Kella as a 7 year old

Let's hear from Kella now.  She is enjoying being 7 and getting ready to go into 2nd grade soon.  Here are her yearly birthday questions, answered.....

What is your favorite.....

color?....green

stuffed animal?....toucan or all of them

thing to sleep with?....blankie

fruit?....pear

thing to eat for breakfast?....breakfast burrito

thing to eat for lunch?....corn dog or hot dog

thing to eat for dinner?....pizza

dessert?....cake and ice cream

drink?....water

thing to do outside?....swim and jump

animal?....flamingo and puppy

Who is your best friend?....Emma

What do you want to be when you grow up?....dog trainer

Here are links to see how Kella answered these questions as a 6 year old, a 5 year old,  and a 4 year old.

Thursday night

Just a Thursday night at karate.  I thought we would go to the open mat class and then, maybe, Ewan would get to promote to his next belt.  We have been working towards promotions for what seems like forever.  We get there, we just go slower because of other commitments like sports. 

Surprise!  Kella and Kinley got in on the promotions, too.  Pretty cute watching my 5 year old try to do basic series and run a kata.  And, they all did great.  It was tough-Ewan's group had to run the same kata at least 5 times until the Sensei was satisfied with how the kata looked.  Kella and Kinley stayed strong through the 2 hours that included class and promotion.  They worked on kata, basic series a little sparring and self-defense.  The payoff-promotion.

 

The promotion class, before.

Ewan promoted to green belt!  

Kella promoted to full yellow belt!

Kinley promoted to yellow-striped belt!

The promotion class, after.

Our newly promoted.  Look at how excited they are.

Back to school 2017!

If you follow us on social media, you will know that the kids, except Kinley, started school on Tuesday.  So far, so good.  I would say the biggest challenge is getting ourselves back into the school bedtime schedule.  Summer was great.  We stayed up late. We slept in lots.  Now, school reality has set in.

Cale and Marcus left first.  Cale is in 7th grade and is taking honors English, honors math and honors band-French horn.  Marcus is a freshman and his classes include AP World History, Spanish, Biology and band-trombone.

The second round of schoolers included Kella (1st grade, Mrs. Sears), Ewan (5th grade, Mr. St. Amand) and Liam (3rd grade, Mrs. Lodge).  They were ready to go and had all met their teachers the night before.  Ewan actually had his teacher back in 3rd grade for some of his classes.  Kella's teacher is new to the district and somehow, Liam's teacher has never had a Shaffer in her class and Liam is the 4 kids to go through the elementary school.  How is that even possible?  

Good news, everyone had a great day.  They loved their teachers and were happy to go back to school the next day.  The trend is holding and routine is getting easier to slip back into.

Here's to a great year!

let's hear from 6 year old Kella!

Here are the yearly questions posed to Kella.  Let's see how this year's were answered.

Kella, what is your favorite....

color?....blue

toy?...puppy

stuffed animal?....flamingo

thing to sleep with?....blanket

fruit?....strawberry and watermelon

cereal?....frosted shredded wheat

thing to eat for breakfast?....bacon and eggs

thing to eat for lunch?....McDonalds

dessert?....ice cream

drink?....soda-Sprite

birthday dinner?....hot dogs and pizza (we had hot dogs and brats)

animal?....puppy, flamingo and kitty

book?....books about animals

song?....Flamingo song (one that she made up)

game?....basketball

TV show?....Paw Patrol

movie?....DC Super Girls

thing to do outside?....play soccer

Who is your best friend?....Emma

What do  you want to be when you grow up?....dolphin trainer

Here are Kella's 5 year old answers and 4 year old answers and 3 year old answers.  For fun, you can see which answers have changed, and which stayed the same.

Happy birthday Kella! 6 years old!

Kella turned 6 on Memorial Day.  She had been looking forward to this day for the entire month of May-like Christmas.  We had a lovely party for her on her special day.

Kella, our resident artist, painted this-two of her favorite things-a flamingo and the number 6.

Ready to have a great party.

Thanks to Daddy, who did the decorations.  He also hid the presents so Kella could find them by using simple clues. The boys do this, so she wanted her turn.

Oh, yeah, something she wanted, a hatchimal-actually, she got everything on her birthday list. It was so cute to see her write it out with her kindergarten handwriting and spelling and hang the list on the fridge.

And, clip-on earrings.  She was so excited to put some on right away.  And, there are tons of super-cute clip-ons to choose from.  Kella got puppy, kitty, unicorn, gummy bear and assorted sweet treat earrings.

Trying to figure out the hatchimal egg.  Not necessarily for impatient birthday girls.

A flamingo scene for her cake.  It's what Kella wanted.  Strawberry cake with strawberry icing and 6 flamingos for the top. 

Happy birthday, sweet Kella!

She had her best friend, Emma, over for her birthday.  Probably the best present.

After-party glow.  Tucked into the rocking chair with some of her presents.

Here is Kella's birthday list.  Happy to say, she got everything on the list.  (1. hatchimal 2. movie 3. chain (key chain for backpack) 4. candy 5. another chain 6. more candy 7. puppy 8. cat (both stuffed toys, of course) and 9. pool (we did get a kiddie pool to play in))

Kella made a mailbox for her birthday cards.  Clever, creative girl.

Picture with Daddy.

Picture with Mommy.

And, one more.

a little bit of Christmas program fun

Smack dab in the middle of December was Kinley's preschool Christmas program.  I forced everyone to come.  The promise of cookies afterward sweetened the deal.  Kinley did great.  It's always funny to hear her teachers talk about how much Kinley has improved through the year.  They have a great perspective, because they have known Kinley and her personality since she was born.  

Kinley's class dressed up like eskimos.  

The preschool sings. Kinley is in white, in front.

A close-up.  Kinley had her hair up in a bun for dance that morning, and she wanted it that way for the program. So cute!

more cute!

And, even more cute!

Santa came and just a couple of the kids wanted to see him.  Kella was excited to tell Santa she wanted a dog, a cat and a bunny for Christmas.  (pretend of course)

Liam wanted to smell test this Santa, ala the movie Elf.  I don't think this one smelled like beef and cheese.

by Kella

Featured today are 2 projects Kella has done for kindergarten.  The first contains "fun facts" about Kella-like favorite food, favorite things to do, etc.  She was super-excited to color the entire thing pink-clearly her favorite color.

And, her Indian lady.  The kindergarten kids make these every year.  Andy gets a kick out of seeing which kids obviously had help with their projects.  Kella colored her lady (the girl loves coloring!) and then I dug up stickers that she added for embellishment.  

She finished up another project today-a Christmas ornament.  It is beautiful and glittery.  And, made by Kella.

Just some selfie fun.

This little lady loves to take selfies.  We have lots of fun with the camera.

The girls like getting their pictures taken solo, too.