::buggy::

Max's class at school was studying insects way back at the beginning of the year. At that point his teacher told the kids to look for bugs and bring cool ones in.

So several weeks ago when Max found a cool bug he and Kris caught it and he insisted on bringing it to school. I told his teacher that he had a bug and she said "Of course he does!! The kids won't stop bringing them!"

So I guess the bug pulled some hijinks in the classroom that day. He escaped from his little jar and crawled and flew around the room and Max and friends got in trouble taking too long capturing him before lunch.

After the bug's second day in his jar I said it was time for him to go free. I forced Max to take his jar outside so he could go free. There were many tears and sad statements made. The bug was his BEST FRIEND! This was the ONLY TIME I've EVER let him keep a bug!! He LOVES THAT BUG!
But finally I convinced Max that buggy needed his freedom. Buggy hung out in his jar for the evening (happily for Max) and then left for the wild.

It's quite the nature story. Nature Max loves nature.

::new tiger & max takes the bus::

We have a lot of fun toys at the office, but some of the funnest have got to be the big lion and tiger that live in the back operatories. They're gigantic. One of our little four years even asked recently if the lion was real or not. It was awesome.
So when I found a new and different great big tiger online of course I had to add him to our menagerie.
He came in the mail today, in a gigantic box, and Sandy and I got to check him out since we were working at the time.
This really isn't that newsworthy, but the baby is so so darn cute. And the tiger almost looks real...



Sandy wasn't sure about riding the tiger, but after a bit he felt pretty darn cool.


I didn't realize quite how realistic looking the tiger was until I saw these picture. He's almost a bit scary!
So that's all our tiger news.

In other news, Max took the bus home from school for the first time today. It was rather heavenly and he seemed to really enjoy it.
I didn't realize that the bus would stop as close to our house as it does--it's just a few houses away at the intersection. Once I realized that, and that a couple of boys from the ward ride home often, I thought we should give it a try.
It was so nice today that I could leave the baby snoozing and go up in the driveway and watch out for Max's bus to arrive. So much nicer than waking poor Sand right in the middle of his afternoon nap (which is what has happened every other school day of his life) and dragging him to the school.

The only goofy part was when Max started walking in the opposite direction from our house--I think the way the bus came got him turned around. But finally he saw me waving and calling and headed the right direction.


(The car behind him belongs to our friends from the ward.)

Here he is, once again caught in a moment with no feet touching the ground. Maybe he floats in real life and I just don't realize it?


Gooooooooooooooooofy.
I think we'll be doing bus rides any days we don't have lessons or karate right after school. It takes a little pressure off of my day's schedule, which is awesome, and it gives Max a small measure of independence, which he desperately craves. It's nice because he can feel independent in such a controlled safe way.
So anyway, it was a great thing to have happen today and I'm so glad it went well.
That's all for now, good night!

::fun run::

(Max is on the very far right in this photo.)
Today was Max's school's biggest fund raiser, the "Fun Run."
They have a 5k race at 8AM then a 1 mile run at 9AM.
Last year we sponsored the race and it was really fun to do, so we did it again.

Last year we came in dead last in the 1 mile run. Cammon & Lorri were visiting us, which was awesome. But we were late in getting there and as we were running up there the main field took off, way too far away for us to have a hope of catching up. So we walked and Max wimped out and we were the very last. Well, except little Scooter who decided to run the whole way. But the rest of us were pretty slow. No big deal.

But this year, we wanted to be faster.

I've been running a bunch, working towards doing a half marathon in January 2012. This is amazing for me because I've always hated to run. I've always been the slowest worst runner. So working on this is hugely tough and challenging for me. But as of today I've run (and when I say run I mean a combo of running and walking) 70 miles! That's in about the last month and a half to two months. So I'm feeling pretty good about myself. Though I'm slow slow slow, I'm at least getting some miles in and I have to be getting better, however slightly.

So I did the 5K. It was my first official race and it was tough. Some fat ladies passed me and stayed ahead and I couldn't keep up with some kids--BUT I finished and I wasn't last. There were slower people than me, somehow. And I didn't wimp out. It got kind of warm and I got tired on the hills, but I made it.

Now for Max.

(There he goes, tongue out of his mouth as usual and feet not even touching the ground! This picture was taken by my friend Mandy, thanks Mandy!!)
We've been trying to get Max into getting more active and having more fun with it. Running and biking have been the things we've been encouraging. So we've been talking up the Fun Run here. He was ready to try hard because one of the prizes was a toy store gift certificate.

