Odds and Ends

Next week the birthdays start in our home (and then it lasts for what seems like a few months), so I was going to update about a few odds and ends before the celebrations begin.

Our girls are growing up so much and we feel incredibly blessed to be able to be their parents and help guide them as they grow. Both girls are amazing in their own way and a few things this past week highlighted each one

First Anna ... Saturday afternoon we participated in an open gym at a gymnastics facility with other families from our church. We went to this same place about six months ago for a birthday party and Anna has really come into her own since then. She tried all sorts of new things that a year ago she would never have even thought to try. She allowed the coaches there to encourage her to do even just a little bit more. And mostly, she had a great time. After the gym time, she headed off with Melissa for a special godmother/god-daughter slumber party. Anna is SO blessed to have such a wonderful, guiding relationship with Melissa :)

And finally, here's the informal observations from Anna's Kindergarten Warm-Up. I hope this doesn't seem too prideful to share, but what else is this blog for besides to share our proud moments with family and friends?

"Anna is a polite and confident girl with strong Kindergarten readiness skills. She happily participated in all activities and interacted appropriately with teachers and other children. She seems very ready to enjoy a positive Kindergarten experience."

Now Kate ... Tuesday morning Kate had her 3 year old screening with the school district. Because of when her birthday falls, she was one of the youngest kids to be screened. For those who don't know, in this screening the early childhood educators check to see if kids are meeting their cognitive, speech, fine motor, and gross motor milestones. We didn't have any developmental concerns about Kate, but I was a little worried that she would be too nervous to be her real self. Well, I should not have worried. She brought her little stuffed puppy along and was fine. Of course she is doing just fine developmentally, but what made our hearts the most happy was that every adult with whom she interacted specifically commented on how sweet Kate was. Our family is so blessed to have Kate.

Also, we decided to pull out the 12 inch bike (with training wheels, of course) for Kate this past week since she's taken so well to riding the tricycle. After going up and down the driveway a few times and telling me that she was nervous about tipping over, she quickly found her stride and had a great time. I envision lots of bike rides around the neighborhood for these girls this summer :)

While Anna was at Melissa's on Saturday night and Sunday morning, Kate let me braid her hair for church. When we finally took it out at the end of the day, the crimps from the braids tickled Matt's funny bone. Kate certainly looks different with curly hair :)

Last but not least, Matt took the girls outside last week on a rainy afternoon to play in the puddles. We try to get out and get some fresh air every day, rain or shine!

Kindergarten Warm-Up

Kindergarten is just on the horizon for our family. In our school district, the incoming kindergarteners come to the school building for a couple of two hour sessions in April for what is labeled "kindergarten warm-up". The purpose of this time is for the kids to get an introduction to the school setting, for the teachers to meet and assess the children, and for parents to absorb a whole lot of information.

Anna has kindergarten warm-up on Thursday and Friday afternoon last week; she loved the experience. On the way home on Friday she asked if she would get to do this every Thursday and Friday now :) We're pretty sure she's going to really enjoy kindergarten next year. We're also sure that she did just fine on the different assessments last week. Anna told us about some of the activities she did with the teachers and, using my education background, I was able to figure out the kinds of skills they were checking. We'll get an informal written report about Anna's "performance" in a few weeks, along with any recommendations for summer school preparation for her.

The adult portion was hard for me to get through :( It's been several years since I've been asked to sit in a big room with dozens of other people and listen to presenters for two hours straight. I never liked it before and I certainly didn't enjoy it this time either. Being home these past 4 1/2 years has given me lots of opportunity to move around and be engaged in multiple activities (the nice way to say not having a chance to sit down much during the day :) and I appreciate all of those aspects much more since I had my two afternoons of meetings.

Besides the warm up, we're just trying to keep up a good balance in our life of family time, personal time, scheduled activities, free play time, work, inside time, outside time, etc. Our spring weather has been so different this year from past years, but at least it's nice to have the variety. On days like yesterday we spend most of the day outdoors. On days like today and tomorrow, we spend most of the day indoors. It keeps us on our toes, right?

