Pre-School Princess

Our little princess has officially started Pre-School! Seems Mommy is having a lot harder time handling the transition than Sycely is, but I am enjoying the special one-on-one time I'm getting with Ella while Sycely's at school. Sycely's attending at the King Career Center's Early Childhood Education program. KCC is a career and technical school here in town that offers courses for high school students in various fields and prepares them for specialized positions in the workforce. As part of their high school program they offer an Early Childhood training program. This program teams the high school students with two certified adult teachers (whom I'm been working with for the last 7 years or so) in a lab school setting. The students learn about child development through classroom instruction, observation and developing and implementing activities for the children. They have lots of hands-on opportunities to learn about working with young chidlren. There are two sessions, morning and afternoon. Sycely's in the later class for two hours three days a week. There are 14 kids in her class, including only 5 boys! In addition to the two adult teachers there are about 12 or 14 high school student teachers.

Two weeks ago we went in for "open house" an abbrieviated school day to let the kids get familiar with the classroom and meet their teachers with parents staying during this time. We pretty much went through the typical school day routine: free choice time, circle, lunch and outside time. Sycely is one of only a few students new this year so she was surrounded by kiddos who knew the drill. I just kept my distance and let her explore and get comfortable in this new environment and with all these new people. She was super open talking with and sitting with her teachers and already has a couple favorites, some of which, ironically are students in Daddy's class in the morning :)
Sycely started off her first trip to school with finding her name tag and dropping her things off in her cubby. Then she chose an activity-pets. They have a HUGE tortoise named Tort, she's been hearing about for a long time now, and a new bunny this year, too. Yep, a real live tortoise and the hare combo! From there she did some painting, some dressing up in dramatic play and then lounged in the pillow-filled bathtub for some book time with me. We followed all that up with lunch and circle and a trip outside to check out the playground then it was time to head home! Ahhh, our first step toward school success!

When the time came, she was all ready-set-go for her first day of Pre-School all on her own!

September

This month has been one heck of a busy one. The JV tennis season wrapped up, school and skating continues and the girls and I are in full swing of our fall routine and of course, I also started leading a Mom's Group at church this month and there's been lots of action on the housing front.

As far as an update on our house situation, we've been showing our house about 4-5 times a week, we've looked at houses, picked one out, and made an offer. It was quite a bit lower than the listing price but the sellers have agreed to accept it once we are in contract with a buyer for our current house. So, we're keeping things immaculate (hard enough in itself with two girls who aren't entirely onboard with that endeavor!) and working like crazy to get us a buyer. We've recently signed on with our Buyer's agent, Ruth, to list our house and we hope that will get us enough increased traffic to get us a buyer signed on the next two weeks. Continue to pray that God will bring us the right buyer and that everything with selling and buying will work together smoothly to bring about the good things we know He has in store for our family. We're pretty excited about our new house and hope to be celebrating the Holidays there, gathered around the fireplace making new family traditions and memories.

We got to celbrate our friend Julie's birthday a couple weeks ago. We went on a large group date to play Bingo, always looking for a new adventure. It was fun, mostly because we had such a big, fun group that were all Bingo rookies. But the real fun came between games when we got to take in some rat racing. Think roulette with a rat instead of a ball. It was a hoot! I actually even won $6 on one turn when the rat went into my birthday number, 28! Such a fun adventure for all of us. I feel so blessed to have such great, fun, supportive friends in my life.

Ella and Sycely have both been battling yucky germs, both having colds about two weeks ago. Since then Sycely came down with a bladder infection. She'd been fighting a high fever for about 6 days and after a visit to the pediatrician we finally found out what was causing it. They thought she had something viral and had told us to keep her hyfrated and as long as her fever was responding to Tylenol we were ok, but if it went up to 105 then that meant it was bacterial and to bring her in. Once we hit 105.9 we called and got her in asap. She's on antibiotics and her fever disappeared completely. She's had to miss two days of pre-school and one week of ballet school already, but was able to get back to all her regular activities this week. Little did we know she wasn't contagious that whole time afterall!

Ella got two new teeth this week for a totaly of six now, with what looks like one more on the way. She's been building up some confidence in the walking department and will take a couple lunging steps now, and took abotu 8 steps between me and Lem the other day, but she still favors the one legged crab-style side scoot for getting around most of the time. She's talking up a storm, using two word phrases and the like. She also says Sycely's name now which is really adorable. She's quite the little cutey pie these days. She LOVES the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See and will bounce and bounce chanting "brown bear brown bear brown bear" when she reads it. Her hair is turning out just as curly as Sycely's and is developing its own unruly flips here and there.

Sycely and Ella are really starting to play together now that Ella is getting a little older. They build with legos together and have tea parties and play with Little People and animals together. Sycely is so generous with her little sister and is always offering her one of her special stuffed animals or a favored toy with phrases like, "Here you go, Sweetie, Honey."

Lem, Sycely and I went on a super special date to see the Broadway stage production of Lion King last week. Sycely has been fascinated with the speical features footage of the stage production on the movie DVD for months so when we found out Lion King was coming to town there was no doubt we were going. She even has a homemade rendition of Nala's costume and mask for the daily re-enactments she performs-and that was BEFORE we saw the show live! Ella stayed home with Nanny and Papa and Sycely, Lem and I donned our finest and had dinner and then headed to the Performing Arts Center. We had really great seats and were able to see EVERYTHING. The first 2 minutes alone gave me goose bumps and brough tears to my eyes, being able to share such an amazing with Sycely and seeing her astonishment was such a memorable blessing.