He took off pretty quickly and Kris says he definitely walked a bunch, but he did it. He didn't wimp out and he was running when he started and running when they came up to the finish! I'm really pleased with the progress since last year. We're both quite improved. And our attitudes are better.

Max didn't win anything of course, but I did take him to the store and get him a prize. As far as I'm concerned he was awesome.

Judy from the office came and joined us and did super well. It was fun to have her there! I was excited when I saw her at the finish line cheering me on when I was done.

IT's pretty fun that we have a great event like this we can sponsor and get involved in right down the street from our house!
And we're pretty proud of ourselves--and tired tonight.

::adventures::

My Max likes adventures.

For the first week of school his new teacher sent home a brown paper lunch sack and asked the kids to bring it back the next day containing five things that they felt defined them as people. They were supposed to share and explain these things to the class.
When I saw this assignment I started to brainstorm of course, so I could give Max some good ideas. I started to talk about it and he told me he already knew what he was going to put in there.
"I love adventures," he said "so I'm going to put my geodes in there and a Matchbox Land Rover. I'm also going to put a little yellow bike that looks like my Scott Bike and my stick that I found in the desert that looks like a gun."

I thought it was very very interesting that he defined himself that way. I hadn't realized that about him up to that point--in fact I don't think it was true up to very recently.

I'm happy to have a boy that defines himself as an adventurous outdoors guy. There are so much worse and more boring things to want to be at this age.

And what it really comes down to is that I thought it was awfully cute.
I suggested he include a family picture in his bag and off he went to school. I think it went well for him.

(No, I don't know why Max is wearing a bike jersey backwards.)
When my parents were here last week Max invited my dad into his special club--the club I didn't know existed. It's called the "Explorers Bike Club" they had a secret handshake, a secret meeting location and they went on all sorts of cool bike rides. Adventurous and fun. And active.
Pretty cool, right?

::another first::

I need to remind myself in the future not to schedule Kris hospital cases on the first day of school. With hospital cases Kris has to be out of the house before 6:30AM. So obviously I accidentally did that this year and it was kind of a bummer. Because of course, no matter how early I got up, we had to be late because of a battle. This particular battle was over what shoes to wear. Max wanted to wear his stinky Keens and I wanted him to wear normal shoes so nobody would think he had bad hygiene right off the bat.
Anyway, we resolved it eventually, and got through the breakfast battle. We made it into the car and then were absolutely fine until we got to school and realized that to get a parking space we'd have to park two blocks away and walk. That's pretty fun with a 25 lb baby to haul around.

But the good stuff for the day? Max's new teacher seems really nice. He's in a real classroom when a lot of the other grades are in portables because of school construction. There are a few nice kids in his class that he knows from last year.
The best news? We got him there and we all survived.

And the very best news is that he had a really fun day. YAY!!!

::bye to summer::

Tomorrow is the first day of school for us out here. Kind of a bummer in so many ways. Good in so many ways too. But's it's sad to lose the opportunity to sleep in a bit and bum around and spend time with friends and at the pool. I think we should move to a four day school week. Really. Kids need a little more time just to be kids.

Kids need to bum around and watch Pixar movies with friends and have fun.

Good thing we can do all that and school too I guess, though squeezing it all in is a trick.

Really our summer was super busy with work and summer camps, so we didn't get to laze around much. Maybe that makes the coming to an end part even harder.

You should probably look for a first day of school post coming soon. I'm sure Mr Second Grade will be adorable as he always is.

::max's story::

Tonight Max's teacher hosted a story reading for his class. All the kids wrote and illustrated a little story. Then they got to sit up on the stool wearing a beret and read it for the crowd. The stories were so cute and the performances were sweet and hilarious. Max is lucky to have such a great teacher who has helped the kids in his class so much. Some of them couldn't even read at the beginning of the year, and here they were reading stories in front of people. It's great.

We were so proud of Max, his reading and his writing. He's a smart capable guy and it's fun to see that demonstrated for us.
Be sure to watch all the way to the end, the last couple of seconds awesome.

::school & such::

Not only did Max's sweet school teacher come and visit us in the hospital, but when Max got to school monday morning this sign was waiting for him in the classroom:


It definitely made him feel special and proud. He has a great teacher.
(The sign barely survived an inadequately closed backpack water bottle.)

