she is dropping the Kate!

Oh no, Annie is trying to drop the Kate from her name. I think she plotted it this summer that when she went into third grade she would just go by Annie. I just might be crushed. Everything she has signed since school says "Annie" and when I asked her about it she rolled her eyes and didn't want to talk about it. I told her I was the mom and that it would break my heart if she just went by Annie and when I say "Annie Kate - she is Great!" it sounds better. So after talking to her today we will see how it goes.

Last night was Back to school night. Oh my this school means business. It was 3 hours long. First hour slide show from the first week of school along with talk from the principal about how proud they are of their test scores.
Second hour was with the homeroom teacher. When we walked in the room all the students had their front page of their pretend newspaper hanging on the wall. Oh my I was laughing so hard!

Here are some of the highlights:

Top story said, "Write a story about an important event in your life"
An Important event in my life was when I went to Europe. I went to 5 Countries. Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France and Austria. (she left out Lichestein but that's ok) I went to a mountain called the Swiss Alps. When I was on this trip I was 8. My favorite place was Switzerland.

Meet my Hero
My Hero is my Dad. He is my hero because he is nice to me and sometimes buys stuff for me at the store.

My favorite Food - Ling lings (from Costco)
My favorite Song - Sweet Caroline (this made me cry)
When I grow up I want to be - in the Military (ok this is so cute yet interesting)

Her teacher is amazing and used to be a gymnastics coach and then decided to get her master's and become a teacher. She has a total coach way of doing thing and motivating kids to do the impossible. She has a great website with all of their homework each night and schedules and such. They read 25 books this year and do a book report for each one. This will be challenging for Annie Kate but so great too.This photo is of Sally Jane 5 minutes after we got in the car from church on Sunday. She does not easily fall asleep in the car so this shows how tired she was - this could have been any of us.
On Sunday I brought down over 300 children's books that our local ward had collected to give to our primary children and for the community who comes to our ward building for tutoring nights during the week. (can you believe I did not take a photo) The back of our car was packed and we had to put some in Annie Kate's seat. During primary I told the kids that when we were done they could go through the boxes of book and start their own library. Two of the kids jumped up and ran to them (they didn't hear the when we are done part) all of them were so excited. When we were done it was so cute to see all the kids going through these books and filling their bags to take home. One family took an entire box and started a wonderful library. We still have a lot and will pass the rest out after linger longer on next Sunday.
Our Sunday experience has been on my mind a lot lately and we have had many incredible experiences. It is the one thing that tempts me to make my blog private (which means it is read by invitation only) so that I could write in more detail about some of our experiences. We have been doing this for 9 months now and I am amazed at how much this has fit my word of the year, "Stretch" I have been stretched for sure. Our time right now is up in the air how long we will be there which ads to thoughts in my mind. I feel like the more I know of needs of people the less I feel like we are doing or able to do. I had told this to a friend near by and she asked me what I thought the difference between helping and serving is. She gave me this incredible article about the definition of both. I realized that I have been doing more helping and not enough serving. Because I have been helping the inconvenience of what we do seems to be more apparent.

I seem to have been in a little bit of a rut of late and trying to pull myself out. Last week I was lucky enough to get a much needed spiritual uplift from Jill. She read this quote to me. It is timely for me in many areas in my life right now and I feel lucky to have a friend who would share this with me.

“There is nothing that we are enduring that Jesus does not understand, and He waits for us to go to our Heavenly Father in prayer. I testify that if we will be obedient and if we are diligent, our prayers will be answered, our problems will diminish, our fears will dissipate, light will come upon us, the darkness of despair will be dispersed, and we will be close to the Lord and feel of His love”

Robert D. Hales
I made it to Target today and found $2.50 swim suits in next year's sizes - total score! I came home to a voice mail from a friend to tell me that our Dora house (her I both got them 75% off this summer) has been recalled by Mattel, because it was made with lead paint. My girls play with this every day and will wonder why I am now taking it back.
yet I will say Polly Pocket has made a new appearance in our home and my little ones are hooked! We have not had these around the house because we always seem to have someone crawling or swallowing little toys. I bought a slew off ebay and now I am constantly changing rubbing pants for rubber skirts. Can't complain because the kids love them. (but I now my neighbor tells me some of these are on the recall list as well... jeesh!)