Our little "reader"

Tomorrow her sisters start school again. I think she'll miss them. They've had a wonderful summer together and, as you can see by these pictures, they've modeled wonderful habits for her. She "reads" just like her big sissies do!

I must be getting lazy...or busy!

Shelby as Carolyn

Riley as Carolyn

On the big turtle at the Madison Zoo

So much for my big "Day after Great America" update! Well...they did have A LOT of fun! Riley was really into the water rides so they did several of those over and over again. She did ride a few roller coasters, but kept wanting to go back to the water rides. They both came home very exhausted from their fun day.

They are now registered for 1st and 3rd grades! Yikes! How did my girls get so old?!?! Riley saw her teacher, Mr. Wurth, and was just beaming....Shelby, on the other hand, isn't so sure about this switch to a new teacher. She has Mrs. Schach. I'm sure things will be fine. We are going to try to go visit her and the classroom this week. Hopefully that will ease some of Shelby's reservations.

We spent last Thursday in Chicago for a quick appointment with Shelby's Dr. Jill. Since we decided this was the day to go visit the Sears Tower we left Avery w/Grammie and Papa and took our 16-year-old babysitter, Carolyn, in w/us. The girls were thrilled to have Carolyn there (so were Scott & I!). She is awesome w/them (Carolyn, if you're reading this don't get a big head) and helped us out tremendously during the day. She had fun, too. Our first adventure was taking the "city bus" downtown instead of driving and attempting to park there. That was fun and the bus was much cleaner that I expected. Cool! I wish Rockford used public transportation more. Then we went to the Skydeck of Sears Tower only to be treated w/the Blue Angels practicing for Chicago's water and air show. Our pictures do not do justice to how great our view of them was. We then made the descent back down to earth (o.k., the elevator ride down) and walked to our friend Jay's apartment. We spent some time visiting there, grabbed dinner and then (literally) ran to catch the bus back to where we were parked. We even added to the adventure as I was purchasing some gDiaper inserts from a lady who lived north of where we were in Chicago. Yahoo maps got us there just fine and back on the Kennedy w/out too much stress! All-in-all it was a great, but long day! Carolyn entertained us on the way home by talking w/her friends on her cell then repeating the conversation to us. Let's just say that things were funny enough that I spit out my water I had just taken a drink of!!! It was crazy!

Hope everyone's summer is wrapping up good. We are taking the girls and 1 friend each to Magic Waters tomorrow to use up their last free tickets. The weather is supposed to be great!

Enjoy the pictures!

Off to Great America

These nuts are off to Six Flags Great America today. Riley earned a free ticket by reading several books at school this past spring. They are both so excited, but this Mommy is a little nervous to think of her little girl flying around on those big roller coasters. I'm sure she'll be fine....she's a dare devil when it comes to the rides at the fair. But she's just my baby....sigh...I'll update tomorrow on how their trip went.