Avery's First Day of 1st Grade!

Today was Avery's very first day of 1st grade and she was so excited! She was up early to eat banana muffins (we brought some to the teacher also- never too early to suck up ha!) and get dressed before we headed up to school to get settled in to her new class.  She didn't seem nervous at all and there were no tears shed this year by anyone!  This year is going to be a great one and we can't wait to see what lies ahead!

Week O' Fun

At the beginning of the week on Monday morning the girls and I sat down and made a list of our top 7 things we want to do during our VERY last week before school starts. There were some interesting ideas (Gracyn: "let's go to disney world!" Avery: "go ice skating and sing Frozen songs") and after whittling it down we came up with our top 7.

#1. Go to GattiTown

We met a crew of our buddies up there for lunch and games and after $15 in games, which resulted in enough tickets to buy 3 blow-pops we all left happy as can be. I didn't take any pictures except for this weird one, but a good indication of a good time is no time for picture taking!






#2. Go to the American Girl Store

This will mark the THIRD time poor Walker has been to the AG store in his short 10 months in this world but he was a good sport and the girls had a blast looking at everything. Avery had a giftcard from her birthday (in March!) that she still needed to use so we didn't walk away totally empty-handed.
Then we made a quick pit stop for a late lunch with just me and my babes at our favorite restaurant. The. Perfect. Day.










#3. Go to the Splash Park with our friends.

We met our whole crew up at the splash park and everyone had a blast. These kiddos are such an amazing group of kids, with all of our oldest are 6 years and younger. And we have quite the crew. With just the 6 of us mommies we have 21 kids, but they have all grown up together and are the best of friends. It's so fun to get to watch them all grow up together. I love my group of friends and their kiddos so much. I'm not sure what I would ever do without them!











#4. Have a camp-out (indoors)

We popped up our (sad) little tent, turned on Frozen, ate a dinner of hot dogs (because according to Avery that is "totally what camp out-ers eat") and got our camp out on. Done, done, and done.










#5. Have a cooking day




#6. Paint

Yikes! Not done yet

#7. Originally the girls said Go Bowling but changed their minds to Have a Swim Football-Watching Party at our friends house when the opportunity arrose (good choice girls)










I think we ended summer with a BANG and are ready to start the school year tomorrow. 1st grade here we come!

Fixer Upper

We've done a few little projects over the summer and I thought I'd brag a little about how well it turned out.
First one was repainting the vanity in the guest bathroom upstairs. All the vanities are in this builder grade wood color and we wanted something a little more updated so I thought I would try my hand at painting them myself. Here is the before


After


Before



After




It turned out pretty good! And the Home Depot guy told us to get bonding primer so we didn't even have to sand it or anything! Then we just picked a regular latex paint color, we picked white, and voila! Done! I still need to do each vanity in the girls' room and am contemplating doing a fun, funky color. Pink? Aqua? Eeeek we will see!

My new loooooong overdue project was painting our front door. It was again a builder grade wood color that did not match with the rest of the house and I have been wanting to get it painted it for a while and finally got my chance.
Before:




After: a much better, cohesive look.





Next up was our entry way. I don't have an official "before" picture but as you can see behind the kids we had absolutely nothing in our large entry. It was big and bare. (And that was before I painted that ugly door)





So we found a big, long entry table at World Market and then a giant mirror at Costco. It looks so much better and so much more pulled together.








And lastly was the kitchen. Again I don't have an official before picture but we had a small, round table that I had reprinted myself. Since we are now a family of 5 then this table was way too small so we upgraded to a bigger table, plus I finally picked some art I liked and we also finally hung drapes (not in the picture).




After: like I said we have drapes now too and it looks so much more "finished". I just love how it all turned out.




I made one small change in Walkers room also. He is too big for a changing pad now so I took it down and I got to hang up the awesome oar that Allison and Matt got him for Christmas. I love it!





Just a few small little changes but I think makes a hive difference in how pulled together our house looks. Fun stuff!

Meet The Teacher-1st Grade Edition

1st grade? How is that even possible? Kindergarten seemed like a novelty and so "new" but now 1st grade is supposed to be "old hat" except that I can't get over the fact that Avery is actually old enough for 1st grade. But she is, and she is so incredibly ready for it, however all she keeps telling everyone is that she's "pretty nervous because it's such a big grade." That is until about 4:30pm today when she found out who her teacher is....





And then immediately all that nervousness fell away. One of the Kindergarden teachers from last year moved up to 1st grade and Avery was really hoping to get into her class because "Mrs.Womack is always so fun and happy and I just know that she would be a great teacher." Not only was she blessed enough to get into Mrs.Womack's class, but she also got put in with 2 of her best girl buddies from her class last year and two of her soccer teammates/friends! It could not have turned out better, so we were pretty pumped to head out, just her and I, to Meet the Teacher tonight. She got to see al her friends, hug her new teacher, walk around her new hallway, and at the end declared she was "zero percent nervous now." ;-) perfect!