My birthday was kind of overshadowed by Sycely being sick so it wasn't as "golden" as I'd hoped but we did get a chance to go on a date for a nice dinner and then have dessert with a few friends. We also had dinner and a yummy Reese's Blizzard cake with Lem's family on Monday.

The snow is making a rather rapid decent down our mountains this year. There was none when we started last week, one day there was a dusting on the tips and by mid-afternoon the following day it was more than half way down and has continued it's gradual crawl over the last few days. The air is certainly crisp and quite chilly these days. No question winter is just around the corner. Time to unpack the winter gear and do some boot shopping, I guess.

Hope you're all enjoying a lovely fall. We welcome your prayers for health and a quick and smooth housing transition for our family. Hope you are all safe and healthy!

The Winds of Change...

So, we've decided to sell our house and it's now officially on the market. After a couple months of considering the possibility (sparked by our two neighbors putting theirs up for sale) we are finally taking the plunge. Two weekends ago we spent a few hours driving around the area we want to move to scouting for sale signs and pulling fliers. Last Wednesday we went and looked at 4 houses, 2 of which were great and real possibilities, 2 or which were absolutely out of the question, one because the floor plan didn't fit what we were looking for and had a not-sodesirable yard, and one because it was just plain too weird! The last house we looked at is one we've been eyeing for a little over a month. It's right at the end of the Gibson's street which makes it extra desirable, but we hadn't been real serious about being ready to move so we hadn't seen it inside. We looked at it on Wednesday and absolutely fell in love with it! It's absolutely gorgeous inside and the whole place has been updated and is just perfect for our little family. The bedrooms are extra large, it has a fireplace, the two story floor plan we're looking for and a beautiful back yard with a nice big deck like we have now. Did I mention it's greatest feature-location, location, location? :) The owners recently finished all their work on it and got it all perfect and found out their friends were moving and they could buy their house in the neighborhood they've always planned to move to. So, they've only got til the end of the month to have a sales agreement signed so that put us in a bit of a spot and kind of took the whole "contigency offer" plan out of the running for us. So, the mass overhaul of sale prepping our house began last Thursday.

Since last Thursday we have painted (including priming and ceilings) two bathrooms, two bedrooms, living room and hall, trim around two windows and one door. We've cleaned doors and trim (thank you Lord for whoever invented the magic eraser!), windows, gotten the lawns mowed, cleaned up both the front and back yard and deck and cleaned the house top to bottom-the nesting kind of cleaned, we're talking the top of trim and inside baseboards kind of cleaning, here. The great news is we got everything finished by Sunday (with help form the Gibsons and Nanny and Papa) so we spent Monday getting the house put back together and cleaned up as well as "staging" the house to be ready to show to prospective buyers. It gave us a great opportunity to go through some things and pack away alot of our clutter-stuff we either don't need to access or won't be using before we plan to move. The good news is the house looks immaculate and super fresh (but naked on the walls) with all it's new paint, etc but the bad news is our garage is full of boxes and stuff we've cleared out.

Monday night our house officially went on the market-we posted it on Craigslist and some other classified listing sites and yesterday we got our sign and fliers out. Because of the short timeline the sellers of the house we want, we really only have about 2 weeks tops to get a buyer for our house. We're REALLY praying that if this is the house God intends for us that He will bring us the right buying soon and that if it's not the house he intends for us that He will lead us to something we love just as much or even more if we miss out on this one. For now we're just praying for a quick sale either way and that He will lead the right buyer to us and us to the right house. We appreciate you joining us in praying for this. And, if you know of anyone looking for a charming 3 bedroom house with and awesome yard, send them to our craigslist posting (you can find it by searching for Bass in the housing listings) or have them call or email us or swing by for a flyer. We will be sure to keep you all posted on any developments as they might occur. Below are some pics of how things look now.

Alaska State Fair 2009

Last Sunday morning we woke to spectacularly sunny skies and two girls sleeping in (meaning at 7:30 they were both still snoozing) so we made the snap decision to change our fair-going plans and spend the day at the State Fair while the weather was uncharacteristically dry. After church we got the girls changed and hit the road for our annual trek to the Palmer Fairgrounds. Ella napped the whole way-until about 4 minutes before we parked so she was raring to go and ingreat spirits when we got there. Nanny and Papa headed out earlier in the morning so they were there to meet us as we arrived.

We started off with everyone's favorite, the petting zoo! Sycely is an old pro now with feeding the little livestock and Ella was completely enamoured with a batch of piglets she discovered all snuggled up in a hay bale fort. She was slightly offended by the baby calf that did not respond in kind to all her moooooo-ing.

Sycely had a blast on rides this year and was tall enough (FINALLY! and only by an inch) to ride some by herself. Her and I rode the hot air balloons and spinning apples, her and Lem did a round on the train, and she did the elephants and vehicles all by herself. Our favorite, the carousel wasn't running so that was kind of a bummer that missed out on that-next year I guess. Lem got his annual dose of fried cheese curds and ventured a pork chop on a stick. Sycely was so wiped out by all the fun and excitement that she fell asleep in the stroller while we ventured across the midway to fetch her some cotton candy, as promised. We all enjoyed sharing it on the ride home while Ella took another long nap. As always, the fair delivered good food, lots of fun and an all around good time for all.