'm doing the math right, that means we are 1/8th of the way through!  Insane.

We are sort of getting into the groove....although I don't think mornings will ever be easy for any of us!

Sydney is LOVING her preschool class -- praise the Lord!  She breezed through orange week and half of yellow week and got rave reviews from her teacher and dance teacher!  One of the teachers came up to me on Wednesday and told me that Sydney had consoled one of the other students during their worship session who was crying because it was too loud.  Awwwww.

➹ There is a small candy machine right by the door to leave.  I may or may not point it out to her and bring a quarter to reward her for her good days!  A little Skittles in a cup never hurt anybody! ➹

On Tuesday, Olivia woke up to me in her bed.  Sydney had crawled into bed with me and David and I was smooched between her and Magnum and could not get back to sleep.  So, I snuck out and went to sleep with Olivia.  It took me forever to fall back asleep and I could barely wake myself up when it was time to get going.  Olivia picked out her outfit, got completely dressed by herself, and poured herself her bowl of cereal {with milk!} all while I laid in her bed.  {Next up, teaching her how to pack her lunch. ;)}  She even brushed her hair and teeth without me prompting her to!  She was so proud of herself.  WE praised her up one side and down the other, but I guess not enough to get her to do it again this morning.  Ha! 

➹ I can't get enough of that smile! ➹

Mom was watching Sydney for us, so David and I went over to surprise her for lunch.  It's so funny to see her interact with her little friends at school!  We went outside with her for a few minutes after lunch and she showed off her jump roping skills.  She's getting pretty good at it!

➹ She's almost always the last one to go to recess. ➹

➹ She was so excited for her daddy to come to school! ➹

Our Weekend of Swim...

Are you guys sick of pool pictures?  I hope not because summer is not even close to being over here in the desert and the only way to stay cool is to take a dip in our oh so refreshing, 95 degree pool.  Yup, you read that right...NINETY-FIVE degrees has been the temp of our pool for the last week or so.  Oy.

Honestly, on Friday, we were SO hot, we couldn't even imagine getting in the pool.  Is that sad or what?  Sheri and I decided that maybe we would take the kiddos someplace with air conditioning instead, but neither of us wanted any place with crowds!!! We decided to try out Peter Piper Pizza right after school, and it was perfect!  There was only one other family in the place and after a couple hours of climbing and games, we walked across the parking lot {sweating the entire time} and ate at my favorite burger place, Freddy's.  It was a FUN FRIDAY for sure!

➹ Thank you, Dr Dre, for this. ➹

➹ Rewarded with a DQ ice cream cone for stuffing her face with french fries and a quarter of a hot dog made by someone other than me! And, I swear, Sydney was with us, she just didn't feel like being photographed! ➹

Saturday mornings are swim mornings around here these days, and you know what happens after morning swims, right?!  BOSA DONUTS!

➹ So proud of my amazing swimmer.  The teacher always has to go swim after her because she swims much farther than the rest of her class! ➹

➹ She is such a ham! ➹

We jumped in the pool after dinner Saturday evening, and it seriously felt like bath water.  I'm not really complaining because I sort of like it that way.  It always bums me out in the winter when it is too cold to swim in our own pool.  It was fun to do a little night swimming -- we stayed in long enough to turn the pool lights on.  

On Sunday, we went to a birthday party at a fancy country club pool.  They had a very cool splash pad / baby pool area and two awesome water slides!  I will have to try and upload some of the videos of Olivia and David going down the water slides -- they were obsessed!  I'm so proud of Olivia -- she used to be really scared of going down even a regular slide, so going down huge water slides is so awesome!

➹ My cuties on their way to the party! ➹