Grandpa's Boy

The other day we went out shooting with my dad.  It was Grandpa, Ethan, Katelee, me and Chris.  We had a good time being out in nature and enjoying each others company.  Afterwards we headed out to my sisters house for a family gathering and as you can see Ethan and Grandpa were quite tired.  It makes me laugh at how similar these two are.  Ethan wants to be just like his Grandpa and I'm just fine with that. 

Elementary School

Having kids in school I always imagined was going to keep our little family busy, but I think I may have underestimated it by quite a bit!  It seems like every week there is some different activity, fundraiser or parent meeting that we need to attend or participate in.  It has been nice having Ethan and Katelee in the same school, so at least it's all in the same place.  We have gotten to attend many fun family nights at the school such as the Thanksgiving program put on by the Kindergarten classes along with a Thanksgiving Dinner (at 7:45am, my kind of breakfast), The school Carnival, Holiday Family Craft night, awards ceremonies, many PEAK meetings (once a month meetings to go over what the kids will be learning that month so we can help them at home), PIE nights (PTA at night), Book Fair, Take Your Parent to School Day and also during reading week I was able to read some books to Ethan's class.  Along with all of these I work in the class at least once a month just so I can help out and so my kids can see that I value education.  On top of all of these different activities we of course have homework, reading and spelling words to work on. 

It has been quite fulfilling having Ethan and Katelee in school as a mother.  I feel like I have some way of actually gauging now the job that I am doing with my kids.  Of course I have quite a lot of work to do, but it is nice to see my kids progressing well in their education endeavors.  Katelee enjoys going to school and is doing a very good job in her class.  She plays well with all of the kids and has really come out of her shell.  It is great to see her run around with all of the kids at the afternoon recess.  She talks about school and her classmates and loves her teachers.  Ethan is your typical boy, he does not enjoy school.  He HATES homework.  He complains about doing anything related to school, especially sight words and writing.  But he does them and he is doing very well.  He has been getting spelling words for about a month or longer and so far he has gotten 7/7 on all of them.  It's a struggle, but I hold hope that something will catch his enjoyment and it wont be such a struggle.  A mom can dream right?  

Here are some pictures of some of the school things we have done so far this school year....        

 Thanksgiving Presentation...  My cute little Indians....

  

Holiday Tree decorations for the whole school....

 School Awards Ceremony.  Ethan received the Certificate of Merit for Attendance, Recognizes All Letters in the Alphabet, Counts from 0-100 and Academic Achievement.  Proud parent moment when he got all of those awards.  (Sad moment seeing that so many of Ethan's classmates didn't get many awards...)

 Ethan's project for the 100th day of school....  In true Vegas style!

 This was Katelee's project for the 100th day of school...  Don't know why Kate's not holding it...

Take your parent to school day.  This was a fun day at school.  It was a nice time but a bit sad to see that only two other parents came to school.  

It has been nice to work in Ethan's class, to get to know his classmates and his teacher.  At the beginning of the year Ethan had Mrs. Watkins, however she has since taken a leave of absence and he now has a new teacher Mrs. Regina.  Mrs. Regina is a great teacher who really tries to help the kids learn and progress.  From working in the class the kids know who I am and don't hesitate to ask me to look at their work and help them out.  Ethan enjoys having me there also and is so sweet to me.  The other day I came in at the beginning of school to read to the class.  When he called me at work after school he said, "I missed you when you left today."  Sweetest thing he ever did say!  

Kate's class isn't so big on having parents come in to help.  In the special class that she has they usually present more of a distraction than a help.  But Chris was able to go with her to Take your Parent to school day and she LOVED it!  She has asked why I don't go to her class often and I just have to explain that we aren't really able to right now.  But I cannot wait to see her in her class setting as well!  

Although school keeps us busy I am so excited to start this new chapter with my kids!  I hope to instill in them the love of learning and progressing!

Ethan's Progress Report

Speechless....  

That was the only thing I can think of to describe me when I saw Ethan's very first progress report!!!  I couldn't believe it, my Ethan, my crazy Ethan did fantastic!!!  He even got all E's....  And his teacher's comments of "He works hard to do his best, we appreciate his efforts." Nearly made me cry!  I was so excited we let Ethan get an actual Happy Meal from McDonalds, instead of the $ menu!  

What a proud Mother moment this was for me!  Way to go Ethan, I hope you continue to enjoy and excel at school!    

Ethan Turns SIX! (October 2012)

Ethan's Birthday was on a Sunday this year so we had his birthday party the Saturday before.  The Friday before his party Ethan got to spend the night at Aunt Anna, Uncle Enrique and Emily's house.  They of course spoiled him like crazy!  They took him to build a bear and let him do whatever he wanted the whole night and 1/2 of the next day!  Ethan was indecisive on what kind of cake he wanted this year.  At first it was Sonic the Hedgehog and then it was Mario or Waluigi...  Finally I suggested a baseball and he jumped on that one, thank heavens, because that was so much easier!  We went with the baseball theme, pretty easy for this household!

Ethan had lots of family and friends over for his party and he really enjoyed it!

 Ethan opened up all of his presents and loved them all....

 The next day was Sunday and his actual birthday...  Chris has meetings that start at 7:30 each Sunday so he wasn't there when Ethan woke up, but the rest of us were.  I wanted to get a picture of him that morning just so I could show everyone what a SIX year old looks like.  He has grown up so fast!!!  I cannot believe he is so old!  It literally seems like he was just born a few years ago, not six!!!!

 Ethan got to open up his presents from Mom and Dad and his sisters.  He was a little disappointed that he didn't get a big truck like he asked for, but I think he was pretty happy with what he did get!  (Poor boy had pink paper, but I had Katelee color on it with a blue and green crayon so it wasn't all girly!)

