End of April Photos...

Photo 114 of 365, taken April 18th:

Back at the school where Alyssa has her singing lesson we checked on the status of the underground ocean hallway and much to Rebekah's excitement they added mermaids! Now all the fish, no matter how cool, have fallen to at least second place on her favorites list.


The girls had been asking for a picnic lunch all week long, and we had a nice afternoon on Saturday, so we decided to grill out. Dave grilled some chicken and a few turkey hot dogs, but other than that I just threw together some leftovers that I wanted to get out of the fridge. I looked at the hodgepodge of food I was about to serve and felt kind of bad that their much anticipated picnic wasn't going to be fancier. Emma walked up mid-way through my microwaving process and she said, "Mmmmm, I can't wait, it's such a yummy picnic." Bless her.

Photo 115 of 365, taken April 27th:

Our first outdoor meal this year. We had some of the neighbor kids stop by last minute to join us and all the kids raved about the leftovers. I wish it was always this easy to feed them!! And I will let you decide if Dave has something in his eye, or if he is trying to avoid being photographed :-)

The girls love stumbling upon heart shapes in unexpected places {and it's both fun and funny how often we find perfect hearts in places you'd never imagine they could be}! This month it happened twice with food...Emma had a heart shaped cheese curd when G&G took the girls to Culvers, and Rebekah got a heart shaped chicken nugget a few days later.

Photo 116 of 365, taken April 19th:

Looking through her kindle, it appears that Emma spent some time this month taking self portrait photos. Here she had given herself a black eye with some eye shadow.

These were all taken on the way to church one Sunday morning.

Photo 117 of 365, taken April 29th:

At the gym lately, Rebekah has had more interest in practicing while I coach than she has ever had before. But when she's not busy with her own group I can usually find her doing something silly like this ~ giving her tiny teddy bear a swing on the kip trainer.

Photo 118 of 365, taken April 30th:

Gymnastics practice might be one of a very few places where it is the coolest thing ever to accidentally show up wearing the same thing as your best friend.

Fieldtrips with Friends

I recently went on a fieldtrip with Rebekah's class to the art museum.

The super cool Milwaukee Art Museum.

We had the most amazing German speaking docent for our fieldtrip. That meant it wasn't an overly informative fieldtrip for me, but the kids loved her and it was so neat to hear them interacting in German with her.

Photo 113 of 365, taken April 24th:

We stopped to look at this artwork, by a German artist. This was his very dramatic representation of his village after an explosion. {I think that was what she said anyway, I could not understand much of the explanation}



Rebekah told me this was her favorite piece of art we looked at all day. The old man's eyes kind of scared me a little.

These next photos are a bit out of order. Dave also went on a fieldtrip with Rebekah's class back in March. I just recently saw the photos he took off his phone:

She loved her day at the Milwaukee Public Museum, and loved that Dad was there too!


Thank you, Dave for this wonderful photo of the girls in front of my favorite honey tree :-)

Rebekah and her sweet friend, Ramsey. They have been best buds this year in 1st grade!!

Alyssa Loves Science

Alyssa has LOVED her science class this year. I am not sure whether it's the particular lessons they are studying or just that she really likes her teacher, but it has consistently been one of her favorite classes this year!

Photo 112 of 365, taken April 26th:

Alyssa was somewhat excited, somewhat apprehensive to begin their dissection unit. It went way better than she anticipated. The first thing they dissected was an owl pellet. She was so pleased with her findings {a shrew skeleton} that she decided to assemble the bones, glue them to construction paper and bring them home for us to keep forever.

A different assignment had the students creating their own make believe animal. Alyssa is typically a very "in the box" thinker; logic, reason and reality always winning out. I have no idea what kind of animals her classmates came up with, so hers could be rather tame in comparison, but I had to laugh at this at least a little. Her Tintinscenterous has armor and a poison scent spray that kills. I would be awfully upset if I came across one on the beach as her description indicates that is where they like to hang out. Love this sweet girl!

Mount Mary Recycled Sculptures

Photo 111 of 365, taken April 26th:

Mount Mary College has been sending over some art students to work with our students on recycled artwork sculptures. Each classroom has made {or is still working on completing} 3-4 sculptures that will be on display at Kinderfest, an end of the year school festival. It has been a multi-day project for the kids. The stamping that I showed pictures of from Emma's classroom are part of this same project. It has been really neat because the kids have been using several different mediums, from painting to stamping cloth pieces to gluing various materials all in order for these cute characters to come together.

A few of the finished products out in the hallway.

Rebekah's group named their sculpture "King Noah". It is huge for us to have the opportunity to do these kind of art projects because we don't have an art teacher on staff at our school. Often any art that is done is completely because of special projects like this, or creativity the specific classroom teachers decide to incorporate into their lessons. I can't wait to see all of the sculptures "on parade" at the end of the year.

