The end of May

After our quick trip to KC, Ben's parents came to our house for several days. It was great to be able to have more time with them! 

Plus, they got to meet our goats, Frank and Scooter!

Scooter is younger and has one bum leg, hence the name Scooter. :-)

 Frank is full grown and has a ornery attitude. :-)

 Baseball season started up and Tim and Sue got to see Levi's first game!

 And we snuck in a morning of fishing, too!

 Grandpa Schrag patiently shared his fishing knowledge with the boys

 and then they did their best to follow the instructions.

 I failed to take any pictures of the fish they caught, but there were quite a few!

 We also have 6 kittens on the farm right now - it's fun to visit them and marvel at how cute, soft and small they are.

And to wrap up the month, the boys had a couple friends over to play one afternoon. It was only 59 degrees outside, but these boys didn't mind. 

 Instead of playing with water balloons (since we didn't have any balloons) they used ziploc sandwich bags!

 Kreed borrowed Levi's swim trunks, they were only several inches too big around the waist. :-)

 The big boys helped the younger ones and for the most part everyone had a good time.

 There were shrieks each time one of them got soaked with cold water, but they laughed really hard too.

On to June!

KC Weekend

A couple days after school wrapped up, we took off for Kansas City to stay at the Great Wolf Lodge. 

 The boys were PUMPED! It took a long time to get checked in, get to our room, find our suits, and then we FINALLY made our way to the water park.

 They swam and explored and slid and swam and then we decided it was time to go find some food. Off to the near by dinosaur themed restaurant we went. Friends of ours had suggested it because they knew the boys would enjoy it. While we waited for a table we took silly pictures of ourselves in the gift shop. :-)

 The place was full of dinosaurs and fish tanks, sound and light effects. We had plenty to look at while we waited for our food to arrive.

 Noah ordered a dinosaur rice-krispy treat for dessert -the cool thing was that it came with different sauces and a paint brush!

 Final piece of artwork:

 Then the boys did a bit more swimming while we waited for Ben's parents to arrive from Illinois!

 Saturday morning, you guessed it, we hit the water park again. I actually went down one of the water slides - not my favorite thing to do...but I survived. Sue and I sat in the adult only hot tub for a while - that was nice and relaxing.
Saturday afternoon, we snuck in a quick visit with Ben's aunt and uncle Janet and Scot and his cousin Emily. It was wonderful to see them again - it'd been too long! Then we were off to see the Royals!

We got there early enough to take in some of the kids activities, but then it was time to find our seats!

 This was the view from our seats - right above the Royals bullpen. Royals starting pitcher Volquez was warming up with their catcher Perez. They were amazing to watch!

 Then it was game time - and time for the rain clouds to move in....

 It was drippy, but we never got soaked. The boys were interested in the game - something I was worried that Levi would struggle with.

 There is so much to watch that sometimes I had trouble keeping up! A woman near us in the stands handed the boys one of the balls that Vulquez and Perez had been warming up with. She'd been cheering (loudly!) for them and they tossed her a ball after they finished warming up. During the game she handed it to the boys. It was so sweet of her! Later I found out from Sue, that the woman has a liver from an 11 year old kid, so she tries to be extra kind to kids around her.

 We had a fantastic time!

 And as the 6th inning was wrapping up, we headed for the car because we'd seen on the radar that a thunderstorm was coming toward the stadium. Thank goodness we did, because just when we got to the car it started to POUR! Bonus for us, there was no traffic so we got out of there without fighting any congestion. They called the game and the Royals won!

 Sunday morning there was just enough time for another swim.

 And just before another rain shower arrived, the boys and I played mini-golf to round out our weekend at The Great Wolf Lodge!

Last Day of School

Whoosh! And just like that, an entire school year just rushed past. It's crazy to me that our boys have finished up another year.

On the last day of school I like to take pictures of the boys so I can compare them to photos I took on the first day of school. I forgot to take the photos in the morning, so instead of well behaved eager kiddos to photograph, I got goofy/"this is dumb" kids in the evening. Oh well! :-)

 My goodness what a difference nine months makes.

It's a little hard to tell since their hair is longer now than it was on the first day of school.

And oh there's Harold! That poor guy was miserable back then, unable to keep food in and so skinny. :(

The boys loved school this last year. They'll tell you they're happy to be out of school, and that's probably true. But I know they like school. Neither one of them ever complains about it and what a gift that is! 

