We've had a pretty busy two weeks here...getting ready for school! Aurora started the second grade on Monday! Alex does not turn 5 until October so he still has another year of preschool.
The week before school, we met with Aurora's teacher, Mrs. M. I was very impressed by her. She was very organized and upbeat and was great with Aurora. She did a reading assessment on Aurora and she is reading at a third grade level, which is great! She also told us about a few things that Aurora is excited about. The kids all get hot air balloons that they get to raise every 100 minutes of reading they do. When they reach 1000 minutes they get prizes! They also have a chance to earn 'behavior bucks' for making good choices. If they don't make a good choice, they have to give one back. They can spend their 'bucks' in the classroom store at the end of the week for candy or small toys. It sounds like a lot of good incentive!
The Friday before school, my mom and I took Aurora to lunch and clothes shopping. We found a lot of great outfits for her to wear, and discovered that Aurora looks great in hats!
On Monday Aurora was excited to get all dressed up for the first day of school and had a great day! She discovered she had a few friends in her class that she already knew, and she even earned a few behavior bucks. Hopefully it will be a great year!
We got a new baby in the family!
Meet Ratchet.
We came across him at an Adoptathon at Petsmart a couple of weeks ago. He's 3 months old and has a very laid back personality. Alex carries him all around the house and he loves to be in the middle of whatever the kids are doing.
The other cats have taken it pretty well...they only grumbled the first few days.
Ratchet and Freddie the Ferret are the same size and love to chase each other and wrestle all around the house.
I think he's settled in with no issues.
Here is he is saying 'Hi'
Here are some of the latest photos take from Alex's camera...
The weekend of July 16/17th we made another trip to Colorado to implement Josh's Father's Day gift. We had originally planned to go in August but the racing company changed their dates and it would not have worked out with the start of school.
We hit the road on a Friday morning. Along the way we passed miles and miles of burnt forest from the Raton fire. :-(
Once we arrived at the hotel, can you guess what the first thing the kids wanted to do was??
On Saturday morning, we headed into Denver and went to the Denver Aquarium.
It is THE best aquarium I've ever been to, including the National Aquarium in Baltimore, MD!
Alex was a BIG fan of the shark tank, which was huge and had glass floors to see sharks underneath you too! He liked pointing them out, telling us what kind they were, and everything we needed to know about sharks!
They even had sawfish, which the kids thought were so cool!
They also put on this mermaid show, which was also a big hit....even with Daddy. :-)
Both Alex and Aurora got to touch rays in the tough tank. They could have fed them too, but the handlers said they were not eating that morning for some reason.
We stopped at had lunch at the AMAZING Aquarium restaurant!
Can you guess which awesome dessert we got?
While eating, the mermaids came to visit us again and I got this great video of them flirting with Alex!
On Sunday, we went to the Pikes Peak International Raceway for Daddy's big day! Here are some of the beauties out for driving.
Josh drove a Porsche 911, but said it didn't even compare to the F2000 car that he was able to drive as fast as he wanted, for 6 laps around the track! Not to brag (ok a little), but I got this awesome shot of him going over the line at 200mph!
Happy Daddy!
We spent the rest of the weekend at the pool and relaxing!
