Sewing Class #1

Jaclyn and Ashlyn were able to take a sewing class last week and loved it!   Three sweet grandmas were there to teach them and they had a great time making these pillow cases and practicing stitching.  Hopefully we can do this on a regular basis.  Of course, now they're asking for a sewing machine.  Oh my!

Cousin Time!

THIS is the most wonderful time of the year....

Yes, for my girls, this is the highest point of their summer.  They absolutely LOVE their cousins, and we are very blessed that they continue to visit us year after year. 

We had a great week full of swimming, shopping, and playing the Wii!  It usually takes the girls a couple days to recover, but it's well worth it.  :)

4th of July, 2012

Happy 4th of July!

Boy, was it HOT!! We endured the heat and went to the parade anyway, and it actually wasn't too bad. Thanks to our friends, we had a spot where we could park the van along the parade route and have a little shade, so that worked out wonderfully. Add the joy of dumping water bottles over your head (not mine, but the girls') and you have a pretty good time! After the parade we cooled off with ice cream and swimming, so it was a great day.

Summer Piano Recital!

Ashlyn had her first piano recital this summer! Both of the girls participated in a June recital and did very well. I was very proud of them.

Ashlyn got right up there with no hesitation and performed her songs.  She continues to thrive at the piano and loves to make up new endings or parts for the songs.  Her teacher is very patient and encourages creativity, so we are very thankful for that!  She allowed Ashlyn to add a harmony part for one of her songs, and she did a great job with it.  You can get a glimpse of her excitement in the 2nd picture.  It was fun for me to watch her.

Jaclyn also did a fantastic job! She is learning more and more all the time and starting to get into more challenging songs. Challenges can be difficult, but there's no better way to teach perseverance (a word that we use a lot in our house these days!).

Congratulations to both of you on a job well done!!

My Soccer Girl

We now have a cute little soccer player in our family.  Ashlyn played soccer for the first time this year and loved it.  She did very well and enjoyed every minute of it, so it's definitely something that she'll want to do again.  Here are just a few pictures from her game the other night.

(With her good friend, Erinn)

Our First Family Camp

Our family had our first Family Camp experience last weekend.  It was one to remember for sure!

The days were very enjoyable, full of swimming, canoeing, horseback riding and lots of free play time.  The kids loved it, and who wouldn't, with free play time with mom and dad!  There was a tire swing right outside our cabin, so that was a huge hit from the start.  We were really glad that the Isaacsons were there and had the cabin right next to us!

The girls also loved the horse-back riding.  Kendall is still talking about it.  She loved the white horse, but she kept calling it the yellow horse, so now, even at home, she's saying "ride yellow horse?"  "ride again?"

She's a horse lover already.

Unfortunately, the whole weekend was not so rosey.  We did not have the best living conditions, so that caused us to get very little sleep.  I wasn't expecting luxury accomodations, I knew that we had rented a cabin, but I was hoping it would've been cleaned out a little better prior to our arrival.  It appeared that we were the first ones in it from the winter, so it was very dusty, with much evidence of little creatures and crawlers.  Let's just say we had to go through everything and shake it all out before we left to come home, and Mama didn't sleep so well wondering what was happening in our cabin in the wee hourse of the night!  And, to top it all off, the first night there was a thunderstorm (no glass on the windows, so we heard everything loud and clear), so little girls did not sleep and crawled into the very small, less-than-twin size beds with us.  Plus, the cabin had settled down on one side, so my bed was slightly leaning.  You wouldn't know it until you had to sleep there and could only sleep on the side that went up-hill!

Oh, it was funny.  It's stuff like this that gives us fun memories to laugh about.  We did decide to leave one night early to allow us all to get some much needed sleep, but it was still a good time and will leave a lasting memory with our children.

We might go back again, although I'm pretty sure we will upgrade our accomodations!

Fun Field Trips

We've had the chance to go on many field trips this year, so I just thought I'd share pictures from a few of them.

Nature walk to identify plants in Kalona:

Visiting a one room school house at Usher's Ferry in Cedar Rapids. Jaclyn loved this one. She's really into the life and times of Laura Ingalls!

Visiting an Amish farm where the kids loved playing up in the hay loft and riding horses!

It's been a good school year.  We're wrapping things up this week and looking forward to another great year of homeschooling next year!