Medika Mamba

The Haiti Rescue Center is using this product to help battle child malnutrition.

Still Recovering, But it Was Good!

I think we are all still recovering from our trip to Iowa last weekend, but we had a good time! Jon was able to help his parents out all weekend with some projects around the house and the girls and I hung out in Harlan all weekend with my family. Tabbi and the boys came over and spent the days with us and Megan and Greg made it over for Sunday and into Monday. We went out to Prairie Rose Lake, the kids got lots of motorcycle rides, hung out and played around the house, visited with good friends, Tom and Joanned, from New Jersey, took the kids to see "Night at the Museum 2", played at the dream playground, Tabbi invited the girls to her place for a sleepover, Jon and I got a dinner and movie date and saw "Star Trek" with Megan and Greg, ate Dairy Queen, more motorcycle rides, and lots of playing. (Wow, that's a really long sentence!) We had a really good time hanging out and the girls were sad to leave their cousins especially. We'll head back down for 4th of July!

Emmy's Graduation

Emmy had her preschool graduation program this morning and she had SO much fun!!! Here are some parts of the program for you to enjoy. She can't wait to go to "Bria's school" next fall!

Opening


Robot Dance


Pepperoni Pizza Song


Getting Her Diploma

Daycare Football

I don't suppose the words "daycare" and "football" are usually used together, but the kids had a good time playing football and kickball after school yesterday. Here's a video of them playing. It's a bit shaky in spots when I was trying to get the football back from Bailey -she wanted to play too!

Chuck Fans......

I got this message on Facebook this morning!

Hey Chuck fans,Good news: NBC has just announced that they will give Chuck a 13-episode 3rd season. And, if things go well, they will obviously extend that 13-episode order to give Chuck a full season (about 22 episodes).Keep checking Chuck Online: http://www.chuckonline.net/ for the latest news, trailer's, return date's and Chuck information!
Have an awesome day!

Bria's First Recital

Bria had her first piano recital this morning and did a great job after only a few weeks of lessons!

Great Finds and Fun Projects

We were out running something to Jon at work this morning and drove past a garage sale .... we found a GREAT toy for the playroom! It's a huge doll house that the kids are really excited to start playing with! I'm going to make sure it's all cleaned up during naptime and then they can play with it this afternoon. The gentelman we bought it from even drove it over to the house for me since it wouldn't fit in the van and helped me take it downstairs - I think I'm as excited as the kids! We might add some new paint and decorations too at some point. Either way, it was a great find and I know it will get a lot of use! I also found these two cute little chairs that I am going to paint up fun for the kids to use. I'm excited for that project!

Ok - Project complete (or almost complete....)

Here are the chairs after Emmy and I painted them this afternoon.

Can You Tell It's the End of the School Year?

We sure can!!! Bria seems full of the end of year stuff! In the past couple of weeks both girls have had their award ceremonies at our church for Awana where they both received awards for finishing up their books. Yay! This weekend Bria has a Girl Scouts award ceremony, her first piano recital and the end of the year Girl Scout's party at CanadInn (i.e. hotel water park - and the whole family is invited). Next Friday is Bria's last day of 2nd grade. And even miss Emmy has an exciting day coming up next Thursday when she graduates from preschool (she can't wait to wear a fun hat!). So, I'm sure the blog will be full of pictures over the next week of the girls finishing up their fun stuff. Here are a couple of pictures from Awana. All I had was my cell phone and we were a long ways away, but it's better than nothing!

By Your Side - Tenth Avenue North

This is my favorite song right now!



"Beloved" is another great song of theirs!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XtL6ZxHbUQ

First Trip to the Park for the Spring

We finally made it out to a park yesterday with the daycare crew. It was a beautiful morning and everyone had a good time running around and playing. We didn't stay too long... Sophie didn't enjoy the park as much as the big kids! But we did have a good time and everyone was definitely ready for lunch and a nap. Reed and Sophie got a bonus surprise of running into Grandpa when we were leaving too..... definitely a good morning!

Happy Mother's Day

Wanted to send out Happy Mother's Day wishes to all the moms I am friends with and work with and am related to! Here is a partial list of the moms in my life I am thankful for (in no particular order except I'm putting my mom first!) ... please don't be offended if I forget someone!

My mom! Tabbi, Barb, Delta, Betty, Luella, Noni, Erin, Roberta, Janelle, Katie, Karen, Mandy, Jill, Lisa, Paula, Amy, Marsha, Teri, Heather, Amy, Jenny, Becky, Heather, Heather, Anja, Cynthia, Erin, Traci, Anne, Kathy, Erika, Joann, Julie, Dawn, Jeanyce, Tina, Lisa, Sadie, Margaret, Kit, Shannon, Rachel, Patsy, Angela, Heather, Karen, Joy, Betsy, Marci, Sonya, April, and all of the rest of you I know! Thanks for being the moms you have been - for a long time or just for a short time.......

Here are some kiddo faces who also say thank you to their wonderful moms!

Emmy's Song

Emmy loves to play on the piano too.... she just prefers to make up her own songs! She is singing along to this one, but very quietly so it is hard to hear.

On the Mend

Emmy's feeling better - yay! Her breathing still sounds bad and when she gets too busy her cough sounds horrible, but she's actually up and moving around more today and playing. Daycare is back open (thanks to all my families for making other arrangements the past two days)! So, we're going to enjoy some fresh air outside the next couple of days and otherwise try to keep it kind of calm and quiet around here for Emmy's sake. It's hard to keep that kid down!

I think our weekend will involve working on more landscaping in the backyard. I have more bricks to get put down for borders and we are going to start working on the ground where the kids and dog step off the deck. We are hopeful that a 2-deep area of paving stones will look nice as well as cover up the area of the yard that will never grow again. I'll post pictures after we get it all done.

Here are some of the fun bricks we've made to use as border back by our trees and I think we are going to put them around the rocks for border too.

Pizza Girl Song

This is for Bria!

Ugh....

Today will be a quiet day around here. Emmy spent the weekend coughing hard and running a really low-grade temperature, so to be on the safe side I got her in at the doctor's office yesterday afternoon. Conclusion: ear infection and pnemonia! My poor baby. Sounds like today will be a day of disinfecting the house (again) and some cuddle time and movies.

Dazed Junco

Anyone who has been to my house knows that the patio door off our dining room onto our deck is NOT a clean clear piece of glass. When we moved in the glass door was all scratched up from the previous owner's big dogs. Our darling dog doesn't scratch the window but she jumps up on it so there are paw prints and slides all over the top half of the door and she licks the bottom half - so it's just a mess. No matter how often I clean it! This is all annoying to us, but not the end of the world - it is what it is.

The surprising thing is that the birds seem to not realize there is a glass door there and love to fly into it. We had a casualty last year as well as a robin I was able to pick up and hold until it recovered last year. Friday's collision left us a stunned Junco who slammed into the glass door twice before retreating to the top of the dog house that is up on our deck next to the door. He sat up there for about 10 minutes until he recovered and flew away. We were able to get right up close to him and check him out. Pretty cool. I was just about to put on my gardening gloves to move him to the safety of a box though because Bailey had discovered him on top of the dog house and kept wanting to "inspect" him a little closer. He flew away when he saw the box and my gloves come out.

So, here is a picture of our little visitor, Mr. Junco.