Today is the first day of Thursday School. Emily woke up talking about it. She was quite excited. Julia looks a little apprehensive about the idea. It will be her first day going. Don’t let her face fool you she was excited too. She cried when she didn’t get to wear her backpack out the door to the car.

Drop-off went well. Emily is in a class of all girls. She will be making all new friends because none of the girls were in her class last year. After hanging her backpack she sat right down and started playing with a barn set. Julia is in a class with all boys, at least at this point. She helped me hang her backpack and then sat down to play with play-dough. She didn’t have any tears as I said goodbye, so I have high hopes that she will adjust to her new class well.

Pick-up came a little too soon for the mama. I had decided to get Emily first and then take her to get Julia. This way Emily could see her old teacher Ms. Melanie. When I got to Emily’s room, Julia was there. During lunch time Julia spotted Emily and was sad that she couldn’t be with her. So, they allowed Julia to hang in the room with Emily after lunch. Too sweet! Emily had a blast and was quietly playing with puzzles when I came to get her. We did our visiting on the way out and Emily enjoyed telling me of her day. Julia did great in her class and participated with the other kids. We will see what she thinks of it next week.

As a side note, Mama loved her three hours too.

This reading spot makes me laugh every time Julia does it. First step, she takes the bin off the shelf and empties it. Then, she climbs in the bin, but doesn’t sit down until she has selected a book. Lastly, she sits and reads the book. If she wants to read another book, she just stands up and picks one off the shelf. I don’t know if it is intentional or accidental that she puts the bin right next to the book shelf.

Julia has been interested in getting in Emily’s booster seat lately. She can climb in all by herself. This particular day she climbed in and asked to play with the puzzle she saw Emily playing with last. She is studding it so seriously. She is growing up quick these days.

When it is time for Mommy to vacuum, we have to clean up the floor of toys and other things. Both girls are interested these days in helping. They use their kid sized vacuum to make some noise and imitate me. They also are good sports about helping with the clean up. Lately, they have discovered that they can sit like princesses in their chairs on the couch. It is cute and keeps them out of the way.

It is so sweet to watch the Julia and Maeve together. Ashely and I call them the “littles” or “little girls”. Julia is expressing herself so much more and her interaction with the world is fascinating. The littles like to play near each other, but it is a lot of parallel play. Being willing to hold hands was adorable.

Every trip the girls and I make to Dollywood is fun, and Emily asks if Daddy is coming with us next time. When we told her that we all were going to Dollywood together, she was so excited! As we entered, she got her map and then started to tell us where to go. We had been hoping for cooler weather on the day we went, but it was very humid and pretty miserable to be walking around in. We were good sports and covered more activities than we have ever done in one visit. Despite the humidity and the threat of rain later in the day, everything worked out just fine. Robby got to try the rope course and gave it rave reviews. We were so proud that Emily ventured onto new rides for her and that Julia was willing to try anything that we encouraged her to do.

We decided to try the car ride off the bat and beat the lines. Emily wasn’t sure that it was her choice for first ride, but was willing to change the plan. Julia drove the car while I was the passenger. She became pretty disinterested in driving pretty quickly and wanted to look around. It isn’t so easy to drive a car from the passenger seat, take pictures, and point out the scenery.

Emily had the priveledge to drive with Daddy. She was disapointed that her car wasn’t more fun of a color. I was just glad that Daddy fit in the car.

Emily is so hard to get a photo of these days. We were lucky that she looked at the camera long enough to get one. She has such a pretty smile, but sitting still and focusing on any one thing is hard when we are in our independent stage of life.

Emily is such a Daddy’s girl and Julia is a Mama’s girl, it just made sense to split ourselves up that way. Emily’s prince was informed of which horse he had to ride, even if it was the smallest on the carousel.

For some reason Emily was expressing fear at riding rides this trip to Dollywood. It was odd that she did it for rides she has ridden before and liked. When it came time to ride the bumble bee ride, she didn’t want to ride. We asked Julia if she wanted to ride by herself and she said yes. She seemed a little lost in the bee by herself, but occasionally waved at us. I was proud that she would do it alone.

We found this awesome union to join. It was next to a deck filled with rocking chairs. We took a break to cool off and do some rocking. The sign was too funny and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to enjoy the laugh forever.

The girls and I have watched the River Battle ride before, but never ridden it. It was great that Emily was willing to try it with Robby. We didn’t mention to her how wet she would get, knowing that she would decline to ride if she knew. She tried to hide from the shooting water by curling up next to Robby, but still got soaked. The side effect was that Robby got to shoot twice the water. She didn’t know how to walk with wet pants and was hilarious to watch after the ride was over.

Our little wet girl was willing to hang out in the owl nest for a photo. She liked the idea a lot.

They have a fun educational boat floating game for the kids to play. Emily loved watching the float she started at the top work it’s way down the sluice. It had to work around objects and get help along the way. This area had the coolest playground that Emily loved playing in. Of course she found a house that she could be the princess of. She played house with Robby until the weather turned and we had to make our way out.

Sweet Julia played hard and just couldn’t make it the whole day with out a nap. She fell asleep after a snack and stayed that way until we worked our way out to another snack. Clearly, she has her priorities in order and is a child after my own heart.