First Day of Preschool

Thomas had his first day of preschool on Monday. He was really excited to go to school and make new friends. Brent and I both were at the drop off and he was very cool about the entire thing. We had him put his bag and hat away, wash his hands and join the rest of the group for circle time. We waved bye and he wasn't phased at all by any of it. He was more ready than I realized for school, I was actually a little nervous about how he would do without either of this to direct him but he seems to be doing really well. I can't believe our Thomas is a big boy!!!

Crazy for Cookies!

I ran across this sugar cookie recipe on allrecipes.com and simply had to try it out with the boys. It was really simple. The only changes I made was I used the butter flavored crisco sticks and added a bit of almond extract in addition to the vanilla extract the recipe calls for. Our cookies only took 8 minutes to bake in our oven and they cooled perfectly and were perfectly soft. Might have to keep this recipe around for the holidays this year when we make our sugar cookie cutters. Could be a new favorite!

http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/soft-sugar-cookies-iv/Detail.aspx

Ingredients

• 2/3 cup shortening
• 2/3 cup butter
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar for decoration

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a medium bowl, cream together the butter, shortening and sugar. Stir in the eggs and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt, stir into the creamed mixture until dough comes together. Roll dough into walnut sized balls and roll the balls in sugar. Place them on an unprepared cookie sheet about 2 inches apart.
3. Bake cookies 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, until bottom is light brown. Remove from baking sheets to cool on wire racks.

Snip snip chop chop!

Or really I should say buzz buzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzrroooommmm. I say that because I tried my hands out as a professional stylist and barber today. I cut the boys hair for the first time. Don't worry, no cute boys were harmed in the process. I even bribed them with suckers so they actually made out quite well from their terrifying experience with me and the clippers today. Thomas really needed a hair cut because he starts preschool tomorrow and his hair was looking kind of shaggy with a little "turkey" of hair sticking of in the back as we call it. Can't have that going on in the many pictures I am sure to take tomorrow! I did not WANT to cut Oliver's hair since he is my baby and I loved his long soft hair but it was getting pretty hard to manage. I am still adjusting to his big boy hair cut but I am sure my scars will heal quickly. He seems to like it and I think we will have less crazy hair days around here because of it.

Here are the before pictures:

And after:

RIP the-blue-right-foot-croc-shoe

On Friday the whole Schenk gang had a little road trip to Des Moines to visit family and friends. After successfully managing to pack up the whole gang in the van we were off to Ankeny. Kim and Todd joined us to meet up with Brian and Amy. We got to see their new place in Ankeny. They have the cutest home I have to say and it was so nice to share some pizza with them on a Friday night. They tried REALLY hard to talk us into moving in next door, they almost had me for a minute too! Thomas and Oliver loved all of Noah's cool toys. Next time we will have to let Noah come over here to play. Thomas was funny on the way home. It was really foggy out driving back and everyone was really quiet driving home since we were all tired. Out of the blue he blurted out, "The car is really dirty! We better wash it!!!"

Saturday Brent had the annual PDI golf outing. Jordan got to be an honorary member this year since the crew was one member short. The boys placed 4th in the tournament. No trophy this year, but Brent will still be back next year to give it another shot I am sure. The boys and I had lunch with Todd and Kim at chips and we got to see some familiar faces back in A-town. Thomas got to go swimming with Todd while Oliver napped and I visited my family. We then met up with Brent and I got to see Jordan's home for the first time. He has quite a nice little bachelor pad I must say. And I was very impressed that he had photos of the boys up on the fridge. We ate dinner out that night at Bang Bang, a new restaurant in West Des Moines. We ran in to my friend Nicole and her family. It was neat to see some old friends. On the way home Oliver was so goofy. He kept singing "baba" over and over again for his sippy cup. Everyone started singing baba songs to him. Everyone in the car was singing a different song at the same time with baba in it. Haven't quite laughed that hard in a long time. We are a silly bunch!

Sunday we got to meet up at the Uptown church. So crazy how much larger that church is compared to the ones we go to. I did a little bit of errands and picked up some crayons at Target with a coupon to donate to the food pantry in North Liberty. But what is any errand without a little bit of an adventure to complicate the trip? As we were checking out Oliver started throwing the biggest temper tantrum. We get out to the car only for me to discover he did not have his shoe! He had lost it somewhere in the middle of Target. So off we venture back into Target with Oliver still crying. After 10 minutes of searching and several strange looks we finally find it after backtracking our steps through the store. Out we go and I have all the kids loaded up in the car. Well as I am buckling Oliver in a car pulls by to tell me we lost a shoe. So glad he pointed it out to me! What a day it has been. Now that my errands are all finished I can visit family once more. The boys loved getting to see Noah and were really excited when Aunt Melissa brought out the bubbles. However when it was time to go we lost our 3rd shoe of the day. Only this time Thomas has lost his shoe. We searched high and low and what do you know we did find a full pair of crocs that were also missing, BUT it was not Thomas's missing shoe! I am sure it will show up by the time he either has grown out of them OR when it is winter. So happy (NOT) that we lost our crocs 3x in just one day! RIP the blue right foot croc shoe. You will be missed--your other half is in mourning and your loved ones miss you so dearly.