First to Last...Another Comparison

Today is Gabe's last day as an Early Kindergartner.  We are very happy with our decision to send him to EK instead of regular Kindergarten.  His teacher was fabulous, he loved his classmates and learned soooo much this year.  We have seen his writing improve a TON, he is reading short stories with help and recognizing more and more words all the time.  He loves math and will often time want to show us his counting by 2's, 5's, etc. and want to dazzle us with his addition and subtraction skills.  He is still a space nut and will fill your brain with information on rockets, space shuttles, the solar system you name it!  We are so much more confident sending him to regular full day Kindergarten next year and we know he will adjust well to the change(of course on his end of the year progress report he still needs to improve slightly on not interrupting when others are talking...)  It has been so much fun to watch him grow both academically, socially and emotionally.  He has lost 4 teeth(3 that were ready, one that was an oops), grown in clothes and shoe size and has in general just become such a boy, not even a little boy anymore:(  I am getting rather emotional just thinking of all the changes that have occurred with him over this past school year.   I will be glad to have him home for summer!  We are planning many trips to the pool, Reiman Gardens, play dates with friends and the park.  In the fall he will go to regular all day Kindergarten and Ty will go to preschool 4 mornings per week.  Callie and I will not know what to do with ourselves with just us home!  But here is the reason for the post. 

Gabe on his 1st Day of EK

Gabe on his last day of EK

Red Headed, Red Teamer, Bam Bammer and a Big Girl Bed

Ty is playing Bam Bam Baseball this year.  Basically like t-ball except they hit a bigger rubber ball off of stacked coffee cans with a big plastic bat, everyone gets a turn to hit and everyone gets a turn to field the ball.  He LOVES it.  He had practice a few weeks ago and did a great job and couldn't wait until his game on Saturday.  Here is my little short stuff up to bat.

He also took a turn fielding the ball.

He is somewhat of a distracted player as when he noticed Grandma and Grandpa were there he had to run over the fence and wave and say "Oh hi guys!"  As much as he loves playing bam bam though I think the snack is his favorite part:)

In other news Callie is now in a big girl bed!  Actually I'm not all that excited about it, I wasn't quite ready for my baby to be out of her crib but with my parents moving soon and her getting the bed from their spare room at some point in the future the timing just seemed right to set the bed up where it was going to go.  Here she is showing off her big girl bed.

For now I am just using the bedding my mom had on it at their house but I am not in the hunt for cute, purple girly bedding.  I think I have one in mind but am watching it on ebay right now:)(I have to have something fun and positive to think about with my baby becoming a big girl and all)  She looks so little in such a big bed!

Mothers Day at the Farm

Wow what a weekend!  It started off with getting ready for a garage sale at my parents house on Saturday.  It was great to get some stuff out of our house and get some of the kids clothes reorganized and I sold some of the excess.  It was so nice to be free of more stuff from the house:)  (I did forget how much work garage sales are though from sorting and organizing and pricing my stuff to hauling it over and getting everything set up, man I was tired)  After the pretty successful sale on Saturday we came home and I made a few desserts and Carl smoked a whole pork shoulder to take up to the farm for lunch on Sunday.  Sunday we left bright and early for Burt.  We met my family at church and besides our little wiggle worm names Callie they did great.  After church my grandma really wanted a picture of the whole family so we attempted.  I think Pete and Kim are seriously wondering if they want a family picture at the wedding next summer or not:)  Despite Gabe doing this in most of the pictures.

We did get one good one. 

After church we went out to the farm for lunch where the boys just couldn't wait to get outside to play baseball and ride the tractors!  They loved their tractor rides and they also got to go see the goats at Daves and got to ride on the gator and mule.  Even Callie got in on the action. 

She loved it!  We had a great day at the farm!

 We also stopped by Carl's parents to say hi for Mothers Day while we were up there, I think we surprised them!

Pool Party

Last year when Gabe attended Ames Christian Preschool one of their fundraisers was to sell raffle tickets for a golf outing where they would give away prizes.  My parents of course purchased a few tickets and actually ended up winning something.  They won a 1 night free stay in a whirlpool suite at the Hilton Garden Inn here in town.  So the voucher expired on April 30th and on April 30th they finally cashed in their voucher:)  Since they knew the kids would love to go swimming we headed over there Saturday evening.  Fortunately the pool was not very busy.  This is our little fish, she LOVES the water!

 This is our bigger fish, he also LOVES the water! 

This is our more land loving lets call him a turtle.  He was NOT crazy about the water. 

He preferred to stay by the steps and hang on the handrail.

or the chair near Mom and Grandma worked well for him too.

Although eventually he did get brave and stick his head in the water.

Gabe found that it was lots of fun to jump in with the floaties on.  This one may have been a bit small for him but he didn't seem to mind.

This was his splash after he jumped in, I was too slow to catch him actually jumping.

Then there is Callie who at first loved her baby float but then when we took her out to let Ty try it she only wanted to be OUT of the float. She loved jumping in to Grandpa.

the action shot turned out a little blurry, sorry.

After we finally got the reluctant swimmers out of the pool we changed and went to eat supper at the hotel restaurant.  When we got back the kids really wanted to take a bath in the whirlpool, they settled for getting in with it empty instead.

After explaining that they couldn't sleep at the hotel too we took 3 very tired kiddos home to bed.  Thanks for the pool party Grandma and Grandpa!