Alyssa's First Paying Gig

Photo 110 of 365, taken April 23rd:

The other day I was cleaning up a shelf that I hardly ever pay any attention to, when I found these ~ Alyssa's first paychecks. She earned them during the run of A Christmas Carol at The Rep. I completely forgot they were even here at the house, and they weren't a huge amount of money at all, just a reimbursement for travel costs, but her savings account got a nice little deposit. She has been offered a babysitting job for the summer, and she is not sure yet whether she's going to take it {I'm not sure if I'm ready for that either, to be honest :-)}, but I thought years from now she might appreciate the memory of her first paying job ever, and I'm sure she'll love that it was with a great theatre company.

I Can't Keep Up

Photo 109 of 365, taken April 23rd:

These girls are too fast for me!

Cookies and a Haircut Idea

Photo 107 of 365, taken April 22nd:

Yesterday, we stopped at the bakery after Alyssa's orthodontist appointment. The two younger girls were so happy to see these Brewer cookies on the shelves...definitely an indication that Summer is on it's way!!

Photo 108 of 365, also taken April 22nd:

The traffic was so terrible on our way back, that I broke down and gave into the requests to stop and get a frosty. At first, Rebekah was so frustrated with Alyssa for trying to put this bib on her, then she realized by tucking her hair into the straps, it was just the right opportunity for her to model the haircut she has been trying to talk me into for months. She keeps asking if I can cut her hair up to her ears. She later saw this photo and told me it was perfect!

NPS FREE Week!!!

This week entrance to all National Parks is completely FREE! In honor of that I am posting a bunch of photos from our various visits to National Parks and Historic Sites.

Dry Tortugas, 2003:
This is where Dave and I got hooked on visiting the parks! It is absolutely beautiful there and it is the most remote National Park, so as we visited the gift shop the lady working there encouraged us to buy a park passport {and get it stamped!} if we planned to visit other parks in the system. Possibly the best $10 we have ever spent and a great memory to have the book stamped in all the parks we visit!






Rocky Mountain National Park, 2004:


Martin Luther King Memorial, 2008:


Cumberland Island, Georgia, 2008:






A video from the National Parks we visited in the summer of 2010:


Pearl Harbor and the Arizona Memorial, 2011:


The fun memories, cool experiences and things we have learned from visiting National Parks and National Historic Sites could not possibly be summarized in a handful of photos and a few sentences. I was disappointed to go through my posts and see that I have not documented nearly all the sites we have visited. I definitely encourage you to stop and visit any National Park that you either live near or are driving past, you will not regret it!! Previous National Parks we have visited and I have posted about {click any of the links to view}:
Florida
The Wright Brothers
Gettysburg
Pennsylvania
Ronald Reagan's Home
William Howard Taft's Home
George Rogers Clark Monument
Abraham Lincoln's Farm

District Meet

Emma had her district meet this afternoon.


It was her highest all around as a level 7 so far. This is the team's 1st place trophy she is holding here.

Photo 106 of 365, taken April 21st:

After the meet we went to The Machine Shed to celebrate my mom's birthday. It was yummy!

Rebekah was sad in this photo because she wanted a sock monkey from the restaurant gift shop. Grandpa must have felt bad for her because he sent Alyssa in to get it for her :-)

Happy Birthday, Mom!!

Today is my mom's birthday ~ Happy Birthday!!

Photo 105 of 365, taken April 19th:
The day started out rather uneventful, except for the small swamp in our backyard. Our house is a little lower than the surrounding homes so when we get a lot of rain, it tends to sit right between our house and our neighbor's. We feel a little bit like Shrek at times like these.

I went into Emma's classroom to help with a stamp making project. The kids were each given a small foam block and some pieces of foam with which they could design their own stamp. I think the project was modeled after an old fashion Chinese method of artistic stamping. The kids enjoyed working on the stamps, and came up with some neat ideas. Emma's is the geometric heart one, one of her friends made a cat, and the boy who sits next to her made Darth Vader.

After helping with art in Emma's room, I left to run some errands and was shocked that it was snowing! Snowing ~ On April 19th!!

At first, it was just coming down lightly in gentle flakes that looked pretty as they floated to the ground and melted immediately.

By the time I came out of Target though, the snow was actually sticking to surfaces. I had to text my mom and ask her if this was the birthday weather she had wished for. She responded that it was Mother Nature's gift to her. My mom has from time to time mentioned to me that she recalled years when it had snowed on her birthday. I couldn't remember any April 19th snows during my lifetime, but she surely proved me wrong today!

I then braved the snow back to school to help with painting pinch pots in Rebekah's class. I thought she was silly for wanting to wear this Snow Angel shirt this morning. I guess she proved me wrong too.

Happy Birthday, Mom! We are excited to see you and Dad this weekend.