Letting Them Go

The girls enjoyed their butterflies for a few days and then we had to let them go.

Fun Outside

Today was a beautiful gorgeous absolutely perfect day!!!! We enjoyed lots of time outside - playing, mowing, weeding, walking, running, biking, watering, sliding, swinging, etc. We also have been busy getting our rooms ready for VBS this next week - Mark is teaching 6th grade and I will be teaching Pre/Kind. This evening when Mark left for church the girls and I walked over to the Mikkelson's house to play with Amber, Olivia, Neva and Isabel. Here are the girls (minus Isabel) playing together on the slide :0)

First Hair Cut

All 3 girls needed a trim - I took on Elie's (easy) but did not even attempt to do Gabie's - she'll go with Mark next week to someone who actually knows what they are doing - ha! Rachel only had whisps of hair that needed to be cut, but it made such a difference! She looks great now - and it was her very first hair cut, which is always a milestone :0).

BEFORE

AFTER

Great Grandpa and Grandma Gruhn

My great grandma was one of the oldest of 9 siblings. One of her younger siblings, Louise Lueders (my great-great-aunt) passed away, and grandma and grandpa Gruhn from Arkansas came for the funeral. We have a lot of distant relatives in the Lexington area that actually go to my parent's church, and my dad did the funeral. We did not mark it to the funeral, but we took the opportunity to visit great grandma and grandpa that we don't get to see very often. And with it being a holiday weekend, it worked out for Mark to come, so it was a perfect little trip!

Potty Training....

a picture is worth a thousand words....

Bike Riding

We brought the girl's bikes along to keep them busy - unfortunately is was quite chilly/rainy/yucky out on Tuesday. So we enjoyed a lot more indoor activities.

Nap Time!

There's nothing like a good Sunday afternoon nap!

Working Out

Rachel all lounged out while Mark was running on the treadmill.

Gardening

I was so excited to get a garden tilled this year for us! I got everything planted today, except that I need to get some tomoato plants that are already started at the store (I can never seem to start anything very well). We planted peppers, onions, watermellon, pumpkins, green beans, sugar snap peas, carrots and sweet corn. We'll see if anything actually comes of it...The girls enjoyed spending a majority of their day outside with me, helping off and on. We also got a rabbit/rachel fence up already, so hopefully that will help to give it a good start.

Two On One

I wish I was writing two FOR one, but I don't think it will work that way. We had Rachel at the ENT today. From looking over her records from the past few months, listening and visiting with us he strongly recommends she has her adnoids out - they are enlarged and can close off the openings for the nose and ears and thereby cause a lot of upper-resp. junk to happen. The tonsils are up to us and right now we're leaning towards keeping them in. The plus to taking them out is that we wouldn't have to do it later someday. The plus to keeping them in is that she's still very young and hasn't really had any 'tonsil' related problems that we know of yet. He told us to think about it and let him know. So that is scheduled for July 21st....as well as Mark having his deviated septum fixed for the second time. He had it done back while he was in the sem, but if anything that time it made it worse. The ent today was just visiting with us and the subject came up he looked at it and thought he could really help Mark, so we scheduled him for the same day. Hopefully this will help them both significantly!

Watering

The girls helped me to water the tullips today (I thought Gabie's outfit was so cute - and I was thrilled she was willing to wear the hat!).

Today was BEAUTIFUL!!!! 80's and almost no wind at all. It was just wonderful. I was so wishing that I could've run - what a perfect day for it! but unfortunately pulled my achilles tendon in my 18 miler this weekend, so I have to take the week off. Thankfully I if it heals fine we should still be good to go for the marathon - only 6 weeks to go! :0)

Caterpillar Stage

During the second to the last week of preschool we did a unit on bugs and creepy crawlies. I sent a postcard off that week to get some catepillars that come in this little cup with food and stuff. I knew this would only be for our family to do (and Kirstie) but I thought it was good timing to send it off when it was fresh in Elie and Kirstie's minds. When they spin their cocoons we move them into a net enclosure and then after keeping the butterflies for a couple of days let them go. It's great fun to watch the process. Yesterday they climbed to the top of the cup and today we found they had started to en-case themselves, in about a week or two we should have some fun butterfly pictures to share!

What We've Been Up To

feeding the ducks at Pizza Hutt after the track meet.

The girls and I went to IA for the weekend so we could see Rebecca run in a couple of track meets - we were bummed that one got rained out, but still got to see her run in the junior high conference meet - she is so awesome! It was fun to get away for a couple of days. Mark had a busy weekend with funeral-ing - he has done 4 funerals in the past four weeks. As our secretary would say 'they are populating heaven at quite a clip!' I hope that clip slows down a bit!

Fun Packages!

We got a coupld of fun packages in the mail the week of the girl's birthdays. We have been enjoying everything so much (thanks Sarahs and families!!!!) With our cold chilly weather that we've been having (with rain!) we've been enjoying having some things to do indoors to occupy our time and energy. Today we docorated egg cookies - these crazy cookies that you could color with 'edible' markers. It was so cool! The girls enjoyed decorating and then eating their masterpieces.

Puzzles

Eliya takes after her Papa in that she enjoys puzzles! She can now do 25-30 pieces on her own and over 100 with help. Since I love to do puzzles too, I have been enjoying helping her tackle the more challenging (not just wooden piece match-up) puzzles :0)

Happy Mother's Day!

Hannah and Eliya worked together to make our mother's day breakfast this morning. Thanks girls!

Park

Eliya conquering what she calls the twisty slide.

Gabie climbing to the slide.

Walking by the river.

I love this picture - it's just precious of them walking together.

Eliya sitting and playing with some rocks.

Gabie wanted to take Max for the walk.

Swinging!

This afternoon we went to Pierre to have a picnic at our favorite park. It was a lot of fun!

Happy Mother's Day!

A Unique Tennis Game

We don't really have tennis rackets so we used a raquet ball racket, some plastic bats, etc. to have a tennis game - it was so much fun!