What happens over the course of a school year?

• Hair is shorter and longer.
  
• Both got a few inches taller.
• Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic got stronger.

And we are off for the summer to swim, swim, swim....if it ever stops raining!

Freezer Jam...YUMMY!

Homemade bread and fresh strawberry freezer jam all on the same day...somebody call me Molly already!

1st Grade Fieldtrip

I got to go with Brynn and her class to the Missouri Botanical Gardens last week. I felt sad that I wasn't super human and could be in two places at the same time as Kohl also had his field trip on the same day and he really could have used his Mama. But, alas, I had to make Sophie's Choice and Brynn won (only because I had already gone with Kohl to an earlier class trip). Kohl came home in tears because his chaperon wouldn't let him buy a peacock feather...the nerve:)

Are we ready to party?

Brynn with her friend, Gina

Checking out the cool glass bubbles.

"...and it was like..."

My little troop that I was in charge of for the day.

A very fine day!

An Ice Cream Farewell

The kids were not ready to say goodbye to Manu and Santi, so they dragged out the cones as long as they could.

Carol was a dear neighbor and we have already missed her dearly. They are now off to California and Chase is asking daily if we can just get into our car and drive to their new house.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

I couldn't do what I do without you.

You bless my kids beyond measure and I know they are better people because they get to have you in their lives on a daily basis.

I love you.

Just because he makes me smile

What did we get ourselves into?

How much work is it to build a few grow boxes and plant a small garden....oh, what we didn't know!
My mom orderered a huge mound of top soil to put in our boxes...thus started the hours of work. They could only put the dirt in our front yard due to the weight of the truck and our driveway...so, for a few weeks we had a huge pile of dirt staring at us and our neighbors just begging to be moved. After filling all the boxes we still had way too much dirt. Thus we decided to spread it out in our front yard to try to replant grass. This was a fun job!
Then when we placed the strawberries too close to the huge tree in our backyard Dan had to trim a bunch of branches so there wouldn't be too much shade on our garden. This is about 1/8 of the branches from what he cut down, we spent all last Sat. putting the rest in the shredder...until we ran out of gas and didn't feel like going to get more, darn!
Then, we decided that it would be so fun to build a sand box to go with some extra sand we had from a neighbors project.
And of course once we had this huge tree trimmed we discovered it would be the perfect place for the rope swing that Dan always dreamed of having as a child.


Six weeks after that load of dirt arrived we have very happy kids, 4 boxes planted and thriving, a front yard dirt bed (the rain this week has not been great for trying to grow grass), a new sand box, and a great tree swing. Hands are calloused, backs are sore, feeling alive and loving the ability to work and enjoy the fruits of our labor.