Amelia is a published author!

One of Amelia's stories was chosen for inclusion in the Sun Prairie school district's literary publication for this year!  It's quite a thick book, with stories written by kids all the way from kindergarten to 12th grade.  We went to a ceremony last night where Amelia received a certificate and a copy of the magazine.  She was very excited!

They called the kids up on stage school by school, about 10 at a time.  While there were about 30 kids from Amelia's school chosen, there were only 3 kindergarteners.  Doesn't Amelia look so small compared to the rest of the kids?

Here is the story that was published:

I think this is really funny because it makes it seem like Amelia always has to pack her own lunch, when in reality, I pack her lunch for her most days.  But some days she does help, and she is very excited when she gets to pack her lunch all by herself.  She is good at including food from all the food groups, although she always packs a juice box (whereas I always make her drink water at lunch).

Here's the author with her story:

Spring at the farm

We met Becky, Brian, Natalie and Noah at the Busy Barns Adventure Farm in Fort Atkinson last Saturday.  It was a chilly day - about 50 and windy, but it was nice to get outside and let the kids run around.  They were so excited to see each other, and so they got a little silly!

The first thing we did was the Rooster Rustle, where the kids were tasked with trying to herd chickens into little houses.  The chickens were obviously used to this, but it was really fun to watch the kids chase them all over.

After the hens were all safely in their houses, the farmers let them out again so the kids could pet them.  Brian and I each caught a chicken; I was surprised by how light they felt, and how easy it was to catch and hold them.  They were obviously nice docile chickens.

Nathaniel got to pat a chicken, too:

 We went to the inside slide three separate times, because the kids loved it so much.

The friendly barn cat was extremely interested in Nathaniel; she wanted to sit on his lap!  He reached out his hand a few times to pat her, or more likely, pull her fur; either way, he was fascinated by the cat.

They had lots of fun in the corn crib!  My girls remembered pouring corn on Noah's head last fall (which he had enjoyed, I believe), but he was insistent that he didn't want corn poured on his head this time (can't imagine why not!)  So they got busy pouring corn into funnels and pitchers.  They pretended the corn was lemonade, and they offered us lemonade soup, lemonade tea, and lemonade salad.  Yum.

The hamster wheels were a lot of fun!  They would get going really well, then one kid would fall over, then they'd all fall over and one kid would fall out.

Megan wanted to push Uncle Brian along, and he was a good sport!

We got to see a few baby animals - the girls all loved the baby rabbits!

Megan especially loved feeding the goats:

I got a photo of the girls in the American Gothic cutout, because I thought we might see the painting if we go to the Art Institute this summer, and it would be fun for them to look back at it. This time, their serious faces make sense!

I made the girls wear pants to the farm, and while they complained about having to put them on, they admitted that pants were easy to move around in, and they liked the pants more than they expected to.  But I had a hard time keeping track of Amelia on the farm, because I kept looking for a girl in a dress!  It's been a long time since she wore real pants, and I think she looks so cute in her jeans!  Megan has worn pants more recently, so it wasn't as much of a shock to me.

Easter weekend

Since Amelia had off school for Good Friday, the kids and I went down to Becky's house to play with Natalie and Noah for the day.  I didn't take any photos, so if you want to see what we did, you'll have to read Becky's blog.

Saturday was a nice day at Grandma and Grandpa's house, full of buckwheat pancake eating:

drawing with chalk (she wanted to give herself a blue beard):

riding the fire truck, which Megan enjoyed - the frowny face is because I wanted to take a picture:

and playing with Aunt Julie:

After church on Sunday, we tried to get a few family photos.  Aunt Julie had the impossible task of trying to get a nice smiling photo of my family; even bribing the girls with chocolate Easter bunnies didn't work to get them to smile nicely.

We didn't have much better luck with Grandma and Grandpa and the grandkids:

We did a little better with the older cousins.  Natalie is by far the best smiler for photos!

Nathaniel smiled, though!  He's wearing the suit that Becky bought for Noah for her brother-in-law's wedding.  It just happened to fit Nathaniel perfectly this Easter - isn't he adorable?

The kids had a great time finding Easter eggs!  The Easter bunny hid one color egg for each child, to make it fair for little Megan and to make sure that each kid got the same amount of eggs.  It worked out really nicely, except that the Easter bunny forgot to count exactly how many eggs he hid for each child, and so they looked and looked and looked for the 20th eggs, but couldn't find them.

After lunch, the kids hid Easter eggs for Aunt Julie, Grace and Ben:

And a few miscellaneous photos: