::new school-old school::

Max had kind of an intro-to-school day on friday. He and I went and got to stay there for an hour. We met his teachers and a lot of the other kids and parents. Probably his favorite part was that he got to explore the classroom and playground a bit. He had a great time.

He was so excited to get ready in the morning. He came running out of his room and said TAA DAA!!

He didn't even realize his shirt was backwards until I told him. Total goofball, don't you think? I had to sweet talk him into letting me take a picture though. I think maybe he was a little embarrassed once he realized.

I took a couple of phone pictures while I was there with him--how could I resist? I was only about an inch away from bringing me big old camera with me, but I didn't want the other parents thinking I was a weirdo that had to document every second of my child's life. They have to wait to get to know me before they figure that part out!

He was thrilled that there was a keyboard. I imagine he'll spend a good amount of time on it.

Each of the kids made a "leaf" for the tree painted on the wall. His is on the upper left. I thought it was so cute.

Here he is "doing wash" in the little playhouse area. It was just him and all the girls when he was in there. It was funny because one of the little girls insisted on putting a baby doll in the washer and drier, and Max did NOT like that. The baby was NOT going to be ok. I thought it was supposed to be the opposite--litte boys doing things like that to torment little girls.

And finally:

The biggest hit of the day. This cool spinny bike toy thing. He loved it. It was cute when there were kids on all of the bikes, all pedaling furiously.
Max stayed on it until the bitter end. In fact when I finally went to remove him his little face was dripping with sweat. (The last few days have been really hot and humid because of a tropical storm moving up our way, yuck).

So the first day was quite the success, and he's totally excited to go for his first real day tomorrow morning.

But all this thinking and talking about school has made me think about his old school, the wonderful Purple Dragon school in Kansas City. Remember how I was posting about when they were doing because it was so fun and extreme? Well, I ran out of steam there sometime in the spring, but I still have all the notes on their snacks and stuff--well mostly just the snacks--to finish out the alphabet, so I'm going to go ahead and post them here, just for fun.

(For anybody that doesn't know, Max's teacher was teaching the kids the alphabet by going through the alphabet letter by letter. Each week would be assigned a letter, and everything they would talk about that week would start with the letter, and all their snacks would as well. It was really fun.)

For Q they ate quiche and queso and apples, yum.

For R it was ranchero cheese, rutebegas (have I ever eaten one?) and raspberries & cream, yum.

For S, sausages and crackers, sunflower seeds, spinach salad and salami.

("shell art" can you tell he made a land rover--I'm sure with no little help)

T was toast and applesauce and tortellini

For U they ate ugli fruit (?) and unusual snacks which included a huge deacon turnip, parsnips and figs.

(and made umbrellas out of paper)

For V they ate vegetables all week, including lima beans.

(and painted volcanos--I love this painting!!)

W was waffles with apricot jam, wontons, water chestnuts, wienies and watermelon (yum).

(and talked about walruses--this is one of the best coloring jobs he did all year)



(and made wood art and watercolor paintings)

For X they ate eXploring snacks, whatever that means!

And for good old Z they had zebra cakes, zucchini and zucchini toast.


This new school has a lot to live up to!
We already know it'll be very different of course. It's very play base where his last school was very academic based. But that's ok. Play is super important when you're four. I'm excited he'll get to spend time with other kids and have fun. That's the only real reason I wanted him to go to preschool in the first place.

We'll keep you posted.

::Cape Cod::

Last weekend was a long weekend for us. Kris had labor day off which was nice. He's been absolutely dying to go camping all summer but we haven't had a chance. He gets done with work pretty late on friday nights, so leaving for a camping trip friday and staying overnight until saturday doesn't work out. And with the ward the way it is it's really hard for us to miss church.

So we decided this time that since he had monday off we'd try to go out right after church and spend sunday night camping.
It was a great idea in theory. Unfortunately we're from out west where there are a zillion places to camp pretty close. Out here in the crowded overpopulated east there aren't that many places to camp, so those that exist are in demand. Especially on holiday weekends.

So we drove out to Cape Cod, hoping that there would be a spot left for us in the 400+ spot campground we were heading for. It took about 2 hrs to get there.

