Raine turned six on Sunday!

She waited all day long for Daddy to get home so she could open her presents. Our home teacher and his wife (Brother and Sister Jeppson) came to help us celebrate too.

Raine had been wanting new princess shoes ever since the ones that the Eastman’s gave her for her second birthday broke. After MUCH looking, I finally found a pair that were big enough to fit her 8-inch long feet! She was thrilled.

She is always happy to get crafting supplies. It’s the one gift that she’s sure to love every time!

And here is her birthday song:

Everything Raine does is cerebral in nature: reading, writing, imagining, and pretending. The best word to describe her is CREATIVE! The glimpses we get into her little mind are always full of colorful new worlds and ideas that, no doubt, span far greater scenes than can possibly be imagined by someone who isn’t experiencing it with her. I love when she explains something going on in her mind and I recognize it as a twist on some reality that she has interpreted as only a child can!

Raine is always reading. She will finish two Magic Tree House books in a single day when we don’t have much going on. Any spare minute she can find she pulls out a book and starts flying through the pages. Then she will tell us about the wild adventures and historical events that she learned about.

Raine is still a social butterfly who loves being with friends. She is kind to those around her and confident in her abilities. She is always looking for ways to help the poor or to simply brighten someone’s day. It is fun to watch her engage with the world and learn so many new things. She is a brilliant, funny, sweetheart of a girl and we really love her!

Today Carter gave his first talk in Primary and he did awesome! He’s not a real center-of-attention kind of kid so I was concerned that he would refuse to get up there or at least refuse to say anything. But when his turn came, he walked up to the front and loudly repeated his talk without hesitating.

Here is the talk he wrote about gratitude and being thankful:

Heavenly Father and Jesus want us to be thankful. They have given us a lot of blessings and we need to say thank you.
When you tell someone thank you, it makes them feel good because they know that you like what they gave you.
I am thankful for the scriptures and the Book of Mormon. I’m glad that I have a family so I’m not alone.

I’m not sure what prompted that last line, but he was very serious when he said it to me so I wrote it down. I think it provides a little insight into his personality though. He always wants one of us to play with him and he loves being cuddled, so it makes perfect sense that he doesn’t like to be alone. Thinking back, it was really hard on him when we moved Raine into her own room. He didn’t want to be in the room by himself and always wanted one of us to lay on the floor next to his toddler-bed while he went to sleep. (Fortunately, he has a great dad who would lay there with him on the hard floor.) The more I think about it, the more examples I can think of that show how much he hates to be alone. And not just anyone will do, he wants to be with his family. It’s something I’ll cherish more consciously now. After all, it’s doomed to change eventually!

Here is a video of Carter repeating his talk after church. It was OBVIOUSLY not his idea to do it!

Carter FINALLY started school this Tuesday. He was extremely excited to get back and play with his best friend Kaden. When they saw each other at meet the teacher last week, they couldn’t decide whether to hug or what! It ended up being a chest bump half-tackle as they compared super-hero t-shirts. Little boys are so funny!

One of Carter’s friends from church is also going to be in his class this year. Carter is excited to have Jack be a church friend AND a school friend now.

I’m excited to see Carter progress this year. Raine never attended pre-K, she went straight from the three-year-old class to kindergarten, so this is new territory for us. But it will be good for Carter, hopefully he will improve his writing skills!

{Carter calls that smile his ‘happy hulk smile.’ He does it every time I take a photo of him and it always cracks me up. It all started when he began using his money to buy super-hero action figures. I won’t let him have anything with a mean or angry-looking super hero but finding one with a happy or even just neutral-face is not as easy as one may think — especially when it comes to the Hulk. We finally found one with a smile on its face and Carter calls it his happy hulk. For some reason, he has decided to start imitating its smile now. Whatever, at least he’s smiling instead of hiding from the camera!}

Here is a cellphone photo-dump of random summer fun:

June 9 FHE at Mountasia playing mini-golf and riding go-carts

June 11 one of the many library summer reading club shows. Raine got to hula-hoop during the rhythm show.

This kid can sleep any time, any place!

June 20 Friday nights are family date night

July 3 convertible ride to the doughnut shop with our home teacher, Brother Jeppson

July 3 there were plenty of crafts

July 9 Carter’s free birthday cookie at Barnes and Noble

July 9 we made plenty of trips to the children’s museum and even rustled up some cattle while we were there

July 11 Elsa made an appearance at the water park

July 16 exploring an enormous play-scape

Aug 3 Raine and my matching maxi skirts

Aug 4 after all the PBS Wild Kratts the kids watched this summer, they just had to have creature power suits and discs

Aug 11 at the pool . . . we spent a lot of time at the pool!

Raine and Elyse

Sept 6

Sept 1 our annual trip to Austin for Ophelia’s birthday

Monday was Raine’s first day of school. She was bursting with excitement — she *LOVES* school. Her teacher is Miss Cepeda, a brand-new teacher who graduated from Temple before earning her education degree at UNT. There are 13 kids in Raine’s class, some from her class last year and some from the other kindergarten class. So far she loves everything about school, even PE!

