Parent night with Brooke

Tonight was parent night in Brooke's preschool class. She showed me many of her "jobs": practical life (scooping and such), puzzles, an alphabet game, the spindle box (counting), and sandpaper numbers. She's very good at counting, easily interprets written numbers as quantities, and probably knows half to two-thirds of her letter sounds. She's doing very well.

It's neat to explore her classroom with her after doing so with Paige last spring. For Paige, it was a room full of activities that she'd largely mastered. For Brooke, it was a room full of challenges to come.

At a Volleyball Game

There was a bake sale at the women's volleyball game to benefit one of the players, so we came up for the game today. This was the result of me asking them to look at the camera. :)

I don't want Sloppy Joe!

"I don't want Sloppy Joe! I want to eat salad!!"

Brooke is really getting into salad. Paige...not so much.

2 wheeler

Last week the girls spent the week with Grandma and Papa as their summer camp was over, but school hadn't yet started. They spent a ton of time at the park and Paige learned how to ride her bike without training wheels!

Here's a video Papa took on 8/24 at their park:



And here's a video 2 days later once we were home:




Brooke also learned to ride her balance bike and was really picking up speed. Once we got home she started pushing and lifting her legs in the air to coast while balancing!

First day of school

I love looking back through the years at the different first day of school pictures:
2011
2010
2009

It's so hard to get both kids to cooperate when taking a picture. Especially Brooke. She will look anywhere but at the camera. Here's the best of the pictures of the 2 of them together:

Last year I started doing a favorites post for the first day of school. And now that Brooke is in official preschool she wanted a favorites picture too :)

Brooke's in charge

This is such a cute age for Brooke. She's been very talkative lately and keeping us updated with her thoughts on every situation. Last night, Brooke decided on her own to help set the table. There was an old napkin left on the table from earlier, so I told her she could throw it away. She takes it to the garbage and noted that the trash can was full. So she said to us "You should take out the trash. Tonight. You can wait until after we eat dinner...and dessert. But then make sure you take it out because it's full."

Vacation 2012

The week of July 4th we went on vacation. On Saturday we drove to our hotel in Philadelphia and then just let the girls swim in their indoor pool that night for awhile.

On Sunday, we went to Sesame Place! We've been there once before, 2 years ago. Brooke was only 1 year old the last time and still enjoyed it, but this year she could ride everything and had a blast. On Monday and Tuesday we toured around Philly and on Wednesday we spent the day back at Sesame and stayed for their fireworks. Then on Thursday and Friday we drove out to New York City and finally headed home on Saturday.

Here's the gallery of pictures and below I'll post some of my favorites: