Eli's Kindergarten Celebration

Tomorrow is Eli's last day of kindergarten. It's hard to believe how fast the year has gone. He's had  a great school year, has made a lot of new friends, has mastered his crazy bus schedule, and  has become a little less shy. He's grown in so many ways.
Last Friday, he had his kindergarten celebration. All of the kindergarteners sang some songs then we went back to the classroom for a slideshow, awards, and refreshments.
I thought this picture of Eli was hilarious.

Dad and Sadie enjoyed the show:

Eli's class sang 5 Little Monkeys:


Eli received the Dove award for being the class peacemaker. We only wish he applied those skills at home!:

It's been a great year. Thanks Miss A.!

 Look out first grade, here he comes!

Gym Bin Circus 2012

The annual Gym Bin Circus was held this past weekend. The circus is a fun event in which all of the gymnasts prepare acts and perform for an audience. The "big girls" do rings and trapeze and high wire and the like. Sadie is a level 2 this year which means she got to do a tumbling routine and a dance routine with all of the level 2s and 3s. She also performed at all 4 circus shows. It was a big and tiring responsibility for her but she handled it like a pro. We are very proud of her! Here is her tumbling routine: Her dance routine:

Spring Piano Recital 2012

On Saturday, the kids had their spring piano recital. They both worked very hard preparing their two songs. Sadie played Mary Had a Little Lamb (with chords) and Lightly Row: Eli played Copycat and Cuckoo: They will continue piano through the summer with a break in August. Both kids want to pick up another instrument but I think we need to wait at least another year for that. Sadie wants to play violin and Eli wants to play the guitar or drums.

Eli Loses His First Tooth

A major milestone has been reached in Eli's life; he lost his first tooth. That poor tooth has been wiggly forever and it finally came out, with a little help, on Thursday night. You probably don't know this about me, but I love pulling teeth. I discovered this passion while I was a first grade teacher and the kids just kept on having loose teeth that needed pulling. In fact, the school nurse knew how much I loved to pull teeth so she would always send other students to my classroom so I could pull their teeth. It was fantastic.

Imagine how excited I was when Eli asked me to pull his tooth. I told him that it would only hurt for a second and then he'd see his tooth and forget about the pain because he'd be so excited and that's exactly what happened. You can tell by these pictures that he was thrilled!

The tooth fairy came and brought him 2 gold presidential dollars. I'm pretty sure the tooth fairy will be visiting a lot considering his second wiggly tooth is almost ready to pop out!

Sadie's Spring Pre-School Program

Sadie's last day of school is tomorrow!! She's had a great year and is ready for Kindergarten. Her pre-school put on a little program. Here is a highlight:

Entryway Lockers

We have an awesome entryway. It's big, has two closets and is it's own little room that collects dirt, pineneedles, wet snow and whatever else collects on the bottom of shoes (ahem, chicken poop). It's the envy of homeowners everywhere. But, it still wasn't perfect. We didn't use half of the space, guests had no where to hang their coats and the kids just hung about 8 coats on one coat hook. It was usually a pretty big mess. Entryway before (taken from the front door):

So you can get a better idea of the layout, this picture was taken from the oppostie direction. One door leads outside, the other into the house and there is another closet to the right of the one shown.

I found a picture in Better Homes and Gardens of a set of built-in lockers and I knew that it was exactly what we needed in our entryway to help with the organization of coats, boots and the like. Well, it turns out that I married a pretty good carpenter (those farm boys can do anything!) not only can he build chicken coops, but he can build lockers too:

They turned out even better than I expected and the kids love having their own space for their things. It's a little big for them, but they're growing fast! I love them and I think they make the space much more functional and they look cool too!

Three cheers for handy husbands who give their wives exactly what they want. Yea!

A Couple of Cute Chicks!

It's chick season and we decided to add to our brood. Chicks are always a delight and watching them grow is amazing as it seems they double in size over night. We'd like to introduce you to Reddy (named by Sadie. We have a Brownie, afterall.) And Louise, named by me in honor of one our favorite book characters Minerva Louise. It's hard to tell them apart, I know, but a mama always knows her babies. Louise is darker with more black and Reddy is larger.

These two little girls are Rhode Island Reds, a hearty, well-laying breed.

I think they will get along just fine with the other girls, but only time will tell if they officially get along without too much hen-pecking!

Easter 2012

We spent Easter in Napoleon visiting grandma and grandpa S. and lots of aunts, uncles and cousins.

Grandma always boils about 12 dozen eggs for the kids to dye. There were enough kids that they had to dye eggs in two shifts. While the second shift was dying the eggs the first shifters went to the communtity egg hunt.

The egg hunt was supposed to be held at the city park but was moved to the community center because of high winds. Before we left Eli said, "I hate egg hunts in the park, because there are lots of good places to hide eggs, but they never use them." Boy, was he disappointed when he saw this:

But, that didn't stop him from finding picking up a few eggs.

The crew at the egg hunt:

The most interesting event happened at about 4pm Saturday when the sewer backed up. This is a very unfortunate event when you have lots of people at your house and you've been drinking pop and kool-aid and coffee all day. Luckily, the Catholic Church is right across the street so we just ran across the street and did our business over there when we needed to. Luckily, I have a brother-in-law who is a plumber and he knows how to call in another plumber to do the job. Hah! By 11:00 that night we could use our own facility once again!
With all of those cousins around you'd think the kids could find something better to do than this:

When Easter arrived we hid eggs in the yard. They were pretty well hid and the kids had to look for the eggs. But, they were too fast for me. Luckily Madisen posed for me:

The Tramp!

