Fun with Friends

These are the pictures from our visit with Becca & Eli last week. We had lots of fun!

Sping Break Fun

This week is spring break for us and we've spent it right here at home! But overall we've had a great week!

Monday we had a playdate with some of our friends from Kindermusik and school. They have two daughters - one is in kindergarten at Rachel's school and the other one is a year younger than Katelyn. We went to their house during Christmas break, so they came to our house for Spring break! We had so much fun and the girls really played well together and got along great! It was a fun day!

Monday night Rachel started running a fever so we were afraid she was getting ready to really get sick. The end of March has always been the roughest time of the year for Rachel's allergies and asthma, so we were thinking this is it! Both girls were supposed to go spend the night with Mamaw & Papaw on Tuesday, but since Rachel had a fever, only Katelyn got to go. Rachel was a big girl about it all and only cried about it when I took her temperature Monday night and discovered she had a fever. At that point, she really cried and said "But I don't want to have a fever!" I knew she realized that she wouldn't be able to go to Mamaw & Papaw's house. But when Mamaw came to get Katelyn on Tuesday, Rachel did so good and didn't pout or cry or anything! Mamaw promised that she'd find another night for Rachel to come spend the night once she got better. So Rachel was fine with that, and actually told us that it was okay because it meant she was able to spend more time with us! How sweet!!

And by the way, Rachel's fever went away by Tuesday evening and she's been fever free since then!!!

Wednesday was spent with me & Rachel playing lots of games, reading books, etc. while Katelyn had a blast at Mamaw & Papaw's house. Wednesday night we headed to church for usual Wednesday night activities and Mamaw & Papaw & Katelyn met us there for supper.

Today we got to visit with our good friend Becca and her oldest son Eli! They drove down for the day and we played outside on the playground all afternoon. We even had a picnic outside. I think Eli would've stayed in the sandbox until it was dark if Becca would've let him! Eli, Rachel, and Katelyn had sand all over them!! I'm still not sure that I got all the sand out of the girls' hair tonight in their baths! Thanks Becca for a great visit!!! We missed you Scotty & Jonah! You'll have to come next time!! I didn't get my camera out today, so I'm counting on you Becca to send me some good pictures!! No pressure or anything!!! UPDATE: Becca posted some pictures on her blog, so check it out. Thanks Becca!

This evening we went to the farm - you can see pictures from that on another post.

Tomorrow we're having a Spring Break Party! We invited everyone from our Bible Study Class who was in town to come over to our house for a backyard cookout tomorrow afternoon/evening! The weather is supposed to be absolutely gorgeous - just perfect for a backyard gathering.

So even though we didn't go anywhere for spring break and Rachel was a little sick, it's been good hanging out here. Hope the rest of you on spring break have had an enjoyable one!

Fun at the Farm

This evening we had the opportunity to go see a baby horse who was just born this morning! The girls thought that was really cool!!! There's a college girl (who happens to be named Laura) who helps with AWANA's at church that talks to us all the time. She is a super sweet girl! She told us a few weeks ago that her horse would be giving birth soon and that we should bring the girls out to see the baby when it's born. Well, Laura called today to tell us that she had a new baby horse at her house, so we took the girls out this evening. Katelyn got right in there to pet the baby, pet the other horses, feed them, etc. She was fascinated by them and asked me on the way home if we could go back again sometime and let her ride one of the horses!! Rachel liked the horses, but was a little more hesitant with them. She did warm up to them though, and decided she liked petting them and feeding them too! Laura even caught one of the chickens so that the girls could pet one of those too! And two of the chickens had just recently laid eggs, so we got to see those. One of the eggs was brown, but the other one was blue! How cool! And Laura told us that the blue ones were lower in cholesterol! Who knew? Guess you can tell I'm not very familiar with farm stuff! Here are some pictures from our evening at the farm.




The baby horse was tired from his exhausting day and decided to lay down right before we got there. It made it easy for the girls to get in the stall and pet it!

The girls had the horses eating out of their hands!

This is Laura (not me Laura - the other Laura!) holding the chicken for the girls to pet. She was so nice to let us come over and visit the farm.

Do We Clean Up Good?

Our church had a murder mystery dinner theatre event for Valentine's Day and it was great! One of the guys from our Bible Study class is a photographer, so the church had asked him to set up and take pictures of the couples. This is our picture. I thought it turned out pretty well! This is a scanned in picture, so the color is a little off. We have lots of pictures of the girls, but we don't get too many pictures made of just us, so we took advantage of this and bought it!

What's Missing?

