Oh Happy Days!

Jenna has been full of smiles now that I'm done with teaching!! :) I had my last work day today, I have a pile of boxes of books and other miscellaneous things that I'll save until someday when I get to have a classroom of kids again. Until then, I am SO excited to have just three kids to teach for a bit!

Preschool Graduation

We went to Emily's year-end preschool program this evening. They shared some favorite poems and songs with us. Then they had a little "graduation" ceremony for the kids heading to Kindergarten next year. A little silly, but the kids enjoyed it.

Emily and Ms. Kristen - we will be forever grateful to Ms. Kristen for the tender love she showed to Emily as she got her first taste of what school is like.

Daisy & Emily laughing together at their silly hats. I often heard stories after preschool days about the silly games and things these two dreamt up together. It was fun to see a first friendship blooming.

This picture is a bit blurry, but Emily's happy smile was worth posting it anyway!

Our little girl has grown up SO much in the past year. She seems so much more confident - she really enjoys being on a stage. I especially enjoy seeing her proud/shy smile when she knows we're proud of her.

Living Prayer

The Living Prayer group from our church invited some young girls to join them for a dance this Sunday morning. Emily has loved practices and has amazingly learned the entire dance. She is almost 2-3 years younger than the other little girls they asked - which was obvious during practices. She worked hard, but also spent a bit of time spread on the stage on her tummy between instruction. At first I had my doubts that she would be able to remember the movements for even small parts of the routine, but she surprised me and had them all by performance time, even to the beat of the music!!

This angelic smile will forever be etched on her proud parent's hearts!! What a wonderful way to spend my Mother's Day

Mother's Day

These three kiddos make every day a little brighter! I feel so blessed to have them to help me celebrate my favorite job - Mommy. I recieved some gifts straight from their hearts :) (blue jelly shoes and a pretty butterfly necklace)

But the best gift of all was a day spent with them. We had Jenna dedicated in church Sunday morning, and Emily was asked to dance with some high school girls for a special mother's day performance during church. We had both of our moms over for a simple lunch and then I got a rainy day nap (those are the BEST). We concluded our day together at Braums for ice cream - can't beat that!!

May Day Parade

The kids and I took the day off on last Friday to go to the McPherson County May Day Parade. We met my mom, cousins, aunt and grandparents for the morning and enjoyed a fun afternoon together while the kids played! This is probably the last year we can enjoy this event because Emily will be in school next year and Goessel isn't involved in the events. We enjoyed many bands of varieties of abilities, fun floats with little kiddos, and a few pretty princesses mixed in.


Jenna slept through nearly the whole parade. G-ma held her close and covered her ears when the noisy sirens came by! I think they both enjoyed their time together!!

Getting bigger

Emily loves Jenna and has started to want to hold her all over again, now Jenna is bigger and able to sit up a bit on her own while Emily holds her. She has such fun feeling big enough to hold her without my hands helping her.
Just this weekend, Jenna started to curl herself up like she is doing a sit up, so I decided to see what happened if I propped her up with the boppy. She loved it! She is still pretty wobbly, but I think she liked the view.

Finally I caught a smile, Jenna has smiles for us constantly, but when I get the camera out, she turns all buggy - her eyes get all big and wide because she's so excited.

been awhile...

I keep thinking I should just sit down and get some blogging done. We are feeling pretty deep into life transitions, so this hasn't been top of my list. However, now that I posted a few recent events, it feels good to cross that off my mental list. Here's the most recent on our family:

On Jake's third birthday, April 13, we had someone place an offer on our house, it was a bit lower than we were hoping for, so we countered and they accepted the next day. I have been amazed at how the Lord is providing for our family. When we first listed our house, I began praying for the family that will move in here. I selfishly also asked that He might not send them until after school was out so I would have time to pack. I've been humbled to discover how carefully He already had my best interests in mind through this process. The buyers are currently renting, so we don't have a contingency on the sale, they must also have school-age kids, because they didn't want to close until the end of May. This gives me a week after school is out to pack things up. I've already begun packing. However, knowing that we'll possibly spend the next 6 months living out of boxes in Pat's parents' basement is making me really think through which box to put things into.

So, I've had a lot on my mind - I haven't taken many pictures, but here is a glimps into the pieces of life we caught on film! :)