First, we planted a little garden in our backyard and it has been really fun to watch our tomatoes, peppers, red cabbage, spinach and carrots grow away. As you can see, the girls and Micah really enjoyed helping get the bed ready. I did feel strange, having grown up on a ranch, having to go out and pay money for cow manure. It's like buying bottled water!
Then Bethany started what I'm sure will be a long and illustrious career as a soccer player. When I saw her head out the door one night with her shin guards, knee socks, soccer shorts, team shirt and hair pulled up in a ponytail, I was amazed at how grown up she looked. And instead of making me sigh and wish she wouldn't grow anymore, it just made me proud and excited at the privilege we have of watching these little ones become big ones. An amazing privilege indeed.
And speaking of grown up, Bethany is a kindergarten graduate! Since I homeschool Bethany, we have the flexibility to cater her education to where she is academically. At the beginning of the year, it became apparent that another year of pre-school material wasn't going to meet her where she was, so we moved ahead with kindergarten. She's an excellent reader; it's really fun to see her curled up with a book on the sofa and know that she's actually reading it now instead of just looking at the pictures! She loves school as do Anna and Katherine with whom I'm just doing pre-school workbooks and lots of reading. So to finish the school year, we organized a school presentation and invited two couples who are good friends of ours and dear to our children. Diane and Garry Lysiak and Steve and Lisa Odmark, along with their youngest, Claire, joined us for an afternoon of poem recitations, songs and of course, cupcakes! Each of the girls sang a little song on their own, Bethany recited a few poems she had memorized and then together they wrapped it all up with a VERY long song about hopping aboard a pirate ship! Then I had the opportunity to present them each with a little certificate and tell them the things we have seen them accomplish during the past year. It was very sweet time. We were so blessed to have the Lysiaks and the Odmarks share this time with us. The girls enjoyed showing them their school notebooks with all their work from the year. It was a good way to finish the year.
As we approached summer, I realized that we needed to get Micah a life jacket. So you can see him in the slide show, proudly wearing his new Cars life jacket. He really wanted to wear it around the house the day we got it, but unfortunately found that once he fell down, it was very difficult to stand back up on his own. It was pretty hysterical to watch. I videotaped it and if I ever get organized enough to get some video on my computer, I'll post a clip.
Just around the corner from our house there is a little farm where a friend of ours lived and kept some chickens for a while. She and her husband have since moved on (as have the chickens), but her grandparents, the Millers, who have lived on this farm for 60 years, are retiring to an assisted living facility. It's bittersweet for us because we love going to the Millers to look at their big vegetable garden, swing on their little swing and ride bikes on their long driveway. But they are excited to retire from farming once and for all and move to their new place. So, we went over to bid them farewell. We can't wait to go visit them in their new place!
Aunt Rosa came to visit, as she does every year usually about this time. While she was here, we went to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum with my friend Alisha and her two kids, Abbie and Ben. It is a beautiful place, way out west of the Twin Cities. We had a fun day but had to rush back for our dance recital dress rehearsal that evening. The next day the girls performed in said recital and had a great time. It was Bethany's second recital and she did tap this year. For Anna and Katherine's dancing debut, they did a sweet little ballet. As you might guess, there was a patriotic theme going... Then two days later, I had my first dance recital in 17 years! I had a great time this year taking an adult tap class and performing again was a lot of fun. We danced to James Brown's Super Bad; pretty funky! It was so fun to have Rosa here. She is one of my dearest and most faithful of friends and we have a lot of fun hanging out together.
Then in the slideshow you'll see a random picture of the girls dressing up like daddy. One time after they got out of their bath, I came up to check on them and found them in Joel's clothes! We thought they looked pretty cute...
And then there was VBS...because of our vacation this next week, we attend VBS at the south campus of our church. It's great to connect with people at the south campus but it's hard to GET to the south campus by 8.30 every morning! We've had a fun week and the girls LOVE vacation bible school every year. In the first picture they were dancing around to the Go Fish Guys and in the next picture you can see how wiped out little Micah gets from all the festivities. And just yesterday we banded together with some other kids from the neighborhood to have a lemonade stand to raise money for our VBS missions project which involves providing solar-powered radios to people in far-away lands. These radios help people connect to their local Christian radio station as well as other programs about health and agriculture. Our lemonade stand raised $58 and so far all the kids have raised over $1000. It's fun to see the kids get so excited about raising money for something like this.
Tomorrow is our last day of VBS; Mom, Sim, Caitlin and Lauren arrive mid-afternoon; we pack and clean and then leave Saturday for Cragun's, a resort on a lake in northern MN. The kids are super excited as are Joel and I. Joel's book deadline is tomorrow, so he's really glad to get that sent off and then relax a bit. With any luck in a few weeks, I'll have a slideshow of that trip!