We had planned on going shopping for a 1st day of school outfit but Avery reminded me that I bought her a new dress already at Target that would "work fine for the first day" and that she would much rather go to the movie anyway. You don't have to twist my arm much to go to the movies, so off we went to see Planes and eat lots of popcorn.....




And snuggle up with my big girl for a bit and just focus all my attention on her.




Then we headed home for a little Mommy/Avery sleepover which didn't last long before she passed out.
Kindergarden, 1st grade, 12th grade.... Any grade..... She will always be my sweet baby girl.




Looking forward to an amazing school year!

WMW is 10 Months Old!

What You Did This Month- 10 months old

Weight: ?

Length/Height: ?

Head Circumference: ?

Diaper Size: Size 3

Clothing Size: 9-12 month

Sleeping Habits: still not the best napper every, only napping 45 minutes to an hour twice a day but we can 't complain too much because he goes to bed about 6PM every night and sleeps until 7AM.  

Eating Habits: Walker has not met a food that he doesn't like I don't think.  he likes it all- baby food, table food, you name it.  Its great except he hunts you down every time you sit down to eat and makes this clicking sound which means he wants a bite.  Honestly he wants to eat all day long.  It's pretty impressive.  He a Winston boy alright.  

Milestones: Walker is so mobile.  He crawls everywhere fast and pulls up on everything.  He has no problem at all stinging on his own for 10 seconds at a time and is very controlled in his movements.  I have no doubt he will be walking before his first birthday.  Yikes! 

Walker says ma-ma, dada, bye bye and dohhh (dog).

Walker got his first shiner this month.   He fell on a chair at my grandmothers house and hit his cheek so hard that the bruise crept right up to his eye.  Little scrapper!

Walker is into EVERYTHING!  We never had to really baby proof for the girls but Walker loves him some electrical outlets so I had to go buy outlet covers for the entire house.  His new favorite pastime is pulling all my tupperware and plastic cups out of the cabinets while I am cooking.  It keeps him busy so I can't complain but he makes a mess faster than anyone I know!

Walker is giving kisses but is pretty  particular about who he gives his smooches away to, usually saving them only for his Mommy and sisters.  

Likes/Dislikes:

- His #1 love is his Mommy.  He wants me to hold him and be near him all day long.  If i get out of his line of sight he just melts down completely.  He rarely will go to anyone else, except Daddy.  

- Walker is so playful and loves for people to chase him.  

Slow Down Summer

This week has been crazy busy, which seems a contraindicative of what summer should but for some reason we had so many things fall onto this week.

Walker is still pretty congested and doing his breathing treatments, although I do not think they are helping much at all, which is what I told the nurse on Monday.  She said to keep monitoring him and let them know if I become concerned.  Luckily this little guy is pretty happy, albeit pretty neglected on his nap schedule this week due to Avery's morning tennis camp and afternoon cooking camp (NOT initially scheduled for the same week #thirdkidproblems), however I think I'm going to check in with the pediatrician again tomorrow just to see what she thinks about him going on his THIRD week of gross, gunky congestion.

What would a week at the Winston house be without a trip to the doctor?  We took Avery to an orthopedic doctor due to her recurrent ankle sprains.  She mainly has them on her right ankle but has been having them on both sides since April.  Since soccer and dance are starting back up soon we wanted to make sure there wasn't something serious that we were missing.  Luckily she looked pretty good, scary part (but not serious) is that her ankle bone has slight bony changes due to the extreme amount of ankle sprains she has had in a short period of time. We were instructed to invest in a good high-arch support shoe, begin rehab exercises and stay away from trampolines and bounce houses for at least a month.
Can you tell Avery was sooooo disappointed to have to go show shopping? ha!  $81 later and these shoes better make a big difference!

Don't let all the health updates fool you though, they have not stopped us one bit.  We have had sleepover...


after sleepover (Gracyn's very first sleepover of her own!).


And have spent a lot of time going from friends houses, to cooking camp, to stopping for ice cream breaks.........


And then finally slowing down every night to snuggle up to a good game of Candyland, which Macy quite obviously won.  LOL.


It's hard to believe we are coming down to our last few weeks of summer and although I like being busy this is our last week of scheduled camps and I am looking forward to a few slow, lazy, stay-in-you-PJs kind of days around here in the next few weeks to gain up the momentum we need to begin the crazy back-to-school schedule.  #slowdownsummer #notreadyyet