 Can you see the slight sadness of not getting a big truck...  When we put the legos together he realized that one of them was a big 4X4 truck and that made him much happier and it made me much happier too!!!  It's sad as a mother to disappoint your child, but that, I assume, is all part of lives lessons!!

My little mother heart has a love/hate relationship with birthdays.  I love them because my kids are so excited to turn another year older.  I love them because I get to spoil them and see how much they have accomplished in the past year.  But I hate them because my little babies are growing up.  I hate them because they show me how FAST life is flying by.  This 8lbs 14oz baby is growing so fast.  He is getting so tall and will soon be my height!  This little boy that use to hug me and love on me whenever I acted like I was crying, now just laughs at me!  Sure he is still sweet at times, but there are times when he does things just to bug us!  He is a character, funny and so smart.  He has so many friends at school and loves to go!  Ethan had a great birthday and is very excited to finally be SIX!!!!  Love you buddy! 

Katelee Turns Four (September 2012)

Katelee has finally turned four!  She is so happy to be getting older and it's making me so sad to see her keep growing!!!!

Katelee got a Cute backpack for her first day of school!

Kate also got a lot of clothes

She also got a Chalkboard and White Board stand and....

Lots and lots of clothes!!!!

 

Kate had a great birthday party with lots of family and friends.  She wanted a Barbie cake and I tried my best.  She liked it so I say it was a winner!!!  

Kate has done very well in school.  She is a perfect example for the kids in her class and she always gets smile faces on her weekly progress reports.  She has made friends with the kids in her class and really livens up when she is around them.  She does better around other kids since she has been in school too.  She is still shy but she will actually play at times, which is a huge thing for her!  She is a moody girl and at times drives us crazy with her crying and yelling and going from happy to fired up in 5 seconds....  But we love her all the same.  She can be so sweet when she wants to and one of my favorite things about Katelee is that no matter what, she will always say "love you" back.  When she gets up in the middle of the night and I put her back to bed I always say, "love you" and she will repeat it back to me.  Ethan never does that...  But Katelee ALWAYS does that!  She is still a mother hen to Ashlee and now that Ashlee has started getting annoyed by it Kate will say, "if you do that one more time I will put you in time out!"  It's hilarious!  Life wouldn't be the same in the Nelson household without Katelee and we are so grateful for her!  Love you girl!!!!

Merry Christmas-Funny

Hope Everyone has a Merry Christmas!  I hope to do a better job at updating the blog next year....

Love, Cousin It!!!

(The things I do at work to make people smile!  Who said Compliance is boring!)

Random Update...

So, It has been quite some time since I gave an update on the Nelson Family!  This household seems to be quite busy lately and it has shown in my lack of blogging.  So here we go...

On Labor day Chris and I both had the day off of work and so we took the kids to Red Rock for a hike.  We have never done this as a family but it is something we will be doing again!!!  We packed a lunch and really enjoyed the day.  Ashlee rode on Chris's shoulders the whole time and LOVED it!  Ethan and Kate were troopers for the hike and loved being in the wilderness...

 Here is a picture of Daddy and Ashlee finishing up the hike.  We let her walk and she loved that too!

 Ashlee is a huge lover of hats and dolls.  She will keep a hat on her head forever if she feels like it.  It has to be her idea though.  She loves to give hugs to her baby dolls and pushes them around in the stroller all the time.

 Once again, Ashlee is a character.  She loves to be silly and make people laugh.  One night she was being super grouchy and so I gave in and gave her a binky and the next thing I knew she had two of them and they were both in her mouth at the same time!

 Ethan loves him some boots.  Aunt Lisa buys him the nice boots and Ethan wears them down fast.  The last boots he got were brown and soon had a hole in the front so when Chris and I went on a date one night we stopped by Sams Town and got him some new ones for school!  He of course loved them and wears them everywhere.  We like the black ones because they seem classy enough to wear to church too!

 The other day while cleaning out Ethan's backpack for the day I noticed he had a progress report.  I was a little hesitant to look at it since Ethan can be pretty crazy!  Well how surprised was I to see this!  The one thing that stuck out to me was he got all "E's" I was one happy momma.  I told Ethan he could have a happy meal, that is quite amazing for me....  Way to go Ethan.  He has really done well with school and I'm so thankful for that!

 Just a silly picture of Ashlee.  We were out driving around the other day and pretty soon she went quite and this is why!

 We had an old family friend get married and we were able to attend.  I always like having a reason to dress up and dance.  These pictures were just silly ones we took.  As you can see Enrique fits into our family just fine!

 And here is our cowboy.  We put him in short, flip flops, dress shirt and tie because the wedding was outside.  His cowboy hat was in the van and when we got out he decided he also wanted to wear it.  So needless to say he stuck out but he loved it!  This is our little cowboy!

 Here is a better picture of all of us, except Emily.  I guess she wasn't feeling the happiness of the occasion.

 One night for family home evening we colored a sheet together as a family.  Even Ashlee got involved in it.  It was a lot of fun!

 I had a Compliance Conference in San Diego last month that was four days long.  I had three nights away from my family and that was tough.  However the view from my room and the solid nights sleep was pretty nice!  Here is the view from my room...

 And another...

 Dinner one night...

 And one night we walked down to the beach, which was very nice.  It was a little chilly, but fun!  I was however, very excited to get home to see my family!

 For Columbus day I had the day off and got to work in Ethan's class and then spend the rest of the day with the kids.  I was making dinner and I guess Ashlee was hungry because she climbed on up to the table and just gave me the look of, "feed me mom!"  We had to wait for dad to get home which didn't make her too happy...  But eventually she was feed and much happier!

We have been staying busy and hopefully I will get things all caught up soon!