The last day of school was cool, windy and rainy. It certainly hasn't felt warm enough in the past week or so for summer to start. But here we are, furnace running in the house and everything, on the last day of school! 

 

Noah had a lot of fun with Mr. Wiens this year. It was his first time having a male classroom teacher and that worked well for Noah. He made incredible progress on using the computer to do research and in math. I remember that my struggle with math started in third grade, but I don't think that's true for Noah.

 Levi thrived in first grade with Ms. Goering. She kept him challenged and engaged in his work, and it was fun to see the progress he made during the year in reading and writing.

 They have fun at school and some how they forget that in the middle of all that fun is whole bunch of learning! They love art, P.E., gardening, music, lunch, recess - Levi even loves going to speech! :-)

 As the boys brought the contents of their desks home over the past two days, I had them leave all of it on the dining room table. I figured at least that way it was all in one spot instead of a pile on the floor here and there and everywhere.

 Oh. My. What a mess!

So Long Steers

Last week, the 350 steers that Ben was custom feeding for the Klingenberg family, up and left the farm! Well, it wasn't quite that simply.

First the steers from my uncle's place had to be brought over to join the ones at our place. Work started around 6 that morning, so the boys lucked out and got to help bring several loads from Bruce's.

The steers wildly hopped out of the trailer!

Then they got to wait...

Then Grant took charge of loading them into the pots (that's a technical term for what you might call a cattle-semi).

Through the gates and up the chute they went. It was a pretty smooth operation - much more so than last year. The difference was in the addition of alleyways and gates that the farmers made over the winter.
Just like last year, Ben and I thought it'd be nice to offer the guys lunch after they finished loading cattle. But since it went so much more smoothly, we ended up eating lunch at 10:30!

And now...it's kind of quiet around here and for now that's perfectly fine.

Art Fair!

To cap off Noah's busy week, we got to attend the 1st Annual Art Fair at the school!  

It was a huge success! Their teacher, Miss McGee did an outstanding job organizing the event. It was a lot of fun and it was wonderful to see the entire gym packed with people. The photo below doesn't show how full it was at the peak of the fair. For a while it was hard to move around!

In addition to displaying two pieces of art from each student, she also had the students help create art to be sold at the silent auction. Each class had a piece of art. Here is a bowl made from the hands of all the 3rd graders. The winner of the auction will chose a glaze color and Miss McGee will complete the project.

The 1st grade art had a pop-art feel to it. Levi could identify some of the hands, but couldn't figure out which were his. :-)

She had several hands-on art activities for the kids to do, snacks, and a power point of kids and artwork rolling the entire time. Plus, the art department raised about $1000 on the auction!

It was lots of fun and the boys were proud of their artwork that was on display. What a wonderful way to support the school, art and celebrate what the kids have done!

Busy Week for Noah

No wonder Noah was so tired every night last week, he was busy doing all sorts of fun things!

 On Monday, his class took their field trip to the Kansas Cosmosphere & Space Center in Hutchinson. Noah reported that it was very cool and he had lots of fun. It was kind of hard to pull much more information out of him, but it was apparent that he was impressed and had fun.

 Wednesday night, Noah was invited to go along with his buddy Jake (and Jake's dad) to Wichita to celebrate Jake's birthday! They ate at KFC - and Noah LOVED it - clearly. :-)

 And then a friend of ours, hosted the boys at his work so they could fly in a simulator. Noah LOVED flying more than KFC, so obviously he had a really, really good time.

Thursday was Famous People Day for the 3rd grade class. Each student picked one famous person, researched that person, wrote a report, drew a portrait, made a display board and dressed up to represent their person!

 Noah chose Jesse Owens. He did all the work for this project at school and he wouldn't really tell us much about it. So I was very curious about what we'd learn once we were at the actual event.

 Some of the other grades came through to learn about the famous people from the third graders.

 And then in the afternoon parents and grandparents were invited to come and "meet" the famous people.

 Plus, each student made a creative power point presentation that they showed to their guests in the computer lab.

 It was an impressive amount of work and the kids seemed to have a wonderful time.

Noah with Jake and Javin...I mean, Jesse Owens with Davy Crockett and Neil Armstrong.

It was a week full of fun and educational stuff! What a lucky kid!

*Big thanks to Noah's teacher Mr. Wiens for most of these photos!*