Happy 6th Birthday Nora!

Nora turned 6 on Saturday, March 12th. She celebrated with 10 of her friends at a gymnastics party held at our park district community center. Barbie was the other star of the party as she was the star of Nora's special cake and the theme of most of the gifts she received from friends and family! The older brother and sister went to the party reluctantly, but you'll see they had no problem participating once they got warmed up. :)

Thanks to all for the special cards, gifts and phone calls to Nora. I think Nora looks older since she turned 6, but she told me, "I don't feel any older. I still feel like I'm 5 and a half."

Fall 2010 - almost caught up!!

Avery is 11 on October 11th, her golden birthday

Avery and her friends (plus Nora) getting ready for laser tag

Brady is 13 on Oct 24th

We officially have a teenager. Thanks to all of you who wrote special letters to Brady. We presented him with his book and he was quite overwhelmed. It will definitely be a special keepsake for him.

Brady and his crew of friends (oh, and Nora's there too, of course) at his sleepover party

Fall birthday parties are big at our house with Avery and Brady having birthdays in the same month. Avery had her friend party at Chaser's Laser Tag and Brady invited 9 friends from the 7th grade to sleepover, eat pizza, play video games and drain the fridge in the basement dry of soda. There wasn't much 'sleep' happening at that sleepover.

Looking back - part II

Here are some more snapshots of the last year...

Nora and Daddy at the last day of preschool party

Brady and Nora at the air and water show

The Blue Angels at the Chicago Air/Water show (our annual tradition)

B, A and N at the Jumpers airstrip in Hinckley, IL (also an annual trip!) - yes, Brady is much taller here than 6 months ago. :)

All the crazy kids with Scott waiting for the sky divers to parachute down

Looking back - part I

In no particular order, certainly not chronological or with tags/captions, here are a few things that happened in 2010...

MaMa visits in May for a dance recital and piano recital

Avery at her first piano recital


Avery - Recorder concert for 4th grade at school

Mother's Day 2010

Nora - at her dance recital (ballet/tap)

Really, this is the back to school pic...

Nora - Kindergarten, Avery - 5th grade and Brady - 7th grade

Back to school again

Guess what - the kids went back to school...again! Maybe I should just call this the "school days" blog. That way I don't have to feel guilty when I don't post anything for an ENTIRE YEAR. :)

(BTW - this isn't even a back to school pic. Just some random spring break picture that I found quickly on this laptop).

Back to School

Brady and Avery headed back to school over a week ago. Avery's teacher's name is Mrs. Krug and she has quite a small class this year (12 girls and 7 boys) compared to previous years. They build a new elementary school in Geneva and so the school size and class sizes at Western Avenue Elementary have been cut in half. She has lots of friends in her class and is already preparing to do a 'book talk' the day after Labor Day weekend.

Brady is adjusting well to middle school. He gets to sleep in later and catches the bus a block from our house at 8:10am (Avery's still up early and walking to school by 7:40am). The first few days of 6th grade were kind of stressful with learning all the new teachers and finding classes in a new school. He has 3 lockers to keep track of - one for books, one for his violin and one for P.E.

Nora does not start her preschool until this Wednesday, 9/9. She will go on Monday, Wed, Thursday and Friday from 9-noon. Scott took her last week to meet her teachers, Mrs. Bloom and Mrs. Gift, and they had fun doing a scavenger hunt around her classroom.

It was raining on the first 3 days of school this year, so we did our traditional back to school pics inside:

I have a very light schedule for September because I backed out of a client/project that was scheduled to start in mid-August in Oak Brook. The client changed the travel requirements and it just wasn't the right fit for our family. I'm still facilitating several Change Leadership workshops for PepsiAmericas through October 6th and am hoping to find a new consulting gig by mid-October when we return from our Disney trip. Managing 3 kids at different schools, with different schedules, lots of papers and homework, and driving 6th graders to school when they miss the bus, has felt like a part-time job to me!

We are enjoying some extra summer-like days this weekend and Nora is tugging on me right now to go to the pool party at Eagle Brook! I'll post some pics of Nora's first day at preschool later this week.