Makes me smile

 Both of the boys can get themselves started swinging and Noah just learned how to keep himself going! He is SO PROUD of himself for figuring this out.

Farm Play

 Sunday evening we celebrated all the summer birthdays with my extended Epp family.  It was hot, but it was also wonderful to see the kids play together. The girls worked together to travel across the farm from the cows to the swing set.

 The boys played soccer and frisbee and pretended to drive the bus and never seemed to stop moving.

 We celebrated little Delaney's first birthday!

 Levi was completely consumed with the magic of a birthday card that played music. He kept listening to it over and over.  It's amazing to watch him enjoy music.

 It was great to spend time celebrating and playing together.

First Day for Levi

Levi was very excited for his first day of preschool. When Noah told him he'd go to preschool today Levi yelled, "Yay! Yay! Yay! Yay!"

I even got Noah to stand in a couple of photos (with his microphone, of course...)

Levi reported that he had a great time at preschool. He had bananas and pretzels for snack, they read a story, sang songs, played outside and he found out where to put his back pack. He said it was fun and he wants to go back on Thursday.

Reunited

Two years ago these two were kissing in a wheat field

last night they were reunited. Levi and Isabelle had a wonderful time together. The two of them could wordlessly go from playing independently to playing together and back again.

My friend Tonya brought her two kids over to play last night. It was great to catch up with her again and watch our kids play. Her oldest, Cole is Noah's age and Izzy is Levi's age.

Great games of tennis were played in the backyard.

Cole and Noah ran around constantly chasing each other or finding something new to play. It was pretty tough to catch them still long enough for a photo.

The older boys were better at tennis, but they also excelled at hitting the ball over the fence.

It was good to catch up with my friend and it was fun to watch the boys reunite with old (but at the same time new) friends.

Oh the corn...

Dry land corn has not done well in our part of Kansas this summer. We've seen 100 degrees on 46 days so far and with little rain in between it didn't give the corn much of a prayer to prosper into a high yielding crop.

(Bonus points if you can spot the plastic purple swimming pool in the picture above. Dad hauled it out of the field to the ditch and this afternoon we noticed it had been picked up.)

Thank goodness for crop insurance or my dad would be feeling more pressure and stress than he already is. But I don't think there's a farmer out there who prefers to get a payment from insurance over harvesting a good crop.

We got a couple rides on the combine in this brief corn harvest. Most of the corn fields won't see the combine this year. So we took full advantage of these fleeting harvest moments.

Levi took the picture above and the one below.

Noah had a great time riding to the Canton elevator with Uncle Bruce on Friday afternoon. He waltzed into the house with a can of Coke and smile from ear to ear.

There's no shortage of dust around here these days.

It was hot today and it'll be hot tomorrow. Can you tell which one of these three has been working the hardest? Can you tell which one had been outside for only a couple of minutes and still has tons of energy?

Levi too?

Yep, Levi's starting school too! Preschool that is. We had an open house at his preschool tonight. They were excited to see the boys they go to daycare with - Kacen, Koy and Kreed!

Cutting takes tongue-in-cheek concentration.

Levi and Sam found there way up to the loft while Gayle introduced the preschool families.

Gayle and Levi had a nice visit while I filled out paper work and Levi chowed down on snack mix.

It took 3 attempts for us to get out to our car at the end of the open house. On our first try Noah scraped his leg coming down from a tree and we had to go inside and tend to the wound.

On the second attempt, Levi realized he had forgotten to look at the play equipment outside and NEEDED to see it.

Finally, we made it to the car on our third try. Levi is excited to start preschool on Tuesday morning. I'm certain he'll have a wonderful time with Gayle and Aunt Pat!

Turning the page

Oddly enough, it felt like today came up from out of nowhere. We've been anticipating Noah's first day of Kindergarten for a long time, but still it seemed like it was suddenly here. Suddenly, our schedule and way of thinking is having to change. Lucky for us, Noah was excited to start school, although he was pretty emotionless this morning while he didn't eat his cereal.

It got a bit chaotic at our house just before we needed to leave and I wanted to snap the traditional first day of school picture outside our front door but this was as good as it got. The boys were wiggle worms and time was ticking away.

At least I got this photo of Noah once we got to school.

Just inside the door we found grandma and several other familiar faces. Since Noah was a Kindergartner he was allowed to go to his classroom a bit earlier then the bigger kids. The teachers were busy with other kids, so I got to help Noah find his hook and name tag.

And then we found his seat.

Here's Noah's teacher, Mrs. Janzen. She was my first grade teacher.

And this is Mrs. Booton an aide in the Kindergarten room.

Kids and parents piled in. All the kids seemed eager and ready for a new adventure. It was a fun space to be in this morning.

So, it was time for me to leave. Just before I left, Noah asked me to stay, but he said it very quietly and I reassured him that he was surrounded by friends.

It feels like a significant page has been turned and that there's no turning back. We've got a kid in school. Soon it will become normal and the feelings I have today will be forgotten. Thankfully, I held my emotions in until I made it out of his classroom. But then I ran into my mom and Noah's music teacher and somehow I couldn't keep the tears away. It wasn't hard to leave him there. I trust everyone in his school and I know he'll do great and have a wonderful time. I think the emotions come because now I have to start learning to let go more than I've ever had to.

The good news is that Noah had a wonderful morning at school. He had PE, music, milk break (chocolate milk!), learned about his classroom and had time to play. He gave school an enthusiastic thumbs up and is very willing to go back tomorrow!

We're ready

Noah's back pack is stocked with crayons, Kleenex, markers, paint shirt and more. His clothes are laid out on his floor. He wants to eat toast for breakfast. I think we're ready.

He has grown-up this summer in so many subtle ways. He's cracking jokes, thinking through problems to find a solution, anticipating what will come next, counting to 100, obsessing about what time it is, and seems to think that going to kindergarten is no big deal. His legs are longer, his muscles are stronger, he rarely makes a mess when he eats and he can take care of his hearing aids by himself. I'm in awe of him sometimes. How in the world has he become such a big boy?

But, there are still many moments that remind us he's only 5.

So tomorrow, I'll take him to school and a new chapter will begin.

Last Evenings of Summer

Summer is drawing to an end this week at our house. Noah starts kindergarten tomorrow, Levi starts preschool on Tuesday. The rhythm of our life will need to change. But, we had three evenings this week to enjoy before we turned our focus to school.

Monday the temps were pretty mild and we took advantage by mowing our lawn and then heading over to the Arboretum.

Noah kept an eye out for this guy:

I couldn't get a photo of this huge snapping turtle with anything near by to reference its size. It was big - can you see how thick its legs are? Yeesh.

Last night we watched "Wipe Out" together. It was 100 degrees outside all evening, so we didn't bother to go out. Tonight it wasn't quite that hot, but our boys were tired (which automatically equals CRANKY) so we had to get creative. Our Playdoh stash hadn't been played with all summer, but tonight it certainly got a work out.

Too bad the "end of summer" doesn't seem to be the end of really stinkin' hot weather.