School starts again

Some great friends of ours had an "end of summer/back to school" party.  Olympic themed party.  We had a great time!

I brought these Olympic ring cupcakes as part of the dessert.

Our family chose to participate in the Olympic games as from Venezuela.  Olivia made the flag.

Each family brought an olympic game (silly or fun) for everyone to participate in.  Our family brought a relay race.  Here I am making my pregnant body jump down the length of the yard, around the bucket and back.  Everyone else didn't it on one foot, but I choose to stick with hopping on two feet :)

Olivia earns her gold medal.

Carter earns his gold medal.

Haylee earns her gold medal.
Each of the children came up and were awarded with a gold medal and bags of goodies as their prize.

Carter got new bedding and pj's as party of his birthday present while he was in Utah.  He was so excited when we got home to Ohio and I changed his sheets.  He couldn't wait to go to bed that night!

Olivia on her first day of 3rd grade.

Carter and Olivia on their first day of school 2012.

Carter on his first day of 1st grade.

He was pretty excited to be able to eat lunch at school.

Olivia was excited to wear new clothes and shoes ;)

Ella, Olivia, Connor, Emily and Carter
At the bus stop on the 1st day of school 2012

Happy to see Mr. Ron as their bus driver again.  Heading to school on their first day back 2012.



Aaron participated in his first triathlon on September 1st.  He had been training for it since May so we were excited to finally have the day arrive!  Here is where it started...Pebble Creek, Muncie, Indiana.  See those tiny yellow dots waaaaaaay out by the trees on the side of the lake?  Yea, me neither.  Well, if you could see them, you'd know that is where the swimmers had to swim out to, around both and back to shore.  My jaw dropped when I actually saw how far that was.  I had no idea that 1500 meters (nearly 1 mile) was so far in the water.  Aaron hadn't had any training with swimming in the lake and he can now attest that it's WAAAAY  more different than swimming laps in a pool.  Aaron made it almost half way in the swimming portion before realizing that he wasn't going to be able to finish it due to swallowing too much lake water and having that asthma attack type feeling.  The support boats drove him back to shore and he waited for the swimmers from his heat to start coming to shore before taking off to finish the biking and running portion of the triathlon.



Luckily Aaron's heat started one at a time and not in a huge "herd."  They did get to all wear those super cute pink swimming caps.

finishing up the race!



Even though he didn't complete the entire triathlon (only 1/2 the swimming portion), we are so proud of him!  He completed the 26 mile bike ride and 6.2 mile run after being pretty disappointed on not completing the swim.  And we had a great time hanging out with the Stratton family while we cheered Rod and Aaron on!



Carter lost his 1st tooth!  That's always an exciting time to get your first visit from the tooth fairy!