Perspective

Just to give the previous post a little props, here is what we were given to work with 3 years ago. Of all the things...trees, plants, interior fillings...the thing we are most grateful for....grass! It is an understatement how hard it is to establish and maintain a simple yard of green grass!

Circus!

We went to see Ringling Brothers last night. It was pretty awesome! We all had a great time. Us kids were perfect little angels. Perfect little angels bribed to sit still with $9 sno-cones and $7 boxes of popcorn. But Mom had a $6 margarita, so after that, she really didn't care. Zach's favorite was the motorcycles -- 7 of them in a very small cage going very fast. My favorite were the acrobats. We got to go down to the main floor prior to the show. I got to stand in between some jugglers and get bowling pins whizzing past my head for a minute, cool! Most of the pics didn't turn out well, but that happens in a dark arena. We were all really glad we went and glad we waited to see the Greatest Show on Earth...it truly was amazing.

Before the circus yesterday, Mom and I went out letterboxing and found two more planted boxes with success. We're hoping to plant one of our own soon -- we have the perfect place picked out. Today, Mom and Dad worked around the house...staining the deck and yard work. My teacher's daughter, Bethany came over to get to know us. We're hoping she will potentially be our future babysitter. It went really well and we had fun with her. Mom and Dad were happy for the 2 hours of uniterupted deck staining. Kind of.

Papa wanted to see pics of our "should have been our vacation" trees. So here they are. Hard to get the two back ones in a single shot, but you get the jist. They are really quite lovely. We had a little picnic under the one today in the small amount of shade it offers. We have these amazing new creatures now in our backyard. Maybe you've heard of them? They're called birds! They hang out a lot more now. Nature is finally making it's way to our house. Mom and Dad were just admiring the hay field behind our house tonight. They really hope the day never comes where some overzealous developers decide to plop a bunch of houses there. If that day does come, hard to say what we will do. Either sell the house or buy up the lots behind us. We sometimes get frustrated living in tight quarters with our neighbors -- as nice as they are. It would be hard to have our backyard privacy infringed upon. At least with the current downfall, that shouldn't be happening for awhile!

Of to bed ! 2.5 days of school left and I'll officailly be a kindgergarten vet. Where did the time go?

Love
K.





Front yard landscaping, but you can't see the tiny little crabapple to the right















Our cleverly planted hornbeam to give us deck privacy sooner or later
















Maple #1 behind the swingset











Maple #2...ignore Dad dumping grass in the field....

A little bit of Zach

While I was on my field trip yesterday, Zach got to go to his friend, Adam's house. Here are some cute pics of the fun he had. He was pretty serious about riding that tractor!

Is There a Theme Here?

Today was my turn to have Mom to myself at the Farm Park. We went with all of the kindergarten classes. As intimidating as that sounds, it was actually quite tame. Each parent had 2 kids to be in charge of and since it was a cool and cloudy day, we pretty much had the joint to ourselves! I had a lot of fun feeding the animals and searching for tadpoles and turtles. We had a picnic lunch. Mom treated me by getting a bag of cheetos to take in my lunch. She never lets me take chips to school, but today seemed like a good time to get orange fingers. I planted some marigold seeds to take home and made sure to spend lots of time playing on the playground equipment. Mom had to leave just a bit early. She was nervous that Zach would be too tired for our friend, so she wanted to get back to pick him up. Turns out, Zach was tired, but was a very good boy and still going strong at 1:30!

The year is about wrapped up for us. Although, I hope to see more of my teacher over the summer. Her daughter may do some babysitting for us and give me some swimming lessons. Mom is really grateful to have been able to attend all of my trips this year and participate in the classroom. Someday when she's back at work, she'll look back at this time and be very thankful for having the opportunity to make such great memories with us!

Here are some pics of our fun day!

Farmer Fred has some Fun

And Farmer Fannie, too! We had a great weekend at the farm. Dad finished up all the planting, so he was able to relax and play with us a lot. Mom and Dad went to a movie Saturday night. We made sure to eat plenty of ice cream and stay up late. Benjamin was there most of the day Saturday. He's such a happy little boy. Zach and him are getting to be good buddies. Grandpa finally has high-speed internet at the farm, so Mom and Dad were happy about that. We checked out Grandma's garden and snagged a whole bunch of rhubarb to take home. Mom's rhubarb is pretty thin, it needs another year to fill in. We made a rhubarb custard pie today that looks pretty tasty.

Hope you had a great Holiday weekend! Here are some pics of our fun....

K.

Farmer Fred

While I was working so hard at school today, Mom took Zach to the Farm Park. No hard feelings though, she's going again with me next week on our class field trip. Zach had a blast, he really liked the big pig the best. Mom took him down the barn slide at least ten times.

We finally got 4, big full trees today. Hard to believe we've been in this house for 3 years now. We've got so much done. We'll have to post some before and after pics later. Sometimes it doesn't feel like much, but when you look back and how the entire house and yard were bare bones, we really have managed to turn this place from a house to a HOME.

Have a mah-vu-lous weekend. Dad left for the farm today, we may go up and see him this weekend.

K.

Just a little bit o'Sunshine

Just a little sunshine for you.


Not much to say. I've totally been wanting to play store lately like ALL the time. It's getting kind of obsessive. School is great as always. I can't believe the year is winding up...where did it go? Mom can't even say the words "first grade" out loud yet.

Zach is still up to his antics. Happy boys are boys that get at least 2 hours of outside time a day, that's for sure.

I think we'll be headed to the farm Memorial Day Weekend. They are way behind, it has been so wet up there.