Here is an adorable timeline Max made at school last week:

August--he's eating a popsicle. September--school. October--halloween. November--baby!! December--Christmas.
So cute, right?

Max loves his baby and that makes me so happy.

And here's a dose of cuteness from today for you. Max was home from school with a cold and it was everything I could do to keep him from coughing on Sandy.


It's like watching youtube movies about fluffy kitties or something. Cute overdose?
You're welcome.

::bugs::

A few weeks ago we had some crazy behavior going on with Max at school. He was just getting used to his new class, and he has a friend in there that's a little nutty. This little boy is silly, physically a little out of control and just doesn't know when to stop.
And all my little guy needs is a little encouragement to be too too silly.
At school they have a behavior feedback system that works out pretty well. It's based on colors. If a kid's color card is blue by the end of the day that means that they had an excellent behavior day. If it gets switched to green, it means good. Orange is not so good, yellow the next, and red is NOT good at all.
It is nice to have some sort of feedback from school so I can know what's going on--or at least have a hint of what might be going on.
He was all blue for a long time, then suddenly we started seeing yellows and oranges and not many blues at all. And we knew he could do better.
So we had lots of talks about times when it's ok to be silly and times to be serious. We also talked about not letting other people encourage him to do things that would get him in trouble.
All important lessons for life, I'm sure this is just the beginning of trying to teach these lessons.
Then to top it off we gave him an incentive program. If he could get be blue every day for 5 or 6 days in a row (I can't remember which) he got an awesome prize.
It took a couple of false starts, but he totally earned it and we were proud.
We asked him how he got blue one day and he told us that he just did his best to ignore anybody that tried to distract him by being silly. Good job Max!!

So he got a habitat for his hexbug as his prize. And, lucky for him he got an extra hexbug along with it. Have youguys seen these Hexbugs? We got ours at Target.

They're these cute teeny robots that look a lot like little bugs and speed around the floor super fast. They're really fun to watch but it's really hard not too lose them under the furniture. Unless you have a habitat.

See how blurry they are in the picture? Told you they were fast.

Anyway, he loved the prize and hopefully felt fulfilled for doing such a good job behaving. And generally since then he's been quite good, even though we haven't given him too many more material incentives.

He's so cute with the bugs that I had to take a video the other day when Kris was out of town and Max was supposed to be eating dinner. It's pretty cute. Enjoy if you'd like.

::school pictures::

Here we go, fall 2010 pictures.

He's such a cute little goof.
At least we were without the hillbilly smile this time. That's probably a good thing.

::school halloween parade::

At our last school Max wasn't even supposed to wear a costume, much less did they do anything to celebrate halloweeen. Out here in the west, however, it appears entirely kosher to go all out for halloween at school.
In fact, they spent at least the whole week leading up to it making crafts, playing games and learning about halloweeny things. The halls of the school were very festive with cute holiday art.
On friday the school had it's annual halloween parade. As usual with school, nobody told me when or where it would be until the day before, and I had to change some doctor's appts around and stuff, but I made sure to be there.
Max was a jedi for school--Luke I guess.

It was cute to see all the kids in their costumes. Also, I've been able to spend a little time in his classroom, so I'm finally getting to know the kids in his class which is nice too.

They lined up out in the hall and waited for all the big kids to parade past. And wow there were tons of kids that came by. I really didn't realize how dang big the school was until I saw the parade.

They had a hard time waiting their turn.
And though Max looks like he wasn't having that much fun, I have proof that he was:

See? He smiled. I'm not sure who he was smiling at, but he smiled.
They joined up with the end of the parade as it went by and we all marched out to the athletic field. I took up the rear to make sure nobody got lost, and it was a good thing I was there, because there were at least two kids that I had to literally push most of the way so that they would keep up. Classic 6 year old stuff.

There they went onto the field where they all lined up for a while and stood around. I'm not sure why, but oh well.
We took some pictures.
Of Luke Skywalker & Luke Skywalker especially.

I don't have any idea why they look so solemn. They definitely weren't!


Now that's more like it.

I like it when they get into character.

That's Max's teacher there on the right looking pretty groovy. He was so confused on why the teacher on the left would dress up "like a boy!!"

