Spring Stories

I am so lucky to have such a cool teacher that makes these nifty little compilations of our work to send home. We rotate them from child to child until each home has gotten to see whatever the theme-book of the month is. This month was a journal of our favorite spring things. Mrs. Miller wrote down a few key words for us on the board, like "rainbow, flowers, sunshine" and had us try to fill in the other words in our sentences. As you can see, I did a pretty good job. I was extra happy that my story was coincidentally the first one in the book, which made me proud.

In the Dark

Good afternoon! It's been a pretty quiet weekend around here. Just the way we like it. Ok, just the way everyone but Mom likes it. She gets stir crazy after about 4 hours.

Dad got back from the farm last night. He was SO excited to hear how Mom and I wanted to flip the ol' breaker switch for earth hour last night! I mean REALLY excited. So at 8:30, we lit some candles, built a tent and hunkered down to live all primitive-like for an entire hour. Our intentions were good, but water in the basement is NOT good, so we did have to flip the switch for the sump pump after about 15 minutes. And, I wasn't feeling too well, had a fever, so I wasn't too excited and just laid on Mom the whole time. It was neat and even though we know we're not going to cure the world with one-hour power outages, it does send a good message and raise awareness. The biggest hassle was having to reset the clocks. We usually don't have the television on until after us kids go to bed, so it really wasn't that different for anyone, other than the candles. We did find out that one surefire way to entertain Zach for an hour is to give him a flashlight and turn off the lights. The kid was like a jedi knight with his lightsaber, or a ninja or something. He was crazy!

Yesterday, Mom and I took advantage of Zach's naptime to finally put together this giant, wooden velociraptor skelton that I won at school a month ago. It was very time consuming, but fun and we pretended we were real paleontologists. We also went to the Easter Bunny Breakfast at the firehouse yesterday. Zach was terrified of the Bunny, we knew he would be. I had loads of fun, did some crafts and got my hands painted. We then went to the library and McDonalds. What a treat! Mom sure knows how to make a fun day for us, at least she thinks she does!

My fever is still touch and go. I played outside in the snow today (crazy) and did ok. We may go to a movie later, we'll see how the day goes.

Hope everyone is feeling well and enjoying what could be the last blanket of pretty white snow for awhile!

Katherine




Dinosaur projections on the ceiling

Where's the Field?

Fortunately, no fields were involved in our field trip today. Instead, we went to the health museum. We saw a talking anatomically correct model, and learned about our heart, lungs, sensory system and skeleton. It was super fun and we had pizza afterwards. Mom and I were bus buddies and I liked having her there. Dad was home to watch Zach, so it worked out great.

I had a fun weekend in WI. Just spent some fun time with Nana and Papa, went to the park and got to hang out with Tara for awhile. Zach had not been up there since Christmas, so he had a great time and showed off all his new grown up skills to the grandparents. We got back late yesterday afternoon.

Dad is "on leave" from work this week, so we're going to try hard to keep him busy so he doesn't get bored and drive Mom batty. He hasn't left the dungeon of our basement in 3 days now, so hopefully he'll get out and get some sunshine before he turns in to a vampire. He's got 7 weeks of time off work to use up by December, so if you need to rent him for a week, we're happy to oblige. Not sure what he has to say about that though!

Have a groovy week!

Katherine





Very serious about the heart sounds















bus buddies

















chillaxin' at grandma's

Letterboxing Part 1

Hi friends. Mom and I finally had a nice day to try letterboxing. It was kind of confusing for me to grasp what it was, but basically you find clues on the internet for a hunt in your area. You follow the clues to find a small box planted somewhere. Inside the box, is a rubber stamp and notepad. Once you find the box, you use the stamp inside to journal in your own notebook and in turn, you stamp your own "team stamp" in the provided notebook. Our stamp was a triceratops and our team name is "Dino Girls". Our first hunt was an easy one at Tower Park. We found the box quickly and did our business. I carried the backpack loaded up with our supplies, snacks and camera. Our next hunt was trickier. We hiked down the river bluffs and it was a good 20 minutes before we found the right area. Unfortunately, we could tell the box had been removed from the hole that it was supposed to be in by an old, big tree. I was very upset, but Mom reminded me that was part of the game. It was still a nice hike and a beautiful day for it. Although it was VERY muddy. Mom learned that Skechers are not the shoe of choice for hiking in the muddy woods. She lost both of them in muddy sinkholes at one point and had to walk with mud in her shoes which went all the way up to her knees at one point. Each time it happened, she was lifting me across a stream or ravine and ended up sinking in. It was pretty funny. We emailed the guy and he felt bad that he forgot to update the letterboxing website that it had been removed. Oh well, that won't stop us. We'll try again next chance we get. We're going to try atlasquest.com next time to get our clues, it seems to be a little more up to date than letterboxing.org. A few people stopped us to ask what we were doing. We looked a little strange on our hands and knees, digging through muddy leaves and bark.