(A funny side note: just like last year, my camera battery died while trying to take 1st day photos. Fortunately, I have learned my lesson and now have a back-up battery! But really, what are the odds that it would run out of juice on the first day of school two years in a row?)

We had a little party for Carter with our pool-friends a few days after his birthday. It was, of course, super hero themed. I made capes for the kids and they decorated masks.

Notice how the girls are much more into the capes and masks than the boys are?

Carter’s friends knew exactly what he liked . . .

Williams, Carter, Riley, and Jack

swords and superheros!

Raine, Savannah, William, Carter, and Riley

After eating cupcakes and opening presents we turned them loose!

Raine and Elyse

Riley and Alice

Harvey

First order of business: open the swim-related presents.

Second: head to NRH2O to try out the new swim goggles that Grandma Anderson sent.

That new spider-man towel was warm and fuzzy.

This little video of Carter swimming is an accurate depiction of what he looks like the entire time we are at the pool. He spends most of the time with his head under water, diving to the bottom and doing flips. He is such a fish!

After we got home, he opened the rest of his presents.

Raine always seems to give the best presents.

Love this!

When dinner was over, we sang happy birthday and ate cake.

This video of us singing happy birthday (twice) perfectly captures the many moods of Carter! Raine told him to blow out the candle, then she was pantomiming to him to not blow it out and he didn’t like it — hence the angry eyes and muscle arms. His face when the candle burned out the second time was classic; and if all else fails, act silly!

Here is Carter’s spotlight sheet from Primary, it pretty well sums up how he feels about things:

Carter is such a cute little nut! He is still a snuggler and momma’s boy but also loves to be rough and rowdy. He isn’t much of a socialite and prefers to stay home, but he makes friends easily when he wants to. I love when Carter comes up to me while I’m getting ready and says, “Mommy, you look very beautiful.” He can be the sweetest little guy in the world! He is also turning into a pretty good little negotiator. Anytime I want him to do something that he doesn’t want to do, we negotiate. He’ll usually ask, “What do I deserve if I do this?” In June, I had signed him up for a soccer class at the Rec and he told me that he wasn’t going to have anything to do with it. So the morning of the first class we started negotiating. Two hours later, we had finally come to an agreement: he would go if I bought him his very own pack of gum! Of course he loved the class and didn’t require any incentives to attend the next week. It’s always amusing to see what his “price point” will be — a treat, gum, toy, money, video game time, PBS Kids video, sometimes it’s even just watching a Mormon Ad, I never know going into it what will strike his fancy!

We spent Independence Day down in Corsicana, at the Walker’s grandparent’s house. It was originally planned as a bishopric retreat, but the first-counselor’s family couldn’t make it so it ended up being a fun get-away with the Walkers and Eastmans. Ashley’s parents own a beautiful home on Richland Chambers Reservoir and they hosted us for a fantastic day on the lake!

Raine loved the boat and tube, even though she fell off once. She spent the entire day on the water.

Raine and Boston

Carter eventually consented to a short ride in the boat.

But as soon as it was over, he booked it back up the house . . .

. . . to the baby pool! He spent the entire day in there.

Once everyone was sufficiently worn out, they vegged in front of a movie.

Raine and Cade

After sunset we all sat on the dock, watching the fireworks along the shore. None of the kids like the loud explosions of fireworks, so it was perfect for them to watch from a distance. They enjoyed the glow sticks more than the fireworks anyway!

Daddy canceled most of his Sunday meetings on Father’s Day so the kids actually got to see him. It was great!

Raine gave him a tie that she picked out herself — purple, of course.

Carter gave him some neon-green superman socks that he picked out!

I am pretty sure that this was his favorite part of the day!

The first week of June, Raine had a week-long camp with her new first-grade teacher. After the first day, Mrs Gwinner told me what a great reader Raine is. I just nodded, thinking “Yeah, she knows how to read.” But not fully comprehending it . . . until I went over to the front office on the final day of her camp and picked up Raine’s Stanford Achievement Test scores. Then I realized how good she really is! She scored in the 99%-ile in the nation on the reading section. Her grade level equivalent is 3.5. Apparently she’s a little advanced for her age!

I laughed looking back at the school year, remembering how I used to ask DJ, “why aren’t the books they’re sending home getting any harder? She can read them without even trying.” I guess the books were grade-level appropriate, it was just our little reader who wasn’t! But without anyone to compare her to, we had no idea that kindergartners don’t normally read Magic Tree House chapter books.

Seeing her reading score also reminded me of all the comments I got about her not crawling when she was a baby. “She is going to struggle with reading because she didn’t crawl” they told me. “She won’t be a good speller.” “Crawling develops the neck muscles and [blah, blah, blah] she will struggle in school.” I didn’t buy into it then and now I’m VERY glad that I didn’t. I could have done a lot of worrying . . . for nothing!

The score that didn’t surprise me . . . listening! Apparently I’m not the only one she doesn’t listen to!!

I also picked up her final report card:

All I can think is, “thank heaven we started her a year early!” She loved school this year and would have been bored out of her mind if she would have waited until she was 5 to start.