Piano Recital

The boys participated in their first piano recital on Sunday afternoon. Their teacher, Cynthia, has her students do a recital at Christmas and in the spring. She did a great job of working with the boys and making sure all of her students were prepared and well taken care of during the recital.

 Each boy had an older piano student assigned to them to make sure they got on stage at the right time, with their music, etc. Levi claimed he wasn't nervous, but he did stop in the middle of his second song. When he came to sit down I asked him why he only played half of his song and he had no idea he hadn't played the whole thing. :-)
Both of Noah's songs were duets that he played with Grandma and they went very well. He told me he messed up, but I didn't notice.

 It was a long recital and sitting still and listening to lots of piano pieces wasn't Levi's favorite. But he was happy to be sporting his new hairdo. :-) Plus, the promise of ice cream afterwards was enough to keep his behavior in check.

 It was sweet of so many family members to come to the recital, I think the boys appreciated it.
And here's the full crew of students, many of them showed impressive piano potential!

The Noah Open

Noah hosted his very own one-man golf tournament. He worked with Ben to mow the course and then had to impatiently wait for a couple days until the weather would cooperate. 

Finally, it was time and all the spectators gathered,

including the steers.

He played well,

and with the help of his caddy,

he persevered through several challenging holes and ended up winning!

It turned out that his caddy was easily distracted and abandoned his job after just a couple holes.

But in the end, it was a fun round of golf to watch. Way to go Noah - congratulations on winning the first ever Noah Open!

Out in the yard

We are in the beginning stages of our first growing season at our new yard. Thankfully, Ben and I both enjoy working in our yard and making it our own.

Sharon Boese created a wonderful landscape plan for us and last fall we planted two areas in the front of our house. This spring we wanted to finish planting around the rest of our house. 

 Earlier this spring I planted this area along the back of the house.

 Ben has continued to care for and watch over the grass growing in our yard. This picture was taken a little while ago, and by now there is even more green. We're still hopeful that we'll have enough grass in our yard to be able to use it this summer. To simply be able to walk from the patio onto grass would be lovely. So far our yard has been kept wet to encouraged the grass to sprout and grow and a yard of mud is no fun.

 It's been fun to watch the plants we planted last fall come back to life.

 Clearly, not all of them came back though...

 I took a day off from work a week or so ago to plant all these plants around the side of our house. On one hand, it doesn't look like that many plants, but in reality there were about 30 plants waiting for new homes.

The south side of our house before...

 and after! It'll be fun to see how they grow and fill in over time.

 Several of the plants I had to work with were actually perennial grasses and flowers that a friend let us chop/dig portions from.

 It's hard to see, but all the plants around our utility boxes in the back yard were free. I hope they grow nicely so we don't have such a clear view of the metal utility boxes all summer.

 Ben and I planted everything and mulched everything just in time for the boys to arrive home from school asking if we'd play baseball...sigh. It felt really good to have accomplished so much in one day, and thank goodness the boys were willing to give us a little break before the baseball game started.

Easter

Levi asked several times in the days leading up to Easter if we could dye Easter eggs. It was hard for him to wait, but finally on Good Friday evening we had enough time.

 Noah was riding in the tractor with Ben (we saved a couple eggs back for him to dye when he got home), but for the most part Levi was in charge.

 We let the eggs sit in the dye for a long time and in the end

 we got some bright, colorful eggs! (Oh, and notice, Levi lost his other front tooth!)

 Easter evening we gathered at Megan and Chelan's with our Epp family. We enjoyed a delicious meal and the kids had a fantastic time playing outside together. Then the grandpa's and dad's hid the Easter baskets and eggs for the kids. Somehow things didn't work out equally and poor Rylee wasn't able to find as many eggs as the other kids. The big kids tried to make it better by re-hiding some of their eggs. :-) Regardless, when it was time for the cousin photo Ry hadn't had enough time to recover. I felt so bad for her. But in keeping with this annual cousin photo tradition - one kid is unhappy and several are not thrilled to be in the photo! :-)

Time to Plant

Ben spent a lot of time in this tractor planting corn in the past week.

 The boys must have missed him, because they fought over who could ride along. It was bewildering to me and Ben that they were fighting over this...since planting isn't the most interesting field work to watch. The boys have both learned that tractor rides require snacks, so they come prepared!

 I'm always impressed by the technology and precision of farm equipment,

 at 5 mph, a seed and a bit of fertilizer get put down at just the right depth, with just the right amount of dirt covering it.

I'm not gonna lie, sometimes I wish the seeds in my garden could be planted like that...

Patio!

Ever since we had to decide what size deck we wanted on the house, Ben and I knew we wanted a patio to stretch beyond the deck. We purposefully designed our deck so it would tie into a patio...someday.

 Eventually, we decided to go with a patio of stamped concrete because we wanted the look of stone and a solid, even surface. In less that 7 hours, the crew from E & J Concrete from Wichita took our space from uneven dirt to a poured and stamped patio. It was amazing to watch them work (and it made us feel super-lazy)!

 They arrived around 7:30 and by 10:30 or so they were ready to pour. They used a motorized wheelbarrow (that purplish thing in the photo above) to haul the concrete from the truck to the patio.

Then they let it set up for a little bit, dusted it with a release powder and then pounded the rubber mats into it making a stone pattern.

 At the end of the day, our patio was covered with the powder and had to dry for a day or two before they could power wash it off.

 When the boys left for school that morning, they didn't know anything was going to happen at our house. When they came home we had a patio. :-)

 A few days later, Juan - one of the owners - brought his boys along to wash, dry and seal the patio.

 And this is how it looks!

 Now we've got a bunch of dirt work to do and (fingers crossed) we'll get some grass to come up yet, too!