Hope you enjoyed the beautiful weather and got lots of fresh air. Us kids were outside almost all of the weekend and Mom and Dad a bit wiped from chasing us around, but we had fun.

HERE are some pics from our adventure.

A bientot!
Katherine

Ladies Who Lunch

I had a neat afternoon today. Mom took me to an American Girl Doll Luncheon here in town. All proceeds benefit the American Cancer Society. I had recently cashed in my piggy bank -- it was all nickels, dimes and pennies, but somehow it ended up being over $30! So I saved that money to buy a new outfit for Kit today. A really nice local lady makes handmade dresses for the dolls. I picked out a cute spring ensemble for my doll. So we shopped, had a nice lunch, and watched the fashion show. I saw a couple of kids from school there and met some new friends as well. All in all, a very nice day and it felt good having fun for a good cause.

We're hoping to take advantage of this nice weather and try our hand at letterboxing this weekend. I'll let you know how it goes. Basically a scavenger hunt of sorts.

Other than the above, not much else is new. I had a great week at school and have yet to come down with strep that seems to be running rampant in my class. Shoot, hope I didn't just jinx myself! Zach is doing fine and has been really talking a lot. We have loads of fun together.

Later taters!
Katherine

The Secret is Out....

Yup, this is what Zach and Mom do all day. I heard her asking Dad last night if they can have another baby because they desperately need a drummer. I'm jealous! His little fingers have crazy mad skills on the slider bar.

Bashful Boys and Birthday Fun

We had a fun little weekend trip up to Grandma D's. Her birthday is Monday, but we decided to go up on Saturday to spend some time with her. Grandpa got her a Wii and Wii Fit, so we helped her set it up and break it in. Uncle D and family also came. We had a nice lunch together and I had so much fun with Benjamin. He is walking already and is only 10 months old! He's always smiling. Zach is not sure what to think about him. Zach knows not to hit babies or be mean to them, so whenever Benjamin tries to play with him or be close to him, Zach just covers up his face and cries. You can see in the photo, he wasn't too happy to have Ben sitting next to him. He's the same way at playgroup. He likes babies from a distance, but once they get close to him, he isn't so sure.

We came back home today. Grandma was glad to have us there and enjoyed the cake we baked for her. I decorated it with the pretty orange flowers. Hopefully she is having fun with her Wii and practicing up on her bowling for me.

Our letter friend this week is *finally* the letter "K". I've been waiting all year for it! I get to wear a special letter friend badge this week and was the helper on Friday since I am the only "K" kid in the class. I'm pretty good at writing my Ks, so I've got a bit of an advantage there.

Pretty routine week coming up here. Hope you have a good one!
K

This Day in History

Where were YOU 3 years ago today? Enjoying the housing boom? Worried about avian flu? Still laughing about Cheney shooting his friend while hunting? Celebrating Jon Bon Jovi's birthday? Maybe celebrating Texas Independence Day?

Well, I was a pirate. In France. So there.

Little Boys

In case you were not aware, here are some things that little boys like to do:












Fill their dump trucks up with cheerios and unload them on to the floors
Giggle every time they pass gas and comment on how they are stinky
Walk around with one hand in the diaper for about half of the day
Punch people for no reason and run away giggling
Yell "hi-ya" as you get a kung-fu chop to the leg
Rock out in the backseat with some headbanging and screaming, i.e. "singing"
Poke bugs and caterpillars excessively even though they are trying to be "nice"
Get a nice handful of yogurt and use it as hair gel
Play with themselves when ever the opportunity is available

Not much difference between little boys and big boys, huh?

And just because this is MY blog, here's a pic of me. You can see Zach is in his jammies still, ready to take me to school as usual. We often wonder if the people at school think a homeless lady and her scraggly kid are dropping me off each day.

Lates!
K