Cousins

The Weidners came up for Amelia's brithday party, and right before they left in the evening, I decided that I wanted to get a photo of all the cousins together.  As always, it was hard to get everyone looking at the camera and smiling at the same time because they were all CRAZY.  Perhaps the ideal time to take a group shot of kids is NOT after a birthday party, silly play time and sugary cake.  Clearly Nathaniel didn't want anything to do with the group shot:

I decided that we ought to work with the craziness, so after trying to get a shot of them all lined up looking normal, I encouraged them to try some silly things.  These photos make me laugh out loud!

 These ones do, too:

But I think these ones turned out pretty cute:

First Time in the Sprinkler

I got the sprinkler out on Tuesday because it got up to 90 - too hot!  The girls were so excited to play in the water, and Nathaniel was excited to try to drink it.  He did not like it when the water went up his nose, though.

At one point, I turned the water down to move the sprinkler to a new spot, and Nathaniel got stuck inside the circle when I turned the water back up.  He was not happy and couldn't figure out how to get out again.  Amelia had to rescue him.

The girls loved to jump over the water when it was relatively low:

But when I turned it up higher, they wanted me to get their swimming goggles:

Nathaniel has also discovered that he likes the sand box:

Megan will get in the sand box to play with him, but she gets upset when he tries to take toys away from her.  In the picture below, Megan is making a cake in the blue bucket, and the cake is decorated with a bridge, a shovel and a torpedo (!).  Nathaniel kept grabbing the torpedo out of the cake, making Megan mad.  After Nathaniel emptied the bucket of dry sand all onto his lap, he decided that he wasn't too fond of covering himself in sand, so we had to brush it all off.  He especially dislikes having his feet buried in sand, but he loves to scoop the sand into a bucket.

It started raining about an hour after this sandbox picture, and the girls were hopeful that we would see a rainbow.  When we first looked out the front door, we didn't see one, but just a minute later the sun came out full force, and when we looked again, there was a beautiful full rainbow.  And then it turned into a double rainbow.  It was the most beautiful rainbow I've seen (or at least, that I remember seeing).

The girls were ecstatic, and kept running around the front yard (and later, the median) singing a song about how awesome rainbows are.

Amelia's Last Day of First Grade

Amelia has been sad all week because school is ending - she says she is going to miss her teacher a lot, and that she will miss her classmates Gia and Aubrey who are moving to different nieghborhoods over the summer.  It is very sad for her that her two best friends won't be at her school next year.  I tried to take a photo of her sad face before school (because it was supposed to be thunderstorming when we picked her up), but she told me that her face wouldn't be really sad until school was out.

As Amelia had predicted, she was crying when we picked her up after school was out.  She gave her teacher a big hug, then gave her another hug while I took a photo, and then started crying again.  In fact, she cried so much that she made Miss Setze tear up, too!  Then we tried to leave the cafeteria, and she ran back to give her teacher another hug.

When we finally left, both she and Megan were crying, because they both wanted to hold the umbrella all by themselves.  It was not a very happy start to the summer.  After a little quiet reading time, a delicious lunch of Grandma's applesauce and toast made with Grandpa's good white bread, and a movie and popcorn afternoon, she seems to have cheered up a little. 

Megan's Last Day of 4k

Today was Megan's last day of preschool - next year she'll be in all day kindergarten.  I can't believe it!  Her class had a little graduation ceremony in the morning where the kids sang a few of their favorite songs.  Megan was an enthusiastic singer and dancer.  They sang some of Megan's favorite songs, including "The Chicken Dance", "Five Little Monkeys", and her very favorite song "All Around the Kitchen Cock-A-Doodle-Doodle-Do".  She got to stand by her best friend Ainsley, and they clearly had fun during the performance.

Ms. Bottomley handed out the graduation certificates:

Then we had a picnic outside and played with the games from field day.  Ben was able to rearrange his schedule so that he could come to the ceremony; he went to work right afterwards and will come home after bedtime.  Megan says that she is really sad about 4k being over, and that she will really miss her teachers.  I know that she likes her teachers a lot, but I also know that she is looking forward to the summer and to kindergarten, so I think that Amelia's end-of-the-school-year attitude is rubbing off on Megan a little bit.  Here is Megan with Ms. Bottomley and Mrs. Herron:

These are the same teachers that Amelia had in 4k, we love them!  They have really helped Megan with her letters and reading, and as Megan said in her goodbye note "they help me fix my problems" when classmates aren't being good friends.  Just as we were leaving, our friends asked if we could get a group shot of some of Megan's friends.  Allie and Amelia will be in 4k next year, and Ainsley will be in kindergarten at a different school, so next year they'll all be apart.  So sad!

