The Sweetest Strawberries

Here are some photos from the day we went strawberry picking...


































The sweet rewards of a summer's worth of strawberries in our baskets. The girls seemed very content as we took the wagon ride back to the farmhouse, maybe it was just pure exhaustion, but it sure was fun! And we've been enjoying lots of delicious strawberry shortcake!

Picture Troubles and Picking Our Weight in Strawberries

**Updated: You can scroll down to see some posts that were earlier missing photos, so I delayed in posting them. I'm still trying to figure out the sizing of the pictures, that's why some are so small, and others are large...** 2nd Update: And nearly two hours later ~ I think I have it all figured out now :-)

Just a quick note...I keep getting an error message every time I upload photos. That's why the post below is missing Rebekah's pics from last week (although I'm almost sure they were there when I first posted it, hmm...) Dave is going to see if he can fix it for me tonight, and if anyone can, it's him :-) I drafted a few posts in the last few days that I was hoping to put up before we leave for 4th of July weekend, but I'm not sure if that will happen in the next 24 hours or not.

Anyway, a strawberry story since I don't have any pictures: We went strawberry picking yesterday. It's something I have wanted to do for a couple of summers now, but the season is so short that we keep missing it. I guess we were trying to make up for lost seasons ~ we now have strawberries coming out our ears. My first miscalculation was letting each of the girls grab their own flats for loading the strawberries as we picked them. They were such cute little crate/basket things, and they all wanted to carry one, so I figured what's the harm in that?

My second miscalculation came as I saw the girls happily filling up their flats out in the fields. The flats were filling up much quicker than I thought they would. By comparing in my mind the size of the containers of strawberries I buy at the store, I estimated that each flat could hold maybe 5 lbs of berries at the max. Emma was the first to throw her's up on the scale at the checkout ~ 8.2 pounds ~ that's a lot of strawberries, and the other girls didn't have much less. $26 worth of strawberries later, I better get pretty inventive with how we are going eat all these things {I froze a bunch for later throughout the season, but at 11:15 last night as I was washing and trimming all those leaf parts off the top, I was sure I never intended to have that many!} At least the price per pound was very reasonable.

There was a sweet lady who was picking berries with her own kids just a couple rows over from us. She complimented the girls, calling them charming and saying they were fun to listen to as they carried on conversations like no one else could hear them. I thanked her, not sure if I should add that more than likely, their conversation would not have been at all filtered even if they had known anyone was listening. That's just how they are. Silly conversations, fake English accents and all. It's always fun and reassuring when other people find the girls' antics as amusing as I do.

Workin' at the Car Wash

After so much rain lately, yesterday afternoon was just about as perfect as summer weather gets. The girls and Dave planned to wash the cars, and just as they were walking out the back door the neighbor girls came up asking if our girls wanted to play. Since there was no way our girls wanted to miss out on washing the cars {it's a favorite summer chore} they invited their friends, Katie and Allie to come over and help.

While they were playing (I mean washing the cars), I kept thinking of the Car Wash Song. I had the melody in my head, but couldn't remember very many of the words, so I had to google it...



Come summer



the work gets kinda hard.



This ain't no place to be



if ya planned on being a star.



Let me tell you it's always cool



and the boss don't mind sometimes if ya act a fool.



At the car wash...
Talkin' about the car wash yeah!


At one point, I heard the girls' friend Allie tell Dave, "Thank you for inviting us over to wash your cars, this is fun!" I laughed and thought to myself, come on over to play anytime! We've got lots more work to do!

A few good slip and slide races seemed in order when the work was done. I thought both Alyssa and Katie looked to be having a very intense slide on this turn.



The girls had fun and there was only one minor injury...Katie got a very small bloody nose when her sister kicked her in the face. I've often thought slip and slides were one of the most dangerous toys ever invented.



I love Summer! I love the smell of sunscreen and BBQs, and the sounds of little girls kind of giggling, kind of screaming as they slip and slide in the backyard.