This past weekend was cool, but Mom and Dad had another date night botched due to illness. Time to get a teenager up in here to watch our snarly little selves. Mom and Dad just need to take the plunge. Gulp.

Have a glorious week. Hope the sun is shining wherever you are.

A Mudder like no Udder

Leave it to my Mom to forget the memory card for the camera at home. So, that means no fun pics of our weekend to share, but that's ok, we took pictures with our brains. Unfortunately, I seem to be out of those USB cables that are brain-compatible. We took a few on Nana's camera, but didn't email them back to us, oops.

It was a nice trip. We had a lovely cookout at Tara's house on Saturday. Mom is a new Aldi's convert after eating all the fine fixins. Strawberry marshmallow s'mores are the BOMB! I had the best time with the cousins -- airplane/pony rides from Koller, picking weeds with Cody, hanging out with Carly and helping Tara around the grill. Mom enjoyed the relaxation and conversation and plenty of beer. Zach spent the better part of the day passed out on Papa's lap.

Sunday was short, but sweet. You would have thought it was Katherine Day. I started off the day with cinnamon rolls, played at my favorite park, ate lunch on the INSIDE of a Pizza Hut (a lifelong dream of mine), had Nana buy me some toy horses and topped it off with cookie dough custard at Culvers -- my favorite! Somewhere in there, I did manage to give my Mom lots of hugs and gave her a sweet little letter I wrote for her at school. If she wasn't so lazy right now, she'd go scan it and post it, but that's not going to happen. We enjoyed spending the day with Nana. Zach was a touch illin' still, so he was a wee bit cranky all weekend. He doesn't sleep that well in the pack n' play and he didn't travel too well this weekend either. It was a long haul home and we were happy to see Dad. He finished landscaping the pavers around the light post for Mom, hooray! She planted around it today, hopefully it is almost done. Don't feel too bad for Mom, she made up for it the next day by reading outside in the lounge chair for 3 hours and not doing a touch of housework other than making dinner.

I've got some more wacky testing this week. Other than that, should be a normal week. Proabably off to the farm this weekend if Mother Nature cooperates.

Hasta!

Touch a Truck

Mom was out running errands this morning and saw all these signs for "touch a truck". At first, she thought it was something weird like trying to win a car or something, but she realized it was a free event for little ones to go climb on their favorite mighty machines. As soon as she got home, Dad packed up Zach and headed to the event. He had so much fun! He played on a digger, fire truck, bus and garbage truck. A little boy's paradise!

Gobbledygook

No title for the post springs to mind, just a bit of this and a bit of that. Gobbledygook.

Gobbledygook or gobbledegook (sometimes gobbledegoo, gobbledeegook^[1] or other forms ^[2]) is an English term used to describe nonsensical language

There you have it. God love wikipedia. Nonsensical kind of sums it up lately.

Things have been kind of "nonsensical" around here. Mom and Dad are chipping away and landscaping projects. Tiny little bushes, big trees and bags of stuff that are slowly whittling away at any hopes I had of going to college. That's ok, I promised them I'd get a full ride. Seriously though, if you ever have a thought to buy new construction, may I ask you to stop for a moment and rethink that thought. Sometimes, the thought of replacing an old water heater or patching a roof sounds much more appealing than pouring money into something you thought was a done deal. Sometimes. However, I'm sure if Mom was currently replacing an old water heater, patching a roof and fixing cracked walls, she'd be wishing she was in a brand new, sparkly house. Grass is always greener. If you have grass, that is.

On to more chippery things. My weekend was fan-frickin-tastic. I finger painted, I planted a garden, I played outside like, ALL THE TIME and we went to eat at the place where you throw peanuts on the floor. My square foot garden is complete. I picked out peppers, herbs, lettuce and some annuals. It's not quite even, but the 9 squares of my 3x3 conncoction look pretty good. We're going to construct a bean pole teepee and upside down bucket tomatoes next week!

While you are looking up gobbledygook, may I invite you to let your eyes wander down the page a bit to the definition off "goofball". There, you will find my brother. He is a manic chimpanzee on heroin. He's seriously whacked out most of the day. He runs around screaming "wow wow wubzy" and "I a siddy boy mama". He also likes to say "peas mama? peas mama?" over and over but we never can figure out WHAT he wants. He kicks Mom in the chins, runs away from her giggling "he he he" and loves to talk to watermelons and pretend there is a little person inside of them. These are the fun years and he's the last one, so Mom is trying to enjoy it, but man he wears her out. He got a race car driver helmet today that lights up and talks in some kind of Ricky Bobby ala Talladega Nights voice. The thing is creepy. We're setting the kid up for a future of NASCAR and Larry the Cable Guy. He just buzzes around the front yard though, looking like that special kid that always needed to wear the helmet on the playground. The neighbors whisper about us, we know.

I'm getting over another cold, no biggie though. Getting ready for a trip to to WI this weekend. Dad is up at the farm for a few days. He is on "unvoluntary vacation" again for the week. How awesome is it though that you can file for unemployment on line, in your undewear (which my dad does) rather than having to go stand in the "line of shame"? Mom worked him like a horse for 3 days around here and I'm sure Grandpa is working him twice as hard. If you want to see something funny, come watch my dad run a roto-tiller with his boxer shorts hanging out. Rather, the roto-tiller rode him. I think somewhere right now Dad is still girating and vibrating. So many more jokes to make, but this is a rated G blog.

School is coming along swimmingly. Almost done, holy guac! Mom signed me up for tennis, swimming and a zoo program. Should be a HOOT!

Ciao bella, I'm off to bed

K.






Senor hambone












Mom's nook, mulch to come tomorrow