Our Noah is 7

Birthdays in this house mean picture time! So here's my baby. . . I mean BIG BOY, Noah's 7 year old pictures.

He's been all about Batman this past year so naturally, we had to do Batman pictures! :-)




And as the most common words out of his mouth are, "Mom, can I play games on your phone?", we had to get some of him playing. (Angry Birds, just in case you were wondering. ;-))


And since I'm sure he'll be some handsome, suit-and-tie businessman in about 20 years, here's the proof that I knew it way back when. :-)



Happy birthday, Goo! We sure love having you in our family!

Math Night at Sue Buel Elementary

Brooklyn and Noah having lots of fun demonstrating their math skillz! :-)







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School pictures of my babies!

2 full-day students = 1 happy mom :-)

Brooklyn and Noah started school today. B is in 5th grade, and N is in 1st, which means I won't see him until after 2:30!! Yeah!! I mean. . . I'm sad that I won't have my wonderful children home with me all day long. *sniff, sniff*

But seriously. :-)

They're both old pros with the whole going-to-school thing so there weren't any tears, just happy smiles!

The Cutest Boy Ever Turns 6!

Okay, so Steve and I may be the only ones that think he's the cutest, but after seeing these new birthday pictures, you have to agree. . . he's a cutie! :-)

I love that we got these pictures taken after his first tooth fell out. It'll be a great reminder of when it happened.

I love this picture because it frames his Lego Star Wars T-shirt perfectly! He's been saying, "The Force is strong with this one!", in the most adorable way, for a couple years now and so I was really excited to find this shirt for him!

I love this next one because it shows his Airwalk shoes, that I didn't want him to wear in the pictures, but that he adamantly refused to take off. They're his current favorite pair of shoes. :-)

Noah's first loose tooth

I had forgotten that Noah was at the age to start losing teeth, but when he started freaking out yesterday, yelling that he had broke his tooth, I quickly reassured him that it was perfectly normal, and that he would be fine.

Promises of money from the tooth fairy when it finally fell out made him feel lots better. So be expecting some cute toothless smiles with in the next few days. :-)

UPDATE: Noah's tooth fell out Sunday morning before church so here's a quick picture of his new smile! Soo cute! :)


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My baby boy is 6!

Noah's birthday was Wednesday. Since it was in the middle of the week, we decided to go out for his birthday dinner tonight. But we also wanted to do something for him on Wednesday, since he'd been making me give him the count down to his birthday for the past few weeks, and he knew that that day was his actual birthday. So that morning, kind of last minute, I decided to invite a few friends over after dinner for cake and ice cream. Boy was that fun!




For dinner tonight, Noah chose to go to Red Robin. He was excited about the waiters and waitresses singing to him and bring him an ice cream sundae.


As we were leaving Red Robin, we saw that a car show was going on in a nearby parking lot so we of course had to stop and see all the "cool cars!" One of Noah's new obsessions is taking pictures of cool cars with mommy camera phone, so he proceeded to take about a bazillion pictures. Here's a few of them...








Hey, this kid knows what he likes. :-)

He even let me have the camera for a few seconds so I could take this picture of him with his favorite MONSTER TRUCK!!!

We were even deemed worthy of being photo subjects.


We sure love our little photographer! Happy birthday, sweet boy!

Strawberry freezer jam is my favorite!

So, I finally buckled down and made my very own strawberry freezer jam today! Wow, that was a long time coming, and now that it's done, I just want to put it on everything! :)

I'm glad it was super easy to make.



Really, the hardest part was washing and cutting all those strawberries. Then I just pureed them in the blender, strained that through cheesecloth (which isn't in the directions, I just did it cause I don't like a lot of seeds), mixed it with the sugar and pectin, and poured it into the jars. Voila! Presto! Done.


(This isn't all of them, just the last batch.)


Here's my little helper. He only ate about 10 strawberries before I had to cut him off. :)


And here's my cute little jars of strawberry jammy goodness! Ahhh!

Brooklyn AND Noah's first day at school!

Today is the first day of school here in Biola. Brooklyn is starting 4th grade, and my baby Noah. . . *sniff*. . . is starting Kindergarten. (Just kidding, I didn't cry. :) They're both attending Biola-Pershing Elementary, which is where Brooklyn went last year.

We started our morning out with Mickey Mouse pancakes and fresh peaches. Yum!


And of course we had to take some first-day-of-school pictures.




Brooklyn was excited to see her friend, Carmen.


And Noah had no problems whatsoever going into his class.



Here's hoping for an awesome first day!

Our day of park-hopping!

Since I had spent most of Brooklyn's Spring Break car shopping, and now finally have a car, I decided to spend today doing the one thing the kids had asked me to do with them these past two weeks.

GO TO THE PARK!!

I thought, what better way than to hit as many parks as possible, letting the kids play as long as they wanted at each, and also decide when to move on to the next one on the list. Both kids were very excited about this plan, so we packed up some snacks, hit Wendy's for some lunch, and headed to our first park.

Logan Park was the very first park we went to after moving to Fresno. It's just a few miles away from the apartments we first lived at, and believe me, we search long and hard to find it that first time, so we've got lots of memories there.







Next, we went to Oso de Oro Lake Park. This is the park we learned about from our friends in our first ward. It's got lots of different fun places to play, including a maze and a lake where you can feed the ducks!







This last park is one we haven't gone to much. We learned about it just before moving to Biola, which put us far enough away that it's just not as convenient as some others, but we still like it because of the super tall, twisty slide!




We had so much fun today, that we'll probably do it again someday soon! :)