Our cold, cold Easter

After the record-breaking warmth back in March, we're having a recurrence of a real Wisconsin spring ... COLD! It's probably not any colder than it normally would be, but it's cold enough to severely threaten our fruit crop for this year :( Last week one night when the lows were predicted in the 20s we did our first attempt at wrapping up two of our apple trees to try to keep the blossoms from freezing.

Then we did it again last night, and have tried again tonight. According to our research, our pears and plums should be okay since they blossomed and were (theoretically) pollinated a few weeks ago. The apple trees, however, are a bit later. There's not much else we can do but wait and hope. Who knows how this weather will affect our grapes, raspberries, and strawberries, to0 :( After we've run out of all of our preserved frozen veggies and fruits this winter and our grocery bill has gone up significantly, it would be sad on many levels if our yard doesn't produce any fruit this year :(


Whenever we've wrapped the trees, Anna has stolen some pieces of plastic to play with around the yard while we do our work.

But that's not our whole life. Here's a few pictures of some of the other random things we done lately.


Daddy is a much better wrestler than Mommy in the evenings :)


We managed a few trips to the zoo (one without Daddy and one with Daddy) recently. The girls like to bring Matt along because we reserve our trips on the train for when he's with us :)


I decided to insist on everyone wearing hats this spring/summer/fall and picked up some new ones that actually have been staying on the girls!


Balancing along the play area (along with playing in the sandbox) is a favorite activity.


Running and jumping on the ramps Matt set up last week has also been fun (especially in our Easter clothes).


Our attempts at an Easter picture with Kate and Anna did not produce many good photos.


And here's the family bike train that I talked about last week.

Hopefully our warm weather returns soon. We miss it!

Random tidbits

Last week I realized that I hadn't shared any silly stories in awhile and thought I could come up with a few.

First of all, we are in full park-visiting mode. It's hard to NOT go to a park on days like we've been having this week. Plus, the girls are at such wonderful ages for playing at parks and are such good friends that they will play together for at least an hour, especially if we bring along a couple of stuffed animals, too. Anna often leads the charge and directs the play, but Kate is right there with her and certainly won't let herself be left behind.

This weather not only encourages running around at parks, but also helps build a blooming flower/plant vocabulary. Both girls know their flowers very well, and are also relatively good at identifying different kinds of trees, at least the more obvious ones (willow, crabapple, magnolia, etc.) Anna even remembers the names of flowers that she learned last summer and will recall them without much effort. If you ask just about anyone who knows these kids, they'll tell you that they both have a pretty remarkable memory.

We've also been out on the bikes a fair bit in the past several weeks. Awhile back we picked up a used tag-a-long (a.k.a. trail-a-bike) for Anna. As we've told her, she's great with her pedaling and steering, but just needs to practice her balance before we start working on riding without training wheels. So in order for us to use this when Matt's at work, we had to rig up our family "train" - which means my bike, pulling Anna on the tag-a-long, pulling Kate in the trailer. After a few test rides, I decided to bite the bullet and take the train into preschool to drop Anna off today. As a bit of reference, last summer I could pull both girls in the trailer to and from McFarland (about 4 miles each way), but the ride home would usually be a struggle for me considering I was pulling between 70 and 75 lbs. of kid, plus a 15+ lb. trailer. So now the kid weight is about the same, but there's an addition 15+ lb. piece of equipment, too.

Well, it worked. The ride in was rough, but after losing the 40 lbs. of Anna once we dropped her off, the ride home was much easier :) We may have to do our train again this spring. On a side note, our train attracted the attention of some construction workers on the way in to town; they gave us a thumbs up and some chuckles ;) I wonder how many odd looks Kate and I got on the ride home, though, when the middle part of our train was missing its rider ...

And finally, lately we've had to work with Kate (and thus Anna by proximity) on appropriate and inappropriate words. Kate loves to rhyme words and make up lots of silly words, most of which don't have any real meaning. However, the situation needed some intervention after she started calling Shadow her "shitty kitty" repeatedly. I've also caught her saying "sticky icky dicky" and "witchy bitchy", but those were only one-timers and we just let them slide :)