4th of July

We had a wonderful long weekend in Iowa! Jason, along with his dad, Dan and Doug got a lot of work done in preperation of dad's new machine shed/shop. We got to spend lots of time cuddling our new little niece Claire and overall just had a great time with family! We're headed off to 3 weeks in Michigan now so I'm sure there will be lots more pictures after that!

Lillian is 6!!

Hard to believe! We were in Michigan for my cousin Rick's wedding so the celebration was a little different than usual. We're hoping to do something with a few of her best friends next week.

Webkinz from Auntie Angie and Uncle Doug

We celebrated by going to Club Libby Lu with her friend Lauren

More Webkinz from Lauren!

6 Years of birthdays

Last day of Kindergarten!

We can hardly believe Lillian's first year at Southwest Christian is done, but it is! She has grown up so much this year it's a little scary!


Check it out!

First day of Kindergarten:

Last day of Kindergarten:

First:

Last:

Holiday Weekend part 2

Yesterday there was free admission at the Museum of Science and Industry for kids so we decided to take the kids and go. We went a few years ago and I wasn't overly excited but we thought the kids might get a kick out of it, and I have great memories of going when I was a kid. Needless to say, the kids LOVED it. We stayed for 4 1/2 hours and they didn't want to leave at that point but everyone's feet were getting tired! Bear with me, I took 75 pictures, I'll just share a fraction!

Checking out the crazy mirrors

U-505

How we sleep on a submarine

Remember these?! I think we actually HAD the space shuttle when we were kids!

Lillian planting corn in the farm exhibit

Oddly enough, this was one of their favorite exhibits! Ship models!Waiting for the coal mine tour
This was probably James's favorite. He loved the chicks!

Lillian's favorite exhibit, the imaging exhibit. That's her, Jason and James's head on the screen.
And last, but not least. Lillian climbing the rock wall.

We're going to the zoo zoo zoo!

Along with everyone else within a 100 mile radius apparently! It was a perfect day and with the holiday weekend, everyone seemed to share our idea that it was a great day for going to the zoo!

We did a few things we'd never done before and avoided the main areas and the children's zoos which were just insane! We checked out the Wolf woods for the first time. They had a room you could go into that was almost completely dark with speakers all around and it played wolf howls and owls and other night time sounds for 2 minutes. Go figure the kids LOVED it! I thought for sure they'd be terrified but they wanted to do it again! We also walked the trail around Indian Lake and checked out Dragonfly Marsh which was a lovely walk! The highlight of the day came when we cut through the Pachyderm house on our way out and walked up to the elephants just in time to see the trainer feeding them treats! The trainer was maybe 3 feet away from us and the elephants maybe 2 feet from him so when they stretched out their trunks to take the treats the kids got a really awesome glimpse of their trunks and how they were able to grab the treats! It happened really quickly and then he told the animals to go outside and they did! We stood and watched them a bit at the outdoor habitat, but I wish we had gotten pictures of the feeding but it happened too quickly to even get the camera turned on!

Lillian discovered my hat from when I was in Israel, she's claimed it as hers this summer!

Ready for 1st Grade!!

I cannot even believe that Lilli has only got 2 1/2 days left of kindergarten. I can't figure out where this year has gone! Her teacher, Mrs. Slagter has been absolutely amazing and it's been so fun to watch Lillian grow this year! Yesterday afternoon they had a small program in their classroom to show us some of what they've learned! It was hard to get any good pictures, but here are a few!

Here she is with her very bestest friend, Gabrielle!

Here's Lillian as part of the little "play" that they did. For those of you with kids, it's a take off on the book "The Wide Mouth Frog". All the kids said what kind of animal they were and what they liked to eat. Lillian was a Monarch butterfly who likes to eat the nectar from lilys. :)

Tulip Time round 1!

We're still in Michigan. Lillian had a nasty stomach bug yesterday so we stayed put. Jason drove to Patrick and Kutu's and they took him to O'Hare last night. My mom will drive us there today and then stay with us til Wednesday. Jason will be home Friday late afternoon so that's not too bad! Here are some of the Tulip Time pictures off my mom's camera. I'll download all mine when we get home and try to get those posted in the next day or so.