Hello Again!!

As you can probably tell by the lack of updates lately...the Banker family has been busy, busy!  We're loving life...here's what we've all been up to....

Carver
Carver just finished up his first quarter of Kindergarten and he is of course doing great!  We had his first conference with his teacher and she had all good things to say.  He has easily met or exceeded all of the expectations for Kindergarten for the first quarter (he has pretty much met or exceeded all of the expectations for the year!).  His teacher, Mrs. McClellan was very impressed with everything he has been able to do so far but especially his math skills.  When she asked each of the students to count out blocks to 5, 10, and 31 most of the students counted each out individually.  Carver was a little bored with this, so he easily counted to 5 and then just continued from there to count to 10 and then, just to show off he counted to 30 by 2's (he's such a smarty pants!).  Since then he has been showing us how he can count by 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's, and 10's to 100 and beyond and he is even multiplying!  Besides his awesome math skills he knows 32+ sight words and is doing a great job of starting to really sound out many words.  Besides being such a smarty pants Carver has continued to show his athletic abilities, doing a fabulous job playing flag football this fall.  I'm loving seeing Carver really become such a big kid....he's loving school and making lots of friends and we're so proud of him.

Kayden
Kayden is LOVING preschool!  He is doing such a great job and his teachers just love having him in class...they are always telling me they want to take him home, but I think we'll keep him. ;)  According to his teachers, he is always eager to do whatever they have the students doing and is always the first one to follow directions and do just as he's asked.  It is so funny seeing how different his personality is than Carver's though and really seeing that coming out at school.  He is a lot more quiet and doesn't have to always be the leader or first in line like Carver always has.  He also is very smart and is learning a lot and it's actually kind of funny that he seems more artistic than Carver and really takes his time and does a great job on his art work.  He and I have also been doing a music class once a week and he loves that too.  He really likes the special attention that it gives him and it gives him another opportunity to show how smart (and what a good dancer) he is. :)  He's also taking swim lessons and is becoming a fish like his brother....I love seeing how much he is improving each week.  Kayden is also really maturing and slowly growing out of his 3 year old frustrations and tantrums.  I think that Carver going to school and K-Man having an opportunity to really discover himself has made a huge difference with this.  That being said, he still has his moments.  He has had many tantrums in the car over the last several months where he kicked the car door when he was really frustrated.  So, yesterday he got mad and decided to take a different approach and dump a whole bottle of water on the floor.  I was ready to lose it when he says, "but I didn't kick the door," like he was so proud of himself....I really had to hold back the giggles on that one. :)  So, as he's growing we're enjoying more smiles and less ornery K-Man.  He keeps life interesting and keeps us on our toes and we're loving every moment of it. :)

As far as Chris and I....Chris is still working hard, working on his PhD, running, coaching, and being a terrific daddy.  I just ran my 3rd marathon (the QC Marathon) and actually learned a lot from my first two so I was able to improve my previous marathon times by 20 minutes, finishing in 4 hours and 24 minutes. :)  Besides that I am keeping busy running the boys around and enjoying some me time a couple of mornings a week while both of the boys are in school.

BuhBye for now!!  :)