Do you see anything missing in these pictures? Yes - Rachel lost another tooth today! This is the 3rd tooth she's lost, and the second one she has pulled herself while at school! Maybe a dental career is in her future!!! The other two teeth that she has lost are on the bottom, and the permanent teeth are already in so you can't see the gaps there. I guess it's a good thing those permanent teeth are already in on the bottom, or else she'd have a huge gaping hole!!! She's also already started getting her 6-year molars. One of the bottom ones is already completely in, and the other bottom one is about halfway in. Evidently, she's going to be early on her teeth milestones. She started getting teeth very early, and then she started losing teeth when she was 4-1/2, and now at 5-1/2 she's almost halfway through getting her 6-year molars. Our dentist/friend told us that she'll probably continue that cycle for the rest of her dental stuff. He said kids that get their baby teeth early, tend to do all that dental stuff early, while kids that get their baby teeth late, tend to be later in their dental milestones. It's kind of neat for Rachel because she's the next to youngest in her class, yet she's lost more teeth than most of the kids in her class. And when she loses a tooth at school, she gets to go see the nurse and the nurse puts her tooth in a little tooth-shaped container on a string that she can wear as a necklace to take home! So it's kind of like a little award!

As you can see, Katelyn didn't want to miss out on having her picture made too! She made sure to take the gum out of her mouth so she could give you a pretty smile and show you that she still has all of her teeth!!!

Beautiful Weather, Tennis & Other Random Subjects

We have been having some beautiful spring-like weather here the past week! We have really tried to take advantage of these gorgeous days and stay outdoors as much as possible. Last week, I played tennis 5 times! It was awesome being outdoors!! I think Robert was able to play 4 times! In addition to playing lots of tennis, we also spent lots of time playing with the girls outside - playing t-ball, basketball, tennis, golf, playing on the playground, drawing on the driveway with chalk, etc. And we've also squeezed in a few walks!

Saturday morning we took the girls to the baseball field and let them practice hitting and fielding on an actual field instead of just the backyard. They did really well! Katelyn isn't actually playing this year - although she's old enough and good enough!! Rachel is playing t-ball 2, which is for 5-6 year olds. The coach pitches 3 balls, and if you don't hit that, then you get to hit off the tee. We'll see how it goes. Rachel is going to run track too!! It's actually just a 4 or 5 week program where they meet once a week and go over some basic running/track drills. There's a guy from our church who ran in the Olympics and he started this track club a few years ago. He saw Rachel playing soccer last fall and talked to us about letting her run track for him. Rachel is actually too young to actually compete - she's just doing it for the learning experience. But if she likes it, she would be able to compete in a few years. When you ask Rachel what her favorite sport is, she says "Running the race!" She likes to just run around! So we thought this track thing might be kind of fun. Especially since it's just 1 night a week for 4-5 weeks.

Last Saturday one of my spring tennis leagues started, and my team started the season with a victory! Actually, it was a great win as we won all 5 courts! Way to go team! I actually played doubles in that match, but I'll probably be playing singles most of the time. Singles is my first choice if I'm given the option! The team we played last week wasn't extremely strong, so my captain decided to let one of the other singles players play singles this week and just let me play doubles. It worked out fine. We're off this Saturday because of Spring Break, but we'll be back in action the 24th! I think I may play in a tournament this week-end. I have til Wednesday to decide whether or not I want to enter.

Robert's tennis league started yesterday, but his team got a bye this first week. There are only 3 teams at his level, so someone has a bye each week.

It is truly amazing what Rachel is learning in kindergarten! She's had sight words to learn from pretty much the first week of school. Each week more words are added to the list of sight words she's supposed to know. Now they're doing words like _at, where you think of as many words as you can that end in 'at' - like bat, cat, fat, hat, etc. After Christmas break, the ones who knew all their sounds were able to start bringing home little books to read to their parents. So Rachel has been bringing lots of books home to read to us. We have to sign her sheet, and then she takes it back to school and has to read it to an adult there (teacher, teacher's aide, parent volunteer, etc.). They've also started writing in journals! It's really cute because at this stage, the teacher isn't necessarily concerned if everything is spelled correctly - she's more interested in whether or not they are trying to spell things phonetically. So Rachel writes in her journal and then illustrates it with her original artwork. It's really cute! They're learning punctuation too like period, comma, question mark, and exclamation point. Did you learn that in kindergarten? I'm fairly certain that I didn't! They've been learning about money, and I don't just mean a penny is one cent. I mean in addition to learning a penny is one cent, a nickel is 5 cents, etc., they also learn who is on the front of the coin and what's on the back of the coin! Of course, with all the new quarters and nickels, it makes it a little tricky for Rachel to try to show off her knowledge at home. She knows an eagle is supposed to be on the back of the quarter, but she'll pick up a new quarter and it has one of the states on it and it confuses her. But I have been amazed at how much her little brain can soak up!!

Katelyn is picking up on lots of the things that Rachel is learning, which can only help her! She writes her letters really well, and knows how to spell things like 'Katelyn,' 'Mommy,' Daddy,' 'Rachel,' and 'Boo!' Not really sure how she started writing Boo, but it's a word she wrote one time and remembered how to spell. Most days while we're waiting to pick up Rachel Katelyn will get a notepad and ask me how to spell random things that she sees around the room - like table, chair, wall, etc. It's helped her with learning how to write her letters, and she does a great job of keeping her letters on the lines. She's probably the best 3-year old colorer that I've seen! She loves to sit and color, and she's very determined to stay in the lines and not "scribble scrabble" as she calls it. All of her teachers at school and at church always make comments about how well she writes and colors. She's learned a lot of that from Rachel - Katelyn wants to be like big sis!