CYT ~ OZ

I think I figured out, or I should really say Dave found a solution to the issues I was having with posting pictures last week. It will take me a few days to put up all my post dated entries, and I'm still playing around with the size of the photos, but I hope to get everything done in the next few days. I restored the pictures in a post of Rebekah's below.

Last Friday we went to see the end of the week showcase for the CYT camp that Alyssa and Emma did by my parents' house. The theme this year was The Wizard of Oz, and was loosely based on some highlights from the Broadway play Wicked. I have not seen the play, so I can't say how similar they were, but some of the music was familiar, and the girls loved it...they are still singing all the songs!!

Alyssa's response to being offered a lifetime supply of hotdogs. She can turn just about anything into a skit, and the CYT camps she has done the last two summers have been the perfect outlet for her dramatic energy. She has enjoyed them so much!!



Just a little bit of sass. She's a different child in front of an audience.



At one point, Emma was on the far side of the stage and I couldn't see her immediately, but I could hear her voice. It's a bit of a story, but she doesn't pronounce the letter "R" well, she'll start speech in the fall to help correct this. I've known for a long time that she should have outgrown the mispronunciation, but because she doesn't make the same error when speaking German, they just recently referred her to the speech teacher. I'm always so proud when she speaks confidently in front of an audience. She's so happy all the time, and it doesn't seem to shake her in the least that she might sound a little different, and that, along with her relative ease at success with her schoolwork, is possibly why she wasn't referred earlier. I'll almost be sad to hear those silly R's go.



There was such fun and cute choreography to the show ~ nonstop action. The girls loved it.



It was great to see everything they learned all week and to watch how much fun they were having! I'm still amazed that in about 4 and half days they can put an entire show together. Thank you again so much to my parents for having the girls all week, bringing them to camp and allowing them to have such a great experience!

a wonderful week with rebekah

Our two older girls have spent this whole week at G&G's house. They are so excited to be doing a Christian Youth Theater camp down in IL. and I've been spending lots of one on one time with this little cupcake. She helped me make brownies the other night, and she kept sneaking bites of the raw batter.



The weather has tried to foil our plans in more than one way throughout the week. Tuesday was rainy, so I thought I would take Rebekah to the movies. As we drove to the theater, the storms really picked up, and she had fun watching the wild lightening show. When we arrived, there was a power outage which caused them to cancel the rest of the shows that afternoon. I took her to a paint your own pottery place, where she was happy to paint a flower shaped jewelry box.



The weather was hit or miss the next day too, but we did get to enjoy about an hour at a nearby wading pool before the rain started up again. Almost without warning the sky turned cloudy and it started pouring leaving us to quickly grab our belongings and sprint to the van. It was nice while it lasted!



I've had such a fun time with Rebekah this week. She always has a very funny sense of humor, but being on her own makes her all that much more entertaining. I'm enjoying her constant chattiness, that I think sometimes doesn't get the attention it deserves. I love when little kids use expressions they hear grown ups using in conversation. She keeps telling me "By the way..." and she's almost using the expression in correct context, but not quite. So funny! And I almost forgot how easy it is to have just one child, I'm actually on time to all the places we need to be :-)

Thank you so much to my parents who have been taking care of Alyssa and Emma all week, bringing them to camp, and undoubtedly showering them with love and fun! I know the girls are having a blast!

In Summary...

Over a week has passed and I'm not any closer to blogging about all the end of the school year activities, so I'm biting the bullet and putting as much in one post as I possibly can. I know all the Grandparents will enjoy the photos, but seriously, this is going to be really long. I owe you a prize if you can make it to the end!!
 













Rebekah's soccer finished up during the last week of school. She can continue playing in the Fall if she wants. She seemed to love it a lot, we think she may be a defender ~ in their last game she stopped at least 5 goals and only let one past her. She became more aggressive with her playing as the practices went on.


 













Lots more of Rebekah's soccer photos, including ones of her wearing a way too big jersey (so cute!) are here.


