Aunt Katherine's Concert

A while back we wend to Ohio to hear Aunt Katherine play her senior recital.  We all had a fabulous time and I finally got around to scrapping a page for the event.  I love how it turned out.  :)

Tulip Time

The tulips arrived just in time this year.  Jon and Becca and I joined some friends for a picnic lunch for Tulip Time.



And then we went and watched Michael walk in the parade.

Becca Reading

With Michael reading book after book and Jon now learning to read new words every day, Becca has been feeling a bit left out.  But the other day we found a book at the library that she can read all by herself.  Check it out:

Child/Parent Doubles and Tread

Tim and Michael have spent the last couple of months raising money for their TREAD race.  Our church was encouraging us to get people to sponsor us and to run the Tulip Time race to raise money to help purchase shoes for kids in Guatemala.  Tim and Michael took up the challenge and spread the word to our stacking friends around the world.  They promised that if $500 was raised they would do a live stream video trying to break 8.5 seconds in Child/Parent doubles.  They raised $680 and so on last Saturday they ran the 5K race and then stacked for an hour live on youtube.  They met their money goal and their stacking goal!!!



If you want to, you can even watch the whole hour of stacking here.

Field Trips

Tis the season for field trips.

Jon's class went to a nature center near the school.  I was thrilled that it was on a day Becca was at school and so I got to go along.  I was actually surprised at how much he LOVED it.  I knew he would have a good time, but I didn't realize how much of an impression it would make on him.  He is talking about a lot and sharing a bunch of facts that he learned with his brother and sister.

They got to see a lot of animals, including turtles, snakes, rabbits, and an owl.  They also learned all about different bird calls.  Finally we took a short walk outside (short because it was rainy), and we saw different flowers and animal prints as well as some deer in the brush.





We (Jon, Becca, and I) also took a trip with my Moms group to Dutch Village.  We rode the rides and walked around.  A favorite is always stopping at the wooden shoe factory and trying on the samples, including these giant ones.

Books

Michael is becoming quite the reader.  For the longest time he was stuck on the Magic Tree House books.  While they are cute, I don't love the series.  Also, Michael's reading level has flown past those books, so to catch his interest and pull him to some harder things, we found this series:



It has been a hit.  Now Tim and I are trying hard to read some of them so we can know what he's reading.  :)

In my search for more books for him, I came across this one that I use to read over and over when I was a child. :)



And all of the kids have been listening to Tim read them the little house books, but recently Michael has been asking to take over the reading and will read chapters to Jon and Becca.