Here is Megan's class singing "All Around the Kitchen":

Soccer Practice

It is hard to keep Megan and Nathaniel occupied during Amelia's soccer practice, but this week the dandelions were perfect for blowing:

Nathaniel doesn't know how to blow dandelions yet, and every time he tried, he ended up with fluff in him mouth.  Instead, he loved to pull all the fluff off the dandelions and then try to break the stems in pieces.  I tried to take a photo of him, but this is the look I got:

It's pretty clear that he's saying "C'mon, Mom, I want to go run!"  I always bring a soccer ball along to practice because the kids love to kick the soccer ball around.  Sometimes Megan will agree to play soccer with Nathaniel, and sometimes Nathaniel will just walk around kicking the ball as he walks (it's so cute!)

Megan's favorite thing yesterday, though, was picking up maple seeds and throwing great big handfuls of them into the air.  I don't think she's ever had the opportunity to do this before, and she was delighted by it.  We spent a long time picking up the tiny pinkish maple seeds from among the clover and dandelions.

It's possible that Amelia likes soccer practice even more than the games because they usually play a game called steal the ball from the coach, and she loves the challenge.  Yesterday they were practicing dribbling the ball down the field and then passing to another player.  Amelia does this very well when she doesn't have an opposing team charging her.

Fun with Grandma and Grandpa

This past weekend with Jeff and Jane didn't go quite as planned, since Megan came down with strep throat on Thursday afternoon, and was feeling under the weather almost the entire time they were here.  She had a fever of 102.6 even with constant dosing of ibuprofen and tylenol, and then the antibiotic was causing intestinal distress.  But she had an hour or two on Saturday when she felt well enough to play, and what she wanted to do was wash Ben's car:

She even ate a piece of watermelon for dinner, since she's been asking for months if we could have sliced watermelon on the rind and this is the first time I've cut it that way this year.  But sadly I didn't get a picture of Megan enjoying her watermelon, since she chose to eat hers while sitting on the swing.  I did get photos of these two cuties, though:

The rain held off long enough on Sunday for us to go to Olbrich Botanical Gardens for a little while.  Megan spent a fair amount of time riding in the stroller but she did hop out to jump on the rocks across the stream.

Amelia and Grandma explored the paths in the rock garden:

Everybody enjoyed looking over the bridge into the pond to see the turtle sunning himself on a log.  Isn't the redbud beautiful?

And every time we go to Olbrich, we have to go to the Thai garden so that the kids can see the elephant statue.  Nathaniel really wanted to get up on the elephant, too, and once he was up, he tried to push Megan off.  Good thing he's too little to do any damage (I don't think Megan even noticed he was pushing her.)

Surprisingly, Nathaniel didn't want to walk, he wanted to get back in the stroller, and he was mad that Megan got to ride in his stroller.  So Ben and I gave him a few power assists, which he loved!  I think it's the first time we've ever done that with him.

Everyone liked looking at the pools in the Thai garden:

Nathaniel's favorite thing in the Botanic Garden was the fountain in the rose garden.  He loved trying to catch the water, and he didn't mind getting all wet.  The girls always love to play with this fountain, too.

We tried to get a nice photo of Amelia with Grandma and Grandpa, and were partially successful.  I suggested that Amelia pick a place to take only one photo (sometimes the girls get excited about picking their favorite spot and I get natural smiles), and she picked the purple garden, of course!

I don't have pictures of anything else that we did over the weekend, but I know Amelia and Nathaniel had a really fun time with Grandma and Grandpa.  Jeff and Jane went to Amelia's school to be mystery reader on Friday afternoon; Jeff and Amelia read Amelia's new favorite book Who's On First?.  Amelia's teacher had to jump in part way through the book to explain the concept to the kids.  And then Jeff and Jane told a few little stories about Amelia, including how Amelia used to call Grandpa "Guppy" and how.  Amelia convinced them to play school for a few hours on Saturday morning - she made assignment sheets and writing projects and even planned a recess.  Nathaniel warmed up to Grandma really quickly, and even wanted Grandma to read him books before bedtime and naptime the last few days - he's never done that before!

And Megan was feeling well enough to go to preschool on Monday, although she was still coughing a bit.  But I'd arranged for her to trade snack helper days with a friend, so Jeff and Jane could go to her class to be snack helper today.  She said she had a very fun time; she got to pick the song for the day, and she picked "All Around the Kitchen Cock-a-doodle-doodle-do".  They celebrated her birthday, and she passed out tootsie pops to her friends.  She even ate her snack of applesauce and a Nutrigrain bar.