I have a kindergartner

The day has finally come. Brendan officially started kindergarten today and he couldn't have been more excited. Me? I had a crazy amount of nervous, excited, happy and sad butterflies in my stomach all morning. I was a whole mess of emotions but I somewhat expected that. My firstborn going off to school for the first time is a big deal!

If you can't tell, he was more than ready to go. His teacher, Mrs. Lo, asked them to wear their favorite t-shirt to class today and so Angry Birds Space shirt it was. Not my ideal first day of school outfit but boys don't really care about that kind of stuff.

 I had to get one of me and my big boy to commemorate this day.

I love this one because Alex photo bombed it. He was not so thrilled about Brendan going to kindergarten. The only thing he did like was seeing the school buses that were outside the school. Everything else, not so much. He knew something was going down and that it did not revolve around him, so we was a bit cranky. Ah, two year olds (can you believe he'll be two in 10 days!!!).

Chris and his mini-me.

 He looks so little compared to his giant backpack. I was sooooo glad that we were able to convince him to get a normal backpack and not one with SpongeBob, Cars, or Star Wars all over it though.

This was outside of his school. Once he saw how many kids there were, he got a little overwhelmed but as always, he was a trooper and got in line to wait to go inside. And somehow I managed not to hover too much or cry (which was seriously a miracle). The only moment I thought I might lose it was when he turned to find me in the crowd of parents and said "I think I want to stay home". Luckily, he saw the boy behind him in line was wearing a Lego Ninjago shirt and they bonded over their love of Lego's, thus putting an end to his nervousness. I'm so proud of my little man.

I finally shed a few tears once we pulled into our garage, especially since Alex kept point to Brendan's empty seat in our minivan saying "Brendan- Brendan- Brendan". I don't think Alex quite knows what to do with himself without his partner in crime.

After picking him up, we went out for celebratory slurpees and talked about his first day. His verdict- "There are a lot of rules in kindergarten, Mom. It's kinda different than my old school." I got a laugh out of that. Love this boy and can't wait to see what the school year brings and to watch him grown and learn. Day 1 done!

What's up

First, I have a video to share that I thought were cute and would make up for my lack of posting and lack of photos. Warning though, no one but our family may be interested in these though. It's' not super exciting but it is cute (in my very unbiased opinion).

This is a little clip of Alex talking, which I find hilarious. He's really into "talking" lately and loves to babble at me in his own sweet, incoherent way with a few real words thrown in for good measure. I love hearing him talk and it never fails to make me laugh and smile. I love this stage that he's in right now.

I do have another video to share but for some reason, blogger isn't letting me upload it so I'm trying out Vimeo to see if that works. I love this video because it captures perfectly how Alex loves to do anything and everything that Brendan does. I love that Alex already worships his older brother. Melts my heart, it does.

The Boys from Valerie Near on Vimeo.

Other than that, I don't have much to share. We're getting ready for school to start soon and have been busy going to doctors and going shopping and trying to have some last minute summer fun. I could do without the doctor part but it is what it is. My health hasn't been the best lately with my gallbladder somehow managing to bother me even though it's been removed.

Here's a crappy cell phone photo of me getting ready to go in and get an MRI done. Good news is that the results were totally normal... which is great except I have no idea why I was in so much pain. I'm seeing a gastroenterologist to see if he can figure out what's going on with me.

That's about it. Hope you enjoyed the videos!

You can run, you can hide but you can't escape

Thank goodness we have a fence for our (tiny) yard or else Alex might be the terror of the neighborhood. He's a hard one right now. The boy is really good at pushing me to the edge of insanity so I often let him play out in our ridiculously small yard to blow off some steam so I can get a tiny break. If it wasn't fenced, Alex would have no problem taking off and running away. As it is, he tries every single day to climb over the fence.

 He's so close but he can't quite make it over- THANK GOODNESS.

But that doesn't stop him from trying. He even tests it out in different spots just to make sure he can't get over.

Here, he was trying to see if he could squeeze through the slats. No luck there either, bud.

This kid kills me. In a good way and a bad way. I had forgotten how frustrating and exhausting it is to have an almost 2 year old (I can't believe he'll be 2 in about a month!!!). I definitely have a lot of moments when I think we're done having kids because I don't know if I can handle much more right now. But then Alex is so sweet and adorable and so much like a little boy right now, that I miss that baby stage. I guess there's still hope for a Near girl. :)

It's all happening at the zoo

We recently checked out the Hogle Zoo, once just the three of us and another time with my freshman year roomie and her family. The boys really loved the zoo despite the fact that Alex was a little freaked out by some of the animals.

 Alex and Brendan liked the monkey's a lot but their big gorilla was a little too much for Alex. He was fine until the gorilla started to move and then the tears came. Poor boy.

 Brendan was more interested in climbing on the animal statues and rocks around the zoo than the actual animals a lot of the time. Typical.

