Owen starts school!

Owen misses the cut-off date here for kindergarten by 20 days. The school district runs a free program called Transitional Kindergarten (TK) for the kids whose fall birthdays just miss the cut-off. It's run by a regular school teacher at the school where he would attend kindergarten, in a regular classroom... so basically, it's like doing 2 years of kindergarten. It's free, though (which preschool around here most definitely is not), and all his primary friends are starting kindergarten, so we decided to put Owen in TK. He LOVES it so far. He has lots of little friends, he really likes his teacher, and they have done a lot of really cute activities. It's low-stress, because it's not a required grade, so there's really no set curriculum. It's basically just learning how to be at school and interact with people. They sing lots of songs, do lots of crafts, learn about the days/seasons/numbers/letters, they have plenty of play time both inside and outside, they spend time reading with buddies in the library.... they even learned about different types of apples, had a taste-test, and then made apple pies with their favorite apples!

Yes, full disclosure, I cried the first day I took Owen in (but not till I got back to the car!), and he was pretty worried as well. But now we both do better (although Nora cries almost every day when we leave Owen). I enjoy getting a few hours with just Nora in the morning.

These pictures are from Owen's first day of school.

We let him pick out any backpack he wanted... we figured that there are only a few years that you can get away with having a Mike Wazowski backpack. :)

Ready to go.... if only mom would stop taking pictures. 

Nora wants in on the action.

Hanging up his backpack!

He has his own little kit and nametag and everything!

Nora thinks she's a big girl too.

End-of-summer activities

Around the time that we registered Owen for school, I started panicking about his "last" real summer before school and if we had done enough fun things as a family before we started school craziness. We planned a few special outings right towards the end of summer as a last hurrah. These photos are from our horse riding trip to Ryan's family's horse ranch. We also took the kids to a car race (which I've been dying to take Owen to for a long time.... but the track is pretty far away here). We had a lot of fun counting down Owen's last days before school!

Nora getting up close and personal with the horses - I was surprised she did so well.

Ready to go!

Nora was not too sure about the whole thing - she rode for a few laps, but then became much more interested in wandering around in the dirt.

Owen decided he could handle the horse himself. "Ok, mom, you can get off now!"

Owen would have ridden all day if we let him. :)

Protecting those cutie ears at the car races!

Love this face.

Squish!

With Becca and grandpa!

We got to see a lot of different types of cars that night, but these little midgets were our favorite!

Grandpa love!

A trip to Matt's office!

Owen thinks it's awesome that Matt gets to ride the bus AND the train every day to work (Matt doesn't think it's quite as awesome). Owen has been begging to go on the train, so we planned a day that we could take BART and meet Matt at his office for lunch. 

Waiting for the train - SO excited.

Playing on the big huge statue thingy outside the Embarcadero buildings (close to where Matt works). Usually this thing is filled with water and you can jump across the stepping stones through the waterfalls. It was totally dry this day, though. If you look closely, Owen is mid-sneeze in this picture. :)

A new playground just opened up by daddy's office!

I should have taken a video of this - this little chair spun at a really weird angle, and whipped Nora around each time. She loved it, but got totally dizzy. 

Walking out on one of the piers to look at the Bay Bridge. 

In daddy's office!

Looking down out of the window at daddy's office. He's on the 44th floor, so it's a loooooong way down.

Out the window again - the Ferry Building and the Bay Bridge/Treasure Island in the background.

The entrance to daddy's office.

Heading back home!

Butterflies

Owen got a grow-your-own-butterflies kit for Christmas last year. You have to have several weeks in a row at home to take care of the butterflies, so since this summer was pretty quiet, we finally ordered them. It was fun. Owen made a whole butterfly book about all the observations he made over the weeks. We had a great time watching them grow and finally releasing them!

Waiting for the chrysalises to hatch.

So proud of his caterpillars.

Moving the chrysalises to the cage.

The butterflies hatched while we were at church!

Nora loved watching the butterflies but if any of them made any sudden moves, she got pretty nervous. 

Holding a butterfly before we let it go.