We got there and there were two spots left. The two toothless hillbillies in line before Kris got the spots. Argh. Can you tell we're still a touch bitter?
We were pretty disappointed. We looked up some other campgrounds on the cape, but they turned out to either be RV parks or they didn't allow dogs. And since we had a big stinky dog sitting in the backseat that didn't work.

So finally we decided we'd just drive all the way down to the very end of Cape Cod and check out what was there. Turns out that Kris, in the great Randle family tradition, had forgotten the hot dogs anyway, so a campfire wouldn't have done us much good.
So off we went.

It took a while to get out there, but as we drove the scenery became more and more interesting. It went from the standard normal stuff we see all day to more piney trees and then big sand dunes with greenery all over them. It was pretty striking.

We drove through Provincetown, a little funky town at the end of the Cape. It was interesting and a little weird.

We finally found a beach and went out to have a picnic. Poor Sultan wasn't allowed out on the beach and so he had to stay in the car. :( Luckily we were planning on camping somewhere near the water so I had packed swimming suits and towels. Because first thing Max did when we got near the water was run right in, sandals pants and all. Arrgh.

So we changed him into his suit and let him go.

It was like a big hill down from the parking lot just leading to the water. Really pretty steep. The sand was different than other beaches we've seen out here. The grains were pretty large, almost like a whole bunch of tiny pebbles. I liked it.

Kris put together some peanut butter sandwiches for us and I ran down to take some pictures of the crazy fish boy.

It was pretty windy and not that warm but that didn't slow down Max (as usual). He had a great time in the water.


I absolutely love the way the above shot turned out. The sun was giving off the most gorgeous light.

There were these little cute birds running around all over the beach. I tried to figure out what they were once we got home but couldn't quite place them. I think they're some sort of Plover.



I finally forced Max to head up the beach towards dinner.

Dinner was good. Max got his first soda ever. It was a big day. One we may not repeat for a while. Of course he couldn't drink all of it, but he felt pretty special.




I asked Kris to take a couple pictures of me. I'm not sure how I feel about them, but that's pretty normal.




I asked the boys to go down so I could take a few more shots of the both of them. I couldn't resist.



Kris had to catch the boy so I could get a picture of the two of them together.

They're super cute, as usual!

We tried to do a little family portrait, but then the wet Max jumped on Kris's back. This is what we ended up with.

Can you see Max's little hand up at the top there?

The sunset was beautiful.



Can you see that guy on the left running with the tripod? It was so weird, this guy was sitting in the sand taking pictures of the sunset, then suddenly just took off running towards the water with the camera. I couldn't figure out what he saw that I didn't! Oh well.



It was sad when the sun finally set because then it was really time to go home. We probably could've stayed there all day.
We drove straight home after that. It was a long day, but we got home before 11. We were bummed about the camping, but we had a great time anyway!

So there you go for all you Cape Cod doubters. It does exist. And we're now fans. I just might have to start a facebook group.


*****I almost forgot the funniest thing. Sultan had to sit on the back bench with Max because the back was all full of stuff. Max suddenly screams, "I CAN'T SMELL!!" We're like, what's wrong with you? Why can't you smell? He goes, "I CAN smell, but I don't WANT to!" I guess Sultan was breathing on him, his mouth right at Max's face level. I wouldn't have wanted to smell either. That dog could use a profi.

::blackboard::

This makes me happy.



Can you see baby fish snuggled up there behind the bread machine? That makes me happy too.

::yesterday::

So I know I got everybody excited about Cape Cod and all, but in the spirit of first things not first, I'm going to tell you about what we did yesterday.

We were supposed to be camping, but that didn't work out. So Kris and I tried to sleep in yesterday morning. Of course that didn't work out. Max was up and raring to go quite early.

So we got up and Kris went for a nice long run. Like seven miles or something. Crazy. Then we went and ran a thousand errands. We went grocery shopping and toilet paper shopping and to the hardware store. Exciting stuff.

We did buy Max some fun shoes at Target. They're cute and he really likes them. He seems to have either destroyed or grown out of every other shoe he owns.


