Zach's Pun Drawings

While I was away in Mississippi, Jeff would pick the kids up from school and then bring them back to hi office. While he was there, Zach drew these funny pictures:

I think the zebra covered in bras is my favorite. Ha Ha Ha!

He is such a funny guy!!

Trip to Mississippi

My sister Amy, her little girl Emma, and I went to Mississippi last Friday to see our new nephew, Tanner. Isn't he a little cutie??

This is his "big" sister, Madison:

She is just too adorable!!
Here is Amy holding Tanner. We had so much fun holding him. He is such a cuddly baby!

Tanner & I. He has to funniest expressions!

Madi is such a good big sister.

Emma & Madi loved playing with eachother. They were so funny to watch & listen too.

Miss Madison & I. I miss her already!

My beautiful sister-in-law Udrika. I had so much fun catching up with her, talking & laughing!

My brother Joe was there too, but I guess I didn't take any pictures of him with my camera. :0(

On Sunday, Amy & I took Madi & Emma outside to play with bubbles. They were so funny with them!

We drove the very long drive home on Tuesday. 
I had such a good time seeing them & meeting my new nephew, but I was glad to be back home! :0)

A Busy Year Ahead

We have a very busy school year ahead of us. We have the usual busyness of school with homework, meetings, programs, etc. But we have a few other things going on too.

Lily is back in ballet & is going to Wichita Children's Theatre to take her classes. She has gone twice now & is loving it!!

Riley is still in scouts, with Jeff as his leader. They are already doing fun things and learning a lot!

Zach is the one who has the most going on. He is still in scouts (his last year as a cub scout), and he also joined in on 3 other activities at school. 
One of them is Science Olympiad. He was SO excited to do this! Jeff is coaching one of his teams; "Shock Value". He is also on another team that deals with powders and chemicals. They go to competitions and they have won several times the past several years. They are having a bake sale to help cover the costs of events this weekend so I made these cookies for it:

All Saints is where he goes to school & Cougars are their mascot. 

Zach also auditioned for Honor Choir and he got in, and he is doing Battle of the Books. He has to read 5 chapter books and they go to meets and answer questions about the books. He is very excited about all of these things!

So, as you can see, I've got my work cut out for me driving everyone everywhere! :0)

Sunset Pictures

The kids didn't have school on Monday, so I took this opportunity to do an art project with them. Since the kids are all getting older, I'm trying to find projects that are a little bit more challenging, so they will last longer than 5 minutes. :0)
I've seen variations of this project before, so I thought we would try it out and make it our own. First, I showed the kids pictures of sunsets. They looked at what colors sunsets can be, and they noticed that the objects sometimes looked black against the sunset. They all chose an object they wanted in their picture, then they started painting their sunsets, while I looked for pictures to print out of their objects.

This is Lily's sunset when she was done painting it:

Riley chose dolphins for his picture, so he cut out some black paper for water, then he cut out the dolphins I printed out, that happened to be black, and glued them on his paper like they were jumping out of the water.

Lily wanted a tree, so she cut out black paper for grass, then she glued this tree onto black paper & cut it out to be glued, black side up, on her sunset.

Zach wanted a pirate ship. The ship he wanted was already black, but kind of intricate to cut out, so he cut out the basic shape, then glued it onto his paper and painted his sunset over it.

He also painted a beach and water.

Riley:

Lily:

Zach:

 

I love how they all took the basic idea of this and made it their own. They all did a good job and it took them about an hour to do. (Yeah!) ;0)

Goodbye Emma

A little over a year ago, Amy & Sam entrusted this little cutie into my care:

Today is my last day to watch her on a daily basis. I know I will still get to see her a lot, but it won't be the same. I am happy that Amy gets to stay home with her, but I am a little sad, that she won't be here everyday to crack me up. :0)
Here are some pictures from the last year of my time with Emma:

Good thing I'm her aunt. That way I still get to see her!! :0)