 We are the proud owners of a brand new 15' trampoline. Come jump with us!!!

Sugarin'

Our good friends, Candy and Mary and their boys, Carlos and Luis, invited us to their house for pancakes and fresh maple syrup. Candy tapped trees for the first time and was just figuring out how sugarin' works, but we had fun watching her efforts. This year, with the weather being so crazy, has been an odd year for sugarin'. Lots of people didn't even bother tapping trees this year as it needs to be warm during the day and cool at night, but it never got really cool enough at night to produce as much sap as usual. Candy gave it a whirl and it was well worth her effort. The syrup was delicious!
Here is the sap boiling. Lots of sap = a very little amount of syrup:

Tasting the syrup:

Straining the sap before the final boiling which took place on the stove:

The kids played and played and played while the sap boiled. It is a loooooong process:

Man, I wish I had pictures of them eating the pancakes. They were delicious!

Jack Came to Visit

Dennis' brother, Greg, and his wife Michele were heading to San Antonio for a conference and needed someone to watch Jack. We happily agreed to it and enjoyed every minute of it. Sadie enjoyed playing the big cousin ("like Emily," she says) and Eli was bummed that he had to go to school every day. Jack is a pretty easy toddler and reminded me a lot of Eli at this age. As long as Jack got to do whatever is was that was a part of Jack's routine then Jack was as happy as a clam. He has an intense focus and can sit and entertain himself for quite a while. He knows all of his letters and numbers (seriously, I have a bag of magnetic letters and numbers and he'd pull them out at random and say every letter) colors and shapes. And he happily does whatever you ask him to do.
The only bad thing is that he arrived in the midst of our sickest week here at our house. Jack made 2 trips to the dr. once for Eli and once for me. By the time Jack left, we were all on antibiotics and Jack was too! But, we did manage to have fun doing lots of other stuff that helped us forget about the coughs and runny noses. The weather was amazing so we spent lots of time outside. Here are some highlights of Jack's stay:
A trip to the gym bin (at the begninning of the week we still had a lot of snow so it was hard to be outside as it was wet and slippery). He loved the pit and would say "C'up Sadie" which was his way of saying cover-up sadie. So we would hide Sadie in the blocks and she would jump out:

No trip to a cousin's house would be complete without a bathtub picture:

One of Jack's favorite things, pushing "the button":

Pusing "Jack's bike". I love that the chickens are in this picure, seems fitting considering how much Jack loved chasing them:

Breakfast (and lunch and supper) of champions-- Pancakes-- it's about all we could get him to eat:

Sadie Rides on Two Wheels

Sadie was bound and determined to learn to ride her bike without training wheels. I thought that she wasn't quite ready as she wouldn't ever let me let go of her seat and her balance was all off. True to Sadie form, she decided she was going to do it so she did it. There was a long day of screaming and falling and pushing her bike over and kicking her bike and blaming me for her falling and more screaming, before she was finally able to do it, but she did it.

The Donut Race

This weekend we participated in the Black Lake Loppet just outside of Bemidji. It's a very kid friendly race and is meant to be a fun event instead of a serious ski event. The entrance fee is a donation tot the food shelf. People came in costumes, some only wore their underwear... you get the idea. It's fondly referred to as the "donut race" because halfway through the race you have to stop and eat a donut before you can continue. The race is staggered in hopes of a mass finish at the end. The big winner is the person who comes in 13th and everyone brings trophy's and ribbons from other events as prizes. It truly is a blast and the kids got into the spirit of the event.
Here they are at the starting line:

The kids needed some assistance down the first big hill:

It was a beautiful day:

Sadie needed help getting up some of the hills. I think she could have done it herself, but she preferred the ride over the work:

Going down is always more fun than going up:

Taking off skis at the finish line:

Most of the kids only did half of the race (and we took all of the short-cuts on that half so we probably only did a little more than a quarter of the 11K race) so we enjoying our reward at the end of our ski:

Sadie and her first crush Louie ("But mom, He's just so nice to me!"-- believe me, all the girls love Louie):

The Sadies hanging out by the fire:

Picking their prize:

A Sperle Update...

The kids have been celebrating Dr. Seuss all week at school. Monday was crazy hair day. Sadie's hair couldn't be too crazy because we go straight from school to gymnastics. But, Missy, my friend who does Clara's hair to the nines and my hair-inspiration did Clara up as Cindy Lou-Who. It was too cute.

Speaking of gymnastics, Sadie has been going 4 hours a week for over a month now and it is going pretty well. She complains sometimes, but once she's there she's in hog-heaven. It's amazing how much better she's gotten this past month.

Eli's behavior has really turned around this last month and he's a much less grumpy kid. Maybe he just got used to being at school all day, everyday. But, he's much more fun to be around.

Speaking of school, we just received notice that Sadie and Eli both got into the charter school, Schoolcraft, that we were hoping to get into. We are very excited to make this change and I can't wait to give you reports.

Dennis enjoyed his 40th birthday. We went to eat Mexican food and the kids were disappointed that they brought him a shot of tequila instead of fried icecream. Dennis got a beer brewing kit and is currently taking a beer brewing class. He also got books to teach himself how to play the piano. He is not quite a concert pianist, but he is improving!

Dennis also got a promotion at work. He is now assistant chief pharmacist, not to be confused with assistant to the chief pharmacist.

No new news from me. I've just been working on some house projects and playing Martha Stewart, which is quite enjoyable. Next year, I've been informed that I should look for a job as my current job as Stay at Home Mom is coming to a close. I was thinking Housewife might be a good new job, but "teacher" pays more!

What's new with you?