 The seals and the polar bear were my favorite. So cool.

 Brendan was upset because he thought he would get to swim with the polar bear.

Brendan has a new BFF- my friend's little brother Isaac. Seriously, Brendan was a little smitten with him and it was so totally cute. The twins were such a big help with our kids too. I wish I could take them everywhere with me!

By far, the biggest hit with the boys was the train ride (Alex is obsessed with trains right now) and the carousel.

 It was hard trying to get a picture of Alex on the carousel because he was so interested in it. He wouldn't look at me and the one time he did, it was so quick he's a little blurry.

 Brendan loved it too but not as much as Alex. Alex screamed (of course) once it was time to get off and I may have had to drag him away from it a little bit. But an overpriced icee helped to distract them so we could move on.

The zoo also has a cool playground for the kids and they both had a blast running around and being crazy before we headed home.

A big thanks to Lindsay for letting us tag along and hopefully we can go back again soon. It was fun for the kids and awesome for me to get to spend some time with a friend that I hadn't seen for a couple of years.

Draper Days

This past Saturday we decided to head out to "Draper Days" and check out what our new town had to offer. We all had a blast despite the near 100 degree weather.

Brendan got to ride his very first "horse" or in this case a small pony and he totally loved it. When he climbed off, he declared "I'm really good at riding horses." So true.

 They also had a small area set up where the kids could pet and brush even tinier ponies, which I thought Alex would love but weirdly he didn't.

Brendan tried to help him out and showed him what to do but still, Alex didn't want anything to do with them. Turns out Alex just likes to get excited and scream about seeing animals but not actually touch them.

 We forked over some money for Brendan to try out "walking on water" and, no surprise here, he was stoked about it. He had a blast trying to walk around in that giant ball.

Most of the time, he ended up falling and laughing the whole time. He finally gave up trying to walk and just started doing somersaults inside it. That made me laugh and it was totally Brendan's style.

It was so stinking hot out and of course Alex wanted to be carried a lot versus sit in his stroller so Chris was kind enough to deal with him. (Why must Chris always make strange faces when I'm trying to take a picture of him?)

I finally couldn't take the heat anymore and it was past naptime so we decided to head home. We had to literally drag Alex out of a bouncy house screaming and kicking the whole time, which continued on the way home. He sure did sleep good though once he was in bed.

So Draper Days gets a thumbs up from us. We are really enjoying living here and I love that there's so much to do and we're trying to pack it all in before Brendan has to start school in about a month. It's still crazy to me that Brendan will be in school soon. How did time go by so fast!?!

Back in action!

I finally ordered a new battery and battery charger set for my camera and they arrived in the mail yesterday, which means I can take pictures again and start blogging a bit more (hopefully). I busted out the camera last night and it felt so good.

We headed out to McDonald's last night for a quick treat of ice cream cones and Alex was in heaven. This boy LOVES his sweets and treats. He even ended up stealing the last bit of my cone and taking off with it, the little thief.

Dirty, as always. I can't keep this kid clean. It's impossible.

The weather here was beautiful last night so the boys busted out the bike and Brendan was sweet enough to let Alex take a turn. We really need to get Alex a bike or something because he is so jealous when Chris and Brendan get on their bikes for a ride. His little plastic car isn't cool enough for him anymore.

I love when they play sweetly together, which honestly doesn't happen enough in my opinion. There's a lot of screaming (on Alex's part) and yelling (on Brendan's) and crying (both of them). But I know they love each other and in time, things will get better. Right????
 

Brothers, they're the best.

We're here!

Well, we're in Utah. Unfortunately, all of our stuff is still on a moving van somewhere so we're living very simply right now. It's been fun to explore the area that we're living in (I have to say that I like Draper quite a bit) and eat some yummy food that I've been missing for the last four years but I can't wait for our stuff to get here so we can settle in and have this place start to feel like home.

It's a little weird being back in Utah, I won't lie. It's all so familiar but different. It's hard not knowing anyone and being the new family again. I hate this part of moving. But Utah is beautiful and I'm loving all the amazing scenery. I had forgotten how beautiful the mountains are- especially right now while they're still green. All I want to do is take pictures of them but sadly, my camera battery charger has gone missing (I'm guessing thanks to a small munchkin who likes to grab things and throw them away) and I'm without a camera right now. I'm hoping I'll find it while unpacking but I have a bad feeling that it's long gone. Oh, Alex.

So since I have no new photos to share, I thought I'd put up some old ones that I never got around to sharing on the blog.

Alex is my little monkey. He loves to climb and swing on things and one of his favorite things to do at our place in Virginia was open the big drawer and swing from it.

 It's a miracle he didn't break the drawer and it was a battle everyday to get him to not swing from the drawer.

So that's about it... hopefully we'll have more to share soon and hopefully our stuff gets here quickly! I might go insane if it doesn't.