 
















Alyssa went on a field trip to see her pen pal's school and experience what it is like to go to school in a more rural area, and her pen pal's class also came to visit our school on a different day that same week. These photos above are the only ones Alyssa took all day while visiting the other school. And by the looks of them, the school's blacktop area must have been a very interesting place. She's so funny, this evidently is what she interpreted from my instructions to takes lots of pictures.


 Fortunately, her teacher took pictures of everyone with their pen pals.


 














The following day when she went on her end of the year field trip to Chicago, she did a much better job getting pictures. Like this one of Dave, who chaperoned. I meant to ask him afterwards if the shirt, which says "I Speak German" across the front of it caused him any problems. It's a bit of false advertising, and he frequently has people walk up to him wanting to speak Spanish (another language he doesn't speak well) with him, but I'm sure he would have mentioned if anything interesting happened.


 














Ka'iulani loved her end of the year field trip, it was one of those things that all her classmates had been looking forward to for the whole school year. More of her photos from the day are here.


 













This might be my new favorite picture of Emma doing gymnastics. I thought it looked like she was flying, and I love how her shadow is right below her and she's looking at it. More cool action shots are here. Emma had a fun season, competing level 3, 4 and one level 5 meet this year.


 




















Emma's class had a year end picnic on the same day as Alyssa's graduation picnic. Since I offered to take pictures at Alyssa's, I couldn't stay at Emma's picnic too long, but I did get to visit for a little bit and take a few photos of her with her friends.


 















Rebekah's class had a field trip to the farm. I love how she is looking at the cow in the top photo. Visiting there brought me back to last time I was at that farm which was Alyssa's kindergarten trip when I was about 7 months pregnant with Rebekah and had a tiny Emma tagging along with me. It was almost 90 degrees that day and it smelled miserable! No wonder I skipped out when Emma's class went ~ but this day was much cooler and easier on the nose. The kids enjoyed it so much. Farm photos are here.


 




















Gathering Waters Festival is a fun lakefront activity at the beginning of each June. The last couple of years the weather has been a little questionable, and this year was no exception. It was a really grey and chilly day, but the girls loved it! Lots of fun arts and crafts, rock climbing and balance rope walking pictures are here.

Phew, that might be about it. Although believe it or not, now that I'm at the end I can recall at least one field trip that I missed! Like I said at the beginning, if you stuck with me this long, you deserve a prize. I don't know what that prize might be, but it ought to be something good :-)!!

5th Grade Completion

Alyssa's days at German Immersion are finished...she had her 5th Grade Completion Ceremony last Tuesday night.
 Here she is on her last day of Kindergarten in 2006.


 And this is last Tuesday morning on her last day of 5th grade.


 Looking so grown up before going into the ceremony. She was so proud of the princess nails my mom got for her. They look like a french manicure with little black music notes and diamonds near the tips.


 













Receiving her diploma from Dr. Brugger. I couldn't decide which picture I liked better, this one above or the one below, so I included both. I thought she looked very excited in this photo.


 













And I thought she looked very proud and satisfied here.

I began this post a few times and sort of scrapped what I had written. I didn't really know exactly what to write about Alyssa moving on from MGIS. She started here six years ago and we had no idea what to expect ~ how would the immersion program work?...would she actually pick up German easily? Now, after years here, I can only feel proud of her and grateful that she has had this opportunity.


 













This has always been a popular photo stop for us on the first and last days of the school year. While I do feel happy and excited for Alyssa, there is a twinge of sadness to see her leave this school. Part of it is just as simple as that she's getting older, the other part of it is that she is leaving this very sheltered and secure environment for a place we know far less about. And middle school is middle school ~ challenging at best, I'm sure. She has such a great attitude about it though, and I'm confident in her, so I am embracing the excitement of it all much more than that tiny tug at my heart that would rather keep her little, and closer to me.


 















Showing off her diplomas both this year and back in Kindergarten. More photos from completion are here.


 













The 5th Grade Class of 2011.