Off to Kindergarten!

Today was Ellie's first day of Kindergarten. They had half of the kids today and will have the other half tomorrow. A nice way to get to know the kids a little at a time. Monday she joins the whole class for the first full week of school.

outside the classroom

checking out "Snappy" the turtle

first introductions

(5 of the 7 in class today were in preschool together last year)

Colton wishes he could go to school too

special lunch with daddy

End of Summer Treat

We decided to start a little tradition of going out for a treat on the night before school starts. Ellie chose gas station slurpees as the night before kindergarten treat!

Colton's first shiner

Colton collided with the stone bench in our backyard. Pretty scary for Dan and me. I didn't even want to look for fear of seeing his eyeball damaged. Fortunately, it was just his eyebrow and cheek. Thank God for eyebrows and cheekbones to protect our eyes! His eyebrow was so swollen he could hardly see, but we immediately got ice on it and the swelling went down really fast. His eyebrow got a pretty good scratch so we will have to wait and see if it scars. He may end up with a bald spot in the middle of his eyebrow.

We were at the beach the other day and I kept feeling like people were looking at us strangely. I finally realized they were probably wondering what in the world happened to that poor little boy!

Day 1

Day 3

Day 5

one more

Ellie and her buddy Addie. Apparently they both like to stretch their bellies...

The past few days

Here are a few pictures from the past few days. We have been enjoying passing the time waiting for baby to arrive. Ellie graduated from Preschool, Dan took the kids on a rainy fishing adventure, and the kids enjoyed a friend's Pirate birthday party.

Happy 5th Birthday Ellie!

We had a very fun birthday party this past weekend with some of Ellie's friends. This was our first "kids only" party and it went well! We made fairy crowns, ate junk food, bobbed for apples (Ellie's idea), and played outside on a beautiful Spring day.
Bobbing for apples didn't work out so well with 4/5 year olds so Dan had to show them how it's done. : D

breaking habits

Last week was a productive week at the Hoover house. We decided it was time to try and break Colton of his binky sucking habits. I trimmed the tip of his binky and told him it was broken. I've heard this is the best way to break the habit and I'd have to agree! He definitely didn't like sucking on a binky with a hole in it so it just took about 24 hours for him to decide he didn't want it at all. He thought we should "throw it trash". I think he also thought it would be a matter of time for us to go to the store and buy him a new one...but that didn't happen. Poor little guy. He fell asleep really well without it. The hardest part was getting used to waking up without it. We had a few pretty early mornings and some short naps. It seems like he is used to being without it now and it only took about a week!

Since we were torturing Colton with this at such a young age we decided it was not fair for Ellie to STILL be able to suck her fingers. We suggested to her that maybe it was time to stop sucking her fingers since Colton was going to bed without a binky and she seemed all for the idea. (amazing) We bought some athletic tape and put it on one of her fingers so that she wouldn't start sucking them while she was asleep. We made her a reward chart and told her that if she woke up and still had the tape on her fingers for 5 mornings, we would let her go to the toy store and pick out a new toy. She was so excited about this chart and reminded us every night that she needed tape on her fingers. I think it took her a little bit longer to fall asleep at night but she did SO well and had no problem sleeping all through the night and waking up at the normal time. She filled up the chart, got her new toy, and still asks for tape on her fingers at night. I think we will continue with the tape or bandaids on her finger for a little while just to make sure the habit is completely broken. We are so proud of her and thankful that it was an easy habit to break!!!

ha ha, I probably should have brushed her hair before I took this picture!