After the errands we started in on the projects.
We picked out some of my photos for the wall behind the sofa, and they finally came last week. So Kris hung them up for me.

He can't keep his tongue in his mouth while he's working.

Unless his mouth is full of nails I guess.

The prints turned out gorgeous and I love the way the wall looks now. It's just another one of the small projects that's making us feel like we're finally all the way moved in.

Please ignore the yucky painted over hook and yucky painted over light switch. There's not much I can do about those right now. Oh yeah, and the yucky hole in the wall. We don't have any patch paint and evidently this was a "custom color."

Then Kris got to work on the blackboard he was making for the kitchen wall. So we could write notes and important to-do lists and stuff.

He did a good job. Here he is spraying on the blackboard paint stuff.

Do you like the spray paint rainbows and all the crud flying around in the air?

The chalk board turned out great. We love it. We had to wait 24 hrs to write on it which was this afternoon. It works great!

Isn't he cute?

Aren't they cute?

I have trouble taking photos in the kitchen, they all turn out super super orange. Some I can't even fix with photoshop. So that's why you're getting some fun black and white action here.

While he was working on the blackboard I worked on my recipe binder.

I have a lot of recipes that I've printed off from different places over the last while, and no way to organize them. I finally put them all together and I feel very official now.

We finished off the day by trying to make our own version of Planet Sub's barbque brisket sandwich (Yuuuuuuuuuum). Kris put them together.
Here they are before he gave them a little toasting in the oven.

And after.

They were so so good. And even Max who always takes hours to eat his dinner snarfed his up in a second. Though they weren't exactly like the P Sub sandwiches, they were as close as we're going to get for a long time.

It was a good day.

::a taste of what's to come::

We visited Cape Cod last night--I'll tell you the reason why later. I just wanted to let you all know that I have a huge load of fun photos to work on and post here.
Hopefully it won't take me too long, but I for sure won't be done tonight, so I thought I'd just post a teaser.

We've also visited the zoo again in the last few days as well as attending an exciting pirate party. So I have a lot to catch up on.


More soon, hopefully.

::winner(s)::

Thanks to everybody for your support, I'm so glad we could raise some money for the Neilsons!

The official winner of the auction is Kathy (my sweet mother in law)--let me know which photo you'd like!
My Dad still wants to go with his bid, so he's going to get a photo as well.

If any of the rest of you who posted a bid are interested in still donating that amount and getting a photo, please let me know. I think it would work out great that way.

For the winners, just use the button below to donate your respective amounts. Forward me your paypal receipt and tell me which photo you'd like and I'll get to working on it for you.

Allow a couple of weeks for delivery because I need to order the photo from an online lab. The prints they make are lovely.

And thanks again for bidding. How fun!

::for nie nie::

Stephanie Nielson (Nie Nie), a friend in this bloggy world of ours was recently in a bad plane crash along with her husband Christian. They were both severely injured and very badly burned. They're in the hospital trying to recover, but it's going to be a long road and very expensive. They have four sweet little kids and this is going to be really tough on their family financially I'm sure.
If you want more details you can go to her sister's blog here.

Stephanie has a sweet blog called the Nie Nie Dialogues. While reading it it's very easy to feel the love she has for her kids and husband. She and I both went to the same high school, and I never knew her well, but nonetheless she feels like a friend.

Design Mom invited us all to get involved in helping the Neilsons through holding silent auctions on our blogs. The proceeds of the auctions will go directly to the Neilsons.
Check Design Mom's site for a listing of other blogs holding auctions. I think there will be quite a few today.

Up for auction here is the following.

One (winner's choice) of the following photos, 8x10 size framed in black.













These are some of my recent favorites. I hope one of them appeals to you.

Just leave your bid as a comment on this post along with your email address. The bidding will continue until midnight Saturday August 30th.
If you'd rather just contribute to the cause, click the button below and you can send them some help through paypal.

Or of course if you could simply say a few prayers for the Nielson family. I know they will be appreciated.

This is one of the things that is so incredibly cool about blogs and the internet. Most of us would have no idea that this had even happened if it wasn't for the electronic connections we have with friends, all over the country and world for that matter. How neat that we can be there for each other in times of need.