Reading, Writing and Fuzzies

Owen is loving kindergarten. He comes home and writes his name and writes the alphabet and writes his number "22" - it's like a whole world of learning, writing, and drawing, has finally clicked and opened up to him and he's loving it. Today before school, he took a calendar off the wall and was pointing to Sept 22 and said "That's me!" Yep! You're #22! That's right! He's also been using his leap frog magnet backpack to draw words and practice letters. He's had this toy backpack for over a year but now he's discovered what it is for! This is his drawing of a dragon, and a little self portrait there in front of him holding a sword. So cute

He's pointing to the dragon's claws - "He had pokies."

Today I took a few photos as I walked him to the bus. He is using one of Joseph's old backpacks, which (since it is for a high school kid) almost goes down past Owen's knees.

It kinda looked like a turtle shell! It was super cute to see him skip up the street.

Today we also harvested our milkweed seeds. I've been excited about milkweed since 2012. We finally have lots of milkweed in our yard, but I am so sad that we didn't have any monarchs this year. I hope they are ok! I'm sure the fires in California have caused much damage to people, animal, plants, and insects. It's sad to think the monarch numbers are down so low. I have kinda stopped looking for eggs, maybe I'll look again a few times, cause there's still a chance! There's still hope. Ok, I'll go look and will pray and I'll keep planting milkweed and hope that they help the cycle somehow. I had like 8 pods - 3 from our yard and I grabbed 5 from some plants on the way to the bus. I took the seeds and then let the kids play with the fuzz.

We get snow in winter (real snow), spring (from out cottonwood trees), and in fall!

Blowing the snowflakes and fairies.

Snow ball fight!

Today was a rare treat after Owen left for school, cause both Peter and Daniel took a nap! I was kid free for like an hour! Owen left for school at 12:20 (bus comes at 12:34) then I came back and put Peter to bed. And around 2:00 Daniel put himself down for a nap on the couch. 

He got up early this morning, so I am glad he took a nap, or he would have gotten really cranky around dinner time. I'd like him to wake up early every morning so that I can have this hour of quiet, but Daniel usually sleeps in until 10. So we'll see if we can get our whole family on a good schedule. We've read scriptures earlier at night, which has been making us head to bed as soon as it's dark. We've had kids in bed by 10 two nights in a row! That's pretty amazing. They are all doing great. Tonight Owen shared his desk with Peter, which was so cute to see. 

I love these three little boys. 

Owen teaching Peter the ABCs

How wonderful that we did have a repeat of Monday's "good day!" My heart is full and thankful for the little joys and quiet moments of this blessed life.