Then we all walked back to the school into the chaos of class halloween parties. I stayed and helped out and by the time it was over I was exhausted. Luckily friday is a short school day, so we got to leave at around noon. I think the kids had a great time. It was quite the kick-off for the entire weekend of halloween activities that we had to look forward too.
As of saturday night when I'm writing this I'm all halloweened out. Fun stuff, but you can only do so much.
But anyway, the parade was so fun. Lucky sugared up kids.

::spooky box::

Max came home with a special homework assignment last week. He was supposed to come up with some sort of "spooky box" to display in his classroom during halloween week. It was supposed to be a diorama in a shoebox, using whatever materials he wanted.
So Max and I brainstormed and came up with what I think is a pretty good idea. A spooky ocean box.
We painted our shoebox last night and then this afternoon all three of us worked together to make spooky cranky ocean animals.
Then I glued everything into place.

(Max is working on some other self-directed project here. Suddenly plenty to do when there's homework!!)
Here's the box, I think it turned out super fun looking.

I like the two headed snakes slithering along the ocean floor amid Kris's seaweed.
I'm frightened of this shark--he looks like he would easily bite somebody's leg off. And you can't see the fish he's chasing very well, but that poor fish looks pretty dismayed.

An awesome group of ghostly jellyfish.

Snakes hiding behind the anemones.

Successfully (and definitely oddly) spooky I think. He turns it in tomorrow, I think his teacher will like it! She'd better anyway.

::amazing::

We went to Max's back to school night a couple of weeks ago, and there we were shown this gem of a chart. Check it out:

Cool, right? But here's the amazing part. At the time of this chart there were only 19 or 20 kids in his class.
It hardly seems possible that they could own 42 dogs between them, that's insane! Especially considering that one of them (poor deprived kid) has no pet at all, and then there are a bunch of cats and "others" in the mix there.
I think it's hilarious.

::switcharoo::

My sweet little Max had to go through a little bit of a school ordeal this week.
Evidently there were some problems with class sizes, and the 1st grade classes had to be slightly reorganized. (I've heard from other moms this happens often in this school--something having to do with enrollment numbers and etc.)
I was hoping that we would be safe, since there are so many 1st graders, and the likelihood of Max being chosen out of the mob seemed low. But of course, he got picked to move into a different class. Bummer. Extra bummer since the principal called and left me a message telling me about it at 7PM on friday night before labor day. So I had to go through the whole weekend mad, and couldn't get ahold of anybody to complain and explain that my poor little son has been moved around already more than any guy needs to be, and how I just wanted him to be able to stay in the same dang class where he was actually starting to make friends!

So I didn't talk to him about it over the weekend, really hoping I was going to be able to talk the school out of it and that he'd just be able to go to his normal class. But after a billion calls to the school and emails to the principal the only way to reach her was to attack her at her office as she arrived 10 minutes before school started.

There was nothing I could do--you know--there comes a point where unless you're going to be a super duper jerk you just have to deal with what comes.

So I had to go out in the parking lot and tell my little boy he was switching classes RIGHT THEN. I felt awful.
Luckily his new teacher is super nice, and after listening to my concerns she was very sympathetic. She came out to the parking lot with me and took him back to the classroom to show him around. He was pretty sad and bummed at first, but warmed up to her pretty quickly.
He seemed to do ok, but me? I didn't do so hot that day until I picked him up and saw he was ok.
He had a good day, and he's had a good week in the new class, though he definitely misses his old one.
I'm just proud of him--he's strong and resilient and fun and smart. He's a great kid and I'm so glad he's ours!!

::reporting in::

Max's first week of school went pretty well.
He only lost his lunchbox once, and we found it.
He only got lost and separated from his class twice during the week, but he used his head and asked for help and found his way back both times.
He only lost his water bottle once--but at the end of the day we found it.
Turns out by luck of the draw he got a teacher with a super good reputation and she seems great. It makes me happy that he got a good one.
He only stayed home from school one day (today) because he had a fever and was freezing this morning when it just wasn't that cold. (He's fine now).
He did ok with the school dress code, which is mostly made up of plain colored polos. He complained about the collars every day, but he looked cute anyway. I got him some good colors.

My week was good. I was glad to have work to do at the office, or else the days would've seemed long and the house would've seemed empty. I would've enjoyed it for a while, then it would've just been boring. I got a lot of work done while he was at school though, so that was great. It's been so fun to work where Kris is, we like seeing each other more than just for an hour at night.

So that's my report. I have lots of stuff to post. Now, just to find the energy to do it.