Sunday Snapshot #20~ End of Preschool and Kindergarten (and Bike Rides!!)

 Tuesday was Elody's last day of Preschool. Thankfully she has another year of preschool because I am not ready to lose her to kindergarten yet!

She wore this same outfit on the first day of preschool, someday she might hate me for this :)

posing by her class artwork

Elody and Miss. Becky

Elody does not like me to take pictures of her...

Singing

SOOO pretty!

Getting her packet

Of course we celebrated with an Eileen's cookie :)

Also this week Camryn finished Kindergarten.

and of course Camryn had to have a cookie too!

 A couple weeks ago Camryn decided that she wanted to take the training wheels off her bike, she has practiced a few times but always freaked out and stopped after a trip or 2 to the corner. Yesterday for some reason she decided she wanted to do it on her own. She pushed herself around the front yard a few times but couldn't get to pedaling because she didn't have enough room. After supper we took the bikes to an empty parking lot so Camryn would have more room. I was getting Brian's phone ready to record her and she stopped me and said "this is just a practice mom." Seconds later she was gone. This video shows her first ride (once I finally got the camera going) and then her second try. Then it stated sprinkling so I put the phone away. She continued in the rain and perfected stopping with the brakes rather than her feet and also learned how to turn! She was so proud of herself and was extra excited that she did it before she turned 6!!

Sunday Snapshot #19~ The "end of the year" begins

It's hard to believe Camryn has less than a week left of Kindergarten and Elody only has one more day of Preschool. Let the end of the year programs begin....


Last Wednesday night was AWANA awards night.

Elody getting her ribbon for finishing her first Cubbies book.

Camryn with her friend Katie

Camryn with her ribbon for finishing her Sparks book, she also got a patch for reviewing the book.

Camryn LOVES "Miss Stephanie"

 

Elody by the AWANA flag

So proud of my girls for working so hard this year to memorize all of their bible verses!

This week is Elody's preschool program and Camryn's end of the year picnic. I love being able to celebrate with the girls and I love even more that in less than a week I will have the girls home for the entire summer!

Sunday Snapshot #18~ The Circus Is Coming!

Thursday night was the kindergarten circus at Morton. This is a long-time tradition at Morton school and it was so much fun! Camryn has been singing the songs for a month now so I was more than ready to see it all put together.

getting ready

 

ready to go!

Camryn with her friend Addie

Time for the clowns

Camryn's wig kept falling off :)

their songs were SOOO cute!

Camryn with Mrs. Leth

the strongmen were sooo cute!

I tried to piece together clips of each act, I am missing the strongmen and the seals because the battery was almost dead but I think we got a little of everything else. We also got almost all of the songs they sang as a group, we missed the beginning of the bear song :(

I had to split the video into 2 parts to upload it. If you only want to see Camryn, the clowns are about 6 minutes in on the first video. She also sang songs with the group throughout the entire video. If you watch it all it is about 15 min, I cut out about half of it.
Part 1 includes the intro, bears, lovely ladies, cowboys/cowgirls, clowns, and an elephant song
Part 2 includes elephants, jugglers, seals (song only), lions, and the finale.

Sunday Snapshot #17~ SPRING!!!

We FINALLY got some good spring weather. Here are a few pictures of how we chose to celebrate SPRING :)


The girls got to visit Aunt Delores's farm while they were staying with Grandma and Grandpa Horstmann, they had a great time!

feeding the calf

At home we did some spring cleanup outside. Thank goodness Brian is in charge of moving the large heavy objects... if I had been the one to find this I probably would have dropped the rock!

Camryn wanted this to be her new pet... too bad it got away ;)

 Elody has been waiting to fly her kite for more than a month. Today was finally the perfect weather for it.

 Camryn managed to keep hers from getting tangled with Elody's!

This child is so funny. She always wants to do something and then 2 minutes later she is over it. This time she just sat down.

 Elody decided to start her own little game of baseball with Grandpa and Daddy. She was actually really good!

 Camryn doesn't like to miss out on much. She was good too of course :)

Sunday Snapshot #16~ party!

Yesterday the girls went to Stella's birthday party at Twisters in GI. They had a BLAST! Of course Camryn thinks it is the greatest place ever and really wants to have her party there now (which by the way is NOT happening!). 

 

 

 

group shot

Elody was a little unsure of the giant foam pit at first but finally decided it was worth a try. Watch her first actual jump in here. Camryn was less afraid and did it multiple times, here is a video of her farthest jump.

Camryn also really liked the high bar. I didn't get a great video of her ability to get swinging on it but here is one short clip of it.

The girls both LOVED the zip-line. It was an old favorite of theirs after multiple trips down the zip-line at the pumpkin patch last fall. Here is a video with a little bit of Camryn and then Elody, or if you aren't sick of all of the video's yet you can also watch another one of Camryn's trips on the zip-line here.

Phew, that's a lot of links! Let me know if you find one not working.

Sunday snapshot #15~ Kansas!

I have always wanted to go on a vacation where you leave a don't really know where you will end up. With 2 young children I don't know how fun that would be though. Yesterday however, we tried it on a smaller scale. We initially had a destination of Guide Rock to visit Megan, Alan, and the kids. While we were there Brian found a new toy to play with.

 With 2 crossbows  in use and a turkey fryer heating up, I decided it was time to get the kids out of there for a while. This is where the excitement begins ;)

The goofy picture was much better than the posed picture :)

 Our first stop in Kansas was at the Center of the Conterminous United States. And I thought the world's largest ball of twine was the most pointless stop in Kansas!

The girls pretending to be excited

As if the first marker wasn't good enough, they also have this impressive one.

and this one... ;)

 After an interesting annoying trip through Lebanon, KS (which included almost getting stuck in the mud) we decided to head east on Hwy 36. After almost an hour a driving Camryn looked at me and in all seriousness said "so we drove all this way to do nothing?" At that point we decided we had better stop and let the girls get out again. Mankato, KS had a very nice little park right along the hwy so we stopped to enjoy the good weather.

Camryn wanted me to take her picture on EVERY part of the playground.

 Elody headed up this slide on her own, at this point she completely freaked out and wanted to come back down. After a little persuading forcing she finally made it down the slide.

This was mid-freak-out

 Of course at the bottom she decided it was the best slide ever and immediately wanted to go again.

After a couple trips down the slide she opted for something closer to the ground.

 Camryn continued her photo shoot on the wooden train. I had to take at least 2 pictures of her on each part of the train.

She decided this was for tall animals like giraffe's :)

I finally got Elody in one! She wouldn't slow down long enough to take pictures.

 After a quick stop at a gas station for a potty break and some bubble gum we headed to Lovewell Lake. It was pretty windy but we were able to find some birds for Camryn to watch and then headed back to Nebraska.

One more quick picture to celebrate. Even though we did drive a long way "to do nothing" I think the girls kind of enjoyed it. Maybe next time we will do a little planning before hand, and go somewhere other than Kansas....

Sunday (or should I say Monday, oops) Snapshot #14~ kinder-garden

On Friday Camryn's class planted a "Kinder-garden." I got to go help plant and also snapped a few pictures, this is one of the MANY reasons I am so glad I get to stay home with the girls.

waiting patiently to plant their sunflower house

getting ready to plant the garden

Camryn planting her sunflowers, she insisted on wearing her gardening gloves :)

On Saturday we visited Royal so the girls could see where Brian works. They have added on so much since Brian first started there and it is amazing to see everything they are doing now.

the girls standing in front of the HUGE water jet machine that Brian programs

Elody hanging out at Brian's messy desk. She was at little curious as to why daddy would have 3 monitors!