all good things must come to an end

I can't believe that this school year is over. I'm so happy to have the girls home all day for the summer, but I'm sad to see them move on from their current classes.Especially Alyssa expressed sadness to leave her teacher and classmates. The girls both had such great teachers this year! And they learned a lot ~ they can officially carry on a well developed conversation in German that Dave and I have next to no chance of understanding, so that's at least a compliment to the education they are receiving.

I usually like to make a special dinner and decorated brownies to celebrate graduation, but with Emma breaking her ankle, our last day of the year was very rushed.

There were no brownies.

There were no special made-to-order dinners.

Their graduation gifts are still in the "future gifts bin" in our garage.

And I feel terrible about it! The gifts are outside play toys so we'll be sure to give them to the girls after vacation when hopefully Emma's a little more up for playing. There's a little bit of a helpless feeling watching Emma struggle somewhat with things that are usually so easy for her. Sometimes, she loves being carried around and hugs onto me like a little koala, and other times I can tell she is just plain frustrated. She doesn't like having help getting in and out of the car, earlier today she had to ask me to carry some books and blanket to the backyard so she could sit and watch the rest of the kids play, and even small things like having to ask someone to throw stuff away for her seems to be a nuisance to her. This is not to even mention baths and all the help she needs with that! She wanted to wash the van with Dave this evening which was not even a remote possibility.

On a more positive note, she still has her usual cheerful, easy-going spirit about her laughing about most things that have become surprisingly difficult for her. She hasn't complained once about being in pain, which I'm taking as a good indication that she's healing well. More good news and something that Alyssa describes as being so excited about it that her stomach aches...we are going on vacation tomorrow!!!

va·ca·tion (vā kā′s̸hən, və-)

noun

1. freedom from any activity; rest; respite; intermission
2. ☆ a period of rest and freedom from work, study, etc.; time of recreation, usually a specific interval in a year

Wow, does that sound welcomed! We rarely {never!} vacation in this way. Our vacations are always jammed pack with theme parks, site seeing, early morning rising and late nights out. There's always a sense of not wanting to waste a single moment or miss anything, and while it's exhausting at times, I have grown to love it. I'm sure we'll take a little slower of a pace than usual, but there are so many cool things we are looking forward to seeing!

I thought I would share some end of the school year photos before we go...
This is Emma with her teacher on a field trip they went to in May. Dave went on this field trip with their class.


On the Thursday before school ended, I took Rebekah to cute little movie theater where they serve meals and/or ice cream sundaes during the movie. We saw the new Shrek movie. It was so nice to have a Mom and Bekah date before school got out.


We returned to school just in time to play out side with Emma and her friends...


look for bugs {Emma has a moth in her hand}...


and play tag in the park.



These are some photos Dave took on a field trip he went to with Alyssa's class last Friday~
Alyssa with her friends Stephanie and Molly.


Herr Klein's 4th grade class at Old World Wisconsin.


The kids played tug of war with these two bulls. Alyssa told me that she let go of the rope right away, not interested in being pulled through the dirt. She's in the far left corner of the pic, clearly not holding the rope. Other children weren't so deterred by the dragging and one of the bulls peed then a child was pulled through the mud that resulted. She rarely lacks effort and this is one time in which I was thankful for her lack of resolve. Great job letting go, Alyssa!


Saying the Pledge of Allegiance in the old school house.


I know all the teachers at our school are great, but our girls certainly had two of the best this past year! I've never seen teachers who challenge their kids so much in the classroom and at the same time run around the playground equipment and stage soccer games for their students at recess. It was a really fun year!

Grandmommy Gets a New Shopping Partner

After a busy weekend, I planned to come home Sunday night and have the girls in bed early so they would be well rested for their last day of school on Monday. I figured I would use that extra bit of time to get packed for our vacation at the end of this week and to get caught up on a few posts I have drafted. Other plans were in store, as often happens.

The girls were playing outside after dinner and Alyssa came running in the back door. "Mom? Help." Often, she's very dramatic, however this time, there was nothing in the tone of her voice that alarmed me. I had my back to her as she came in the door, and she again repeated herself very calmly and plainly, "Help, Emma's hurt." As I turned around and saw the expression on her face I knew something was seriously wrong. The color was completely gone from her face and her eyes had this very blank but fearful look to them.

I got out into the yard and our neighbor was cradling Emma in her arms, she handed her to me explaining that as Emma was jumping on the trampoline she had suddenly grabbed at her ankle and told everyone else on the trampoline to please stop bouncing. The odd thing was that nothing out of the ordinary had seemed to happen. Emma was bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, then she just collapsed. I laid her down on the couch and I could tell right away that she needed to be x-rayed. The little ankle had already swelled up like a puffball. I've seen lots and lots of sprained ankles at gymnastics, and a few broken ones, and from what I could tell based on outward appearances, this certainly looked more on the broken side. I was wondering though if my initial feelings of fear were causing me to see something that wasn't actually there because she wasn't crying. She whimpered when Ka'eo tried to put the ice on, but she seemed "okay." Rebekah asked Emma if she would like to pray for her ankle, then Rebekah proceeded to say the prayer she says when we are about to eat, and said, "There, I'm cheering Emma up now."

