First Day. First Grade

The first day of school has arrived and we finished everything on our summer fun list, except hiking to the T! 

Kasen is in first grade and has a new teacher named Miss Guild. Tai has a new teacher at A Step Ahead Preschool too named Mrs. Katie. The first day of school was also Kyle's first day working his new DEU position! He gets to drive an unmarked car and wear street clothes and chase drugs and stuff. He's super excited about it and we are super excited for him. Go Kyle!!

Tai's new word recently is "dazz-a-ling". She painted all of her own finger and toe nails the other day, each a different color, and then came to ask me if I thought she looked dazzling!

We picked our biggest watermelon out in our garden that day too. 

Kasen got to put together an About Me bag to take to school and these are the things he picked. I guess his most favorite color now is red and that is his Fire Phoenix Pokemon that he sleeps with every night. He still loves Spiderman and his favorite part of summer was riding on the tube.

His favorite food is Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches and he is very much Mr. Literal. Jokes are very hard with Kasen because he takes everything 100% literal. Whether it's the "Room of No Return" or "Activator" berries or he will believe you.

Over the summer he learned that googol is the highest named number. It is 1 followed by 100 zeros and now it's his favorite number. Everything is a googol now. He has now decided that he wants to be a computer programmer when he grows up.

He LOVED his first day of first grade. In his prayers that night he said, "I'm thankful I get to go to school. I'm thankful I get to eat lunch at school cause they make the best foods. I'm thankful that I get 2 recesses." He walked in after school and said, "I love first grade." Makes me so happy to hear. I hope he continues to love and have good experiences at school.

It only takes me 40 minutes to pick him up after school. The pick up lines are insane!

Kasen got to go on his birthday date with Grammy this month. He had a sleepover at her house and also got to go to Boondocks, which he now says he likes better than Fat Cats! He's also been getting Grandma Mel to play Just Dance with him. He's loving Just Dance right now.

The last week of summer we packed in all the play dates too. Camden and Gemma both came over to play, we went to the park with Knox and the Juarezs, we went to the park with the DeVaneys, we went to the library and then we did babysitting swaps for date night with the Day cousins too! It was an exhausting party all week long. I said something about Tai and Gemma playing house and Tai was quick to correct me that they were not playing house, they were playing family!

For our date night Kyle took us out to eat at Backdoor Burger, where he tried a burger with raspberry pepper jelly, jalapeños AND peanut butter. Crazy right?! We got ice cream and went to Comedy Sports too.

Kasen loves Grandpa Kelly's new puppy, Wayne.

One of the last things on our summer fun list that the kids made, was to have a picnic at the temple. It's been quite a while since we had a picnic during our temple date so we went for a picnic. And I never would have expected the amount of mess that 2 kids can make with a couple burgers. Oh. My. Gosh. At least they finished all the food we bought for them.

I've been thinking this week about a quote I read from Dave Butler that says,

"GOD IS NOT AN ALL OR NOTHING GOD."

And how much I love that thought. It's something I haven't always thought about, but my perspective has shifted over the past few years. I used to see others and think, "If someone has a testimony of living prophets then why wouldn't they follow all of the prophet's counsel?!"

But people don't have to believe everything or nothing at all. There is a gray area where individuals need to receive their own spiritual confirmations of what resonates with their own happiness, but there is also room for EVERYONE living in the gray area in God's Kingdom too. He is ecstatic with ANY amount of our hearts and our faith that we have to give Him and will work miracles with it. We each fall short and how grateful I am for God's grace and mercy that make up the difference DURING our trying to do all we can do. 

Also, Kasen found out that the primary gives out treats for every Article of Faith they memorize and pass off so he's already memorized the 1st and 2nd Articles of Faith! Tai got in on it too and already passed off her 1st one. She was so proud of herself and I was pretty impressed too.

Now we just need to figure out how to get them to be quiet and reverent during back to school Fathers Blessings.

Cousin Dakota Jo was born on August 7th! So we got to go meet her and be shocked at how tiny she is. Like you can barely even tell that you're holding her. Kasen let us know that #1. She looks like a doll and #2. She has a boys name. We explained that some names can be for a boy or a girl. Dakota was actually named after Lyndsey's twin brother that died when he was 4 months old. 

During the last year we have had 4 new cousins born and we are loving it! Kyle's side of the family has actually had 3 weddings AND 3 new babies in the last year, but only Lyndsey has had both! 

And now the Liddiard cousin score is:

Girls: 13

Boys: 3