Soccer

 I am officially a soccer mom. Landon started playing in a pre-k soccer league. He has had two practices thus far and he loves it. After his first practice he said, "Mom, I like soccer more than preschool! Can we have soccer more than preschool?" Haha. He plays every Thursday evening. His team only has four boys and the rest are girls, but he doesn't mind. His sports socks, shin guards and too-long jersey make him look adorable (at least his mommy thinks so!) Just the other day the kids came up with their team name, the Blue Panthers.

 His fan club. (Grandma was able to be there for his first practice!)

 Listening to Coach Chuck, who is amazing with the kids.

 Water break

 Luckily for us, 6-year-old Julia who is there watching her brother loves to entertain Katelyn.

 He's running back to the coach, but doesn't he look like a little football player here?

 And the infamous tongue. I guess Ben use to always stick his tongue out too when he was younger.

 Ball drills

 Game play

Sideline entertainment

Preschool!

Landon started preschool! He is enrolled at a local elementary school and goes four days a week in the afternoons. He comes home and conks out on the couch which is not so great for bedtime, but at least he is having fun! Because it is through the school district he also continues to have help with his speech therapy which is the main reason we have him enrolled in this program. Mom shares carpool duty with another mother in the ward so she only needs to drive two days a week.

 

 He really wanted a Spiderman backpack.

 Katelyn misses Landon when he is gone but it is nice to have a couple hours a day where she isn't being picked on. Mom will have to start "little kid preschool" with her since she is so eager to learn.

And this is a picture of Landon's classroom. Miss Jenny is his teacher and there are 15 students.

Grandma D visits

Grandma Davis was able to spend a week with us and she sure played with the kids. It was a nice week to have her here too because it was the week that Landon started preschool and had his first soccer practice.

Making cookies with grandma.

Mini Golf was fun.

 Daddy keeping an eye on the ball and the baby at the same time.

 Gotta love how his tongue always sticks out when concentrating.

A whole round of mini golf didn't quite keep Kate's interest so she started finding other means to entertain herself. (And this little gem who has not had a potty accident in almost a year decided she was having too much fun to find a bathroom and just squatted in the grass and "went like Landon." Yep, but she forgot to take her panties off. ).

 And Allyson and Mommy just hung out on the grass.

 She loved "investigating" the foreign object (grass) with her feet:)

 And since Ben had to work that week we found a few things to do on our own, like take the kids to the park and have a picnic lunch before taking Landon to preschool.

Thanks Grandma Davis for coming and spoiling the kids (and Ben and Kyra). We had a lot of fun and are glad you could spend time with us.

Idaho visitors

Grandma and Grandpa Anderson and Aunt Nancy made a short weekend visit to Colorado to see us. It was so nice because now that we live here it is just a 10 hour drive which is much better than the 30 plus hours it would have been to Tennessee. It was short and sweet so we didn't jam pack the two days with much.

We went for a walk along the Cherry Creek trail by our home and played at a park and then went to Ikea. They also went to church with us on Sunday. 

Grandma and Landon hanging out

Swinging (if you can't tell from her expression) is Katelyn's favorite thing to do and so she loved it when Aunt  Nancy or Grandpa pushed her.

The kids made them read TONS of books.  

 And little Ally got lots of loving.

Thanks for coming down! The kids loved all the extra attention and it was Grandpa and Nancy's first time seeing baby Ally. And Grandma was happy to see how big Allyson had gotten in the couple months since she had left us in Tennessee.

Allyson Ann is 2 months old.

We don't have any stats for height and weight since our insurance at Ben's new company doesn't kick in for another month (but she will be visiting the health department for her 2 month shots).

Allyson is beginning to smile which is oh so cute. Ben will spend a half hour on the ground with her getting her to coo and smile at him. She also is sleeping less during the day, especially the mornings. She does seem to designate the early afternoon as her time to be out cold though. We're still working on getting her to sleep through the night. Sometimes she can go with just one bottle feeding but often times it is two. She still does have a clogged eye duct that will hopefully fix itself before she turns one so surgery is not needed. Her hematoma is gone, but a hard bump has remained. But lopsided head and all she's still the cutest little baby girl around:)

We decided this Saturday would be a good day to start visiting some of the tourist destinations in our new area. We let the kids decide and they chose Tiny Town and Railroad which is a town made of miniature replicas and small trains to ride. It was just 45 minutes away at the base of the Rocky Mountains.

School is in session

"Knock, Knock. Anybody home?"

Landon was excited to see a windmill since he saw a lot of them on the move from Tennessee to Colorado.

She saw her dad and got a real excited look on her face

Look at that cute little grin.

And this Little Miss just vegged out in the stroller while Big Brother and Sister ran around miniature buildings and rode on mini trains.

* AND Mommy was very excited to get a chance to use her new SLR camera. Oh how she has missed it!

4th of July

We had a pretty low-key Fourth of July here. There were no fireworks because of  a fire ban due to the dry weather that has caused a huge fire in Colorado Springs that destroyed 350 homes. Our ward did have a pancake breakfast at a park so the kids did enjoy that.

 The kids were dressed in Red, White and Blue--but no smiles for these pictures.

 Allyson decked out for her first Fourth of July.

And here a just a couple other pictures to document our life.

 

Notice the Landon and Katelyn have their hands on their ears, that is due to the loud cries coming from their cute little sister that had enough of being strapped in a car seat. 

This was Allyson's (TOP)  first day at church at a month old. This is the same outfit Katelyn (BOTTOM) wore on her first day of church too.