As the next half hour passed the swelling only increased and it was obvious she couldn't walk on it, so Ka'eo brought her to the ER. Alyssa and Rebekah kept asking every five minutes when Emma would be home, did I think her ankle was really broken, will Emma be in a wheelchair when she gets back? They were worried and I had a hard time getting them to rest. At one point Alyssa was just sitting at the window waiting for them to come home.

When they returned around 10:30 Emma's ankle was in a soft splint. She had broken the growth plate and needed to see an orthopedic surgeon the next day to be sure that they didn't need to repair it surgically. Everything went way better than I ever could have asked for with the surgeon. My dad's cousin, Rory is an orthopedic surgeon and he was happy to see her the next morning. It was reassuring to see someone we know and have him look at the x-rays and show us right where it is broken. The poor thing did a really good job breaking it in two places on both the inside and outside of the ankle bone. He confidently explained that this is a fragile area of the bone structure for a child Emma's age, and we didn't need to worry about surgery or the healing process. It's a relatively common area for a break, and Rory expects it to be as good as new in as soon as four weeks. Praise God! Rory was so great and attentive to her pain, he complimented her for being brave and tough, gave her the coolest hot pink cast, and said all the things Emma needed to hear. We are very thankful he was able to so gently fix her back up again!!

Emma's broken ankle puts a slight hitch in our vacation plans for the end of the week. Once she was all casted up I was so relieved but my next thoughts naturally went to our vacation, and the upcoming visits to theme parks where she will likely have to pass on many of the rides she has been looking forward to for months. I know there are so many worse things beyond missing out on rides that a child could have to go through, but Emma tends to be so tenderhearted about this kind of thing. She cried WAY HARDER when she realized that I was not leaving her at school to enjoy the final day of play with her classmates in room 28, than she did when the injury took place the day before! I dreaded explaining to her that the vacation was going to be very different than what she had been planning for.

Dave beat me to the punch on that conversation {another thing which I am so thankful for} and I thought he explained it to her in such a great and perfect way. Later that night Emma announced that whenever there is something she can't do, she will just go shopping with Grandmommy. She will be Grandmommy's helper and shopping partner. Trust me when I say that Grandmommy doesn't require any help with shopping, she is very capable of doing significant damage in this area on her own :-), but Emma is so happy to have this new responsibility. It was sweet to hear Emma so genuinely excited to have this special time to spend with Grandmommy who I am sure will be grateful for an excuse to stay off some rides. Many, many times I have seen her get on a ride that she is absolutely dreading for no other reason than to be able to share the experience with the kids, and now she has a very good reason to say, "oh, no the baby better not go on this one, we'll be in the gift shop!" I don't think Kahiwa will have to worry about missing out on anything :-)

Anyway, Rory was so efficient fixing up Emma's ankle that we were able to return to her class for about the last hour or so of the day, and she enjoyed cupcakes and icee treats with her classmates. Her last memory of 1st grade didn't have to be tearfully saying good bye to everyone as had happened earlier that morning. Another huge blessing to be thankful for! She even disappeared on me for a few minutes, leaving me wondering how a child just learning how to use crutches could outrun me in the school. She had decided that she needed to run back to her classroom to have her friends sign her cast since she found the correct kind of marker for that in the school office. Just took off before I even knew she had left {someone had stopped me to talk and I was very distracted.}

In a way, her broken ankle has helped her discover a new interest that she has. We've learned over the last two days that Emma LOVES to scrapbook. She can't get up and play with the kids the way she would like, so we needed something to keep her busy and happy while she's sitting down. She got a cute scrapbook kit from her friend Jaydon for her birthday, and I have a bunch of prints from her party, so she has worked very diligently to get a birthday scrapbook together. I think it even took her by surprise how much fun it is to organize the photos and decorate the pages. It's turning out to be so cute!
 
Yesterday we spent a nice day going out to breakfast with my parents and taking the girls to the library to sign up for summer reading before we head out on vacation. I also got a lot of packing done while they watched movies with the girls. Fun distractions to help Emma pass some time that otherwise could have been unpleasant. While we wish we could have protected her from the injury, we have lots of things to be thankful for coming out of her rather unexpected mishap on the trampoline.

Air Show Attempt #2

Sunday was not a much better day in terms of weather, there was still quite a bit of fog, but it was a little warmer and clear enough for the long awaited Air Show to run.
 The Aeroshell stunt planes.


 


 There were a few really cool kites the girls chased through the field. They loved this octopus.


 As they waited for the air show to start the girls wrestled and Alyssa made up a Blue Angels "cheer." I think this picture and the one above are the last pics I have of Emma clowning around before she broke her ankle. :-(


 
Fat Albert came flying overhead to signal the arrival of the Blue Angels.


 They were awesome, just as we had hoped and expected they would be.


 It was still pretty loud, but didn't seem anywhere near as thundering as it had been just a few days earlier when we were at home.


 That's it, Baby!! NOW you have seen the real BLUE ANGELS!!!

The Air Show That Wasn't

We had a great day at The Gathering Waters Festival.
 The kayaking was great and exciting. Kamele had to be coaxed into the kayak because she was worried that there were crocodiles in the water, but she ended up loving it! She kept waving and smiling at me back on the shore. She's very happily peeking out from behind Emma in this pic.


 Alyssa and I each had to take our own kayaks out, because the guide didn't think that I could handle a tandem kayak. "It's pretty hard, takes a lot of strength, you know, " he told me. I wanted to protest a little, explain that maybe I was a little stronger than I looked, but considering that I had no idea if I could actually do it, I didn't want to appear over confident in my abilities. Alyssa ended up going in circles out in the water. She must have tried for at least 15 minutes to get herself back to shore. She later confessed that as soon as she got out to the middle, she wanted to head back. She couldn't figure out why leaning the direction she wanted to go wasn't helping her cause at all. She said it was fun, she just thought she was stuck out there for good. Let's just agree that she doesn't have a future on the Iowa rowing team.



The rock climbing was awesome!
 It was Rebekah's first time climbing an actual rock wall, and she looked so cute all "geared up." Alyssa thought so too!


 


 


 



The crafts were super cool too!
 


 


 Rebekah loved the jams :-) She's dancing to The Hand Jive here.


 This boat used by scientists to explore Lake Michigan was really neat too.



About the only thing that wasn't great about the day was the weather. We had gone to the lakefront to enjoy the air and water show and had prepared ourselves for a very hot day, with possible rain sprinkles from time to time.
 It turned out to be freezing! And foggy! The air show was postponed...postponed...then finally canceled. Oh well, tomorrow's another day.

Family Field Trip #1 (or would it be #2?)

Over the last two weekends, the girls have officially declared this summer, The Summer of Family Field Trips. Two weekends ago we went to the traveling exhibit of The Bible and The Dead Sea Scrolls at the Public Museum. As we got out of the car Alyssa asked, "So is this like a family field trip?" We agreed with her that it was, and Emma made it official this past weekend when she asked the same question as we headed to a multi-era military encampment. They decided that we should treat every fun place we go to this summer as a field trip, and while a military encampment might not sound like a "fun family field trip" our girls wanted to go here instead of doing a gymnastics show. Fortunately we were able to rearrange our schedule a bit and do both.

We don't have any pics from the Public Museum as photography was not allowed in the special exhibit area, but I'm sure we'll having plenty going forward. Here are some photos from last year's Reclaiming Our Heritage Military Encampment (I especially love the ones showing the re-enactment of the surgery).
Please excuse poor little Kamele's somewhat messy appearance. She insisted on having her hair in two braids just like the older girls had the day before, and her baby fine hair just would not cooperate. I think she had about four actual strands of hair that would stay braided. On top of the crazy hair, she was playing with rubber stamps right before we were ready to leave the house, and although it's faint, she got her cheeks and forehead pretty well stamped up. It was just one of those mornings that if I had waited for everyone to be all cute looking before we walked out the door, we wouldn't have gotten anywhere all day.


The girls were able to make beeswax candles...





They also wrote thank you letters to war veterans using feather quill pens and berry ink.





As Alyssa looked at this picture she wanted me to point out that she just now noticed that she left out the word "job" in one of her sentences ~ okay, correction noted :-)


This trunk full of a soldier's belongings was really neat. The old magazines and candies were so cool, I was afraid to let the girls touch anything.


Rebekah jumped into the driver's seat of this jeep.


An old fountain in front of the old Veteran's Hospital.


Exploring the Humvee. Rebekah was way more interested in the pond she's pointing to on her left.


We saw him last year as well, but the girls were really excited to see this Abraham Lincoln and hear him speak. He introduced himself as a historian named Bob. He explained that since he happened to look a little bit like Lincoln his presentations had the added benefit of him being able to tell stories from President Lincoln's point of view, as if Lincoln himself was remembering the tales and passing them on. This amused Alyssa very much. She kept saying, "Bob, Bob Lincoln. How funny!" {giggle, giggle, giggle}

We have read a lot about President Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address lately in anticipation of our upcoming trip to Pennsylvania, and it was super cool for the girls to hear him explaining about some of the exact events we had read about.


It's also noteworthy {at least to our girls :-) } that we saw both a family of ducks (a mother with 7 ducklings) and a beautiful family of swans. An exciting kickoff to our official summer of family field trips!

A Little Airplane

Here comes the airplane...
Yesterday afternoon as we went out to play in the yard, the Blue Angels flew over doing a practice flight for this weekend's air show.

It seemed like they came out of nowhere. Suddenly they were just there, right over head. The whole ground shook and it was so loud!

Bekah dove into the garage and hit the ground as if we were under attack.

After getting over the initial scare of the unexpected air show stunts taking place in our neighborhood, she has been so excited to tell anyone who will listen that she has seen the real BLUE ANGELS!!
Saying that she has "seen" the Blue Angels would have to be a rather loose interpretation of what actually happened considering she was face down on the cement floor of the garage. At least it was exciting for her!