Kindergarten!

It's been a big week here at the Friend house. Yesterday I accompanied Jack to his first, very short day of kindergarten and today he went for his first regular day, a half day in the afternoon. I am usually the type to be excited as my kids embark on new adventures and this was no exception. However, I was am extremely nervous and apparently a bit emotional. For the first day I kept reading and rereading all my school papers to make sure I had all the right supplies and did't forget any details like what time to arrive and where to go. I was so nervous and Jack thought it was just any other day. He said he was a little excited, not worried or nervous about anything, thought it was cool that Mason was in his class and was pretty much accepting of Silas not being in his class. Meanwhile I was practically biting my nails off! Day 1 was uneventful. Day 2 was today and I spent all morning watching the clock, ticking off the minutes until it was time to leave. We got their a few minutes early and although Jack was really excited to go in by himself he did ask if I would stand outside and wait with him while he waited for his teacher to start their line. It was so sweet of him and as I walked back to the van, waving good bye I started to tear up. I was so shocked at my emotions and honestly it took me a bit to recover. I couldn't even really tell you specifically why there were tears. I suppose it's just emotional seeing your kids grow up and take big steps like going to kindergarten. Probably safe to say I'll be a bawling mess when they go to college. Despite my continued nerves about this coming year I am so excited to seeing Jack learn and grow. Between him being in kindergarten and the twins starting preschool soon, I predict lots of change/growing up this year. Should be an exciting ride!

First day as a Lincoln Lion. All ready to go with his really heavy backpack full of supplies and his gift for his teacher.

Jack with his teacher, Mrs. Parkinson, at the end of his first full day of school. Hopefully he'll learn/remember her name soon!

Cabin in the Woods

This past weekend we enjoyed a long weekend in The-Middle-Of-Nowhere, Wisconsin with two other families for some fun and relaxation on Big Hills Lake. The Oxley Cabin has been our host before and it never disappoints. Somehow a lake setting is always so peaceful to me even with 7 kids running around. We enjoyed riding in the fast boat, tubing, walks, bike rides, wakeboarding, playing games and swimming at the beach. The kids had fun trying new things and playing with friends we don't see very often. The weekend almost took a terrible turn for the worse when Paul had a bad tubing accident.  Thankfully, he survived with not much more than rope burns, soarness and bruises. Although I didn't see what happened because I too was being thrown into the water, from the looks and sounds of it the accident could have been A LOT worse than it was. We are so grafetful for God's protection and that Paul's head is still attached. The kids have been asking to go back since before we even left and Jack has proclaimed that he would like to live there instead of our home in Morton.

All the kiddos.

Within our first hour on the boat our fearless captain (Nate) ran over the rop to the tube getting it tangled in the motor. We spent the next hour and a half trying to flag someone down to tow us which is difficult when there is no one else out on the lake. Finally, Tanya caught the attention of these fisherpeople and they graciously pulled us home.

 

Paul tubing with the boys and wakeboarding.

The Oxley beach. Much fun had here.

Chanda and I tubing. She laughed the whole time and I screamed the whole time. Much fun was had here too.

Garden Harvest

Our garden has done quite well, despite our best efforts to let the weeds take over. I spent hours and days weeding in the spring and hardly made a dent. The task was so great that I pretty much just gave up. A few of our plantings did not reep a harvest due to the weeds but so much of the garden has done well, perhaps better than I expected. We've had radishes, peas, carrots, lettuce, onions and a few tomatoes. In July Dad picked our first round of corn which was perhaps not the prettiest, but was really delicious. Our second crop of corn yielded well over 15 dozen ears of corn and was good but we liked the first round better (we had tried two different types). The kids had fun running through the corn "forest" with their papa though I'm not sure they were ever too helpful with the harvesting. We've also had more cucumbers than I can handle from our one or two cucumber plants and it's not even done. We have had two watermelons from the garden which have been small and very seedy in my opinion but pretty tasty. We still have potoatoes left to dig up and our pumpkins are still growing. We have one (or maybe it's two) plants that have really gotten large and seem to have over a dozen pumpkins growing. We will see if it continues to do well. The kids would really enjoy picking pumpkins this fall.

 

Sweet Friends

We had the opportunity last week to have an end of summer bash with several of my good mommy friends and many of the kids good friends. It was a busy, chaotic but wonderful time spent together. One thing I've noticed over the summer and have mentioned to Brittany is how our twins have started realizing that they "go together". Instead of being four kids the same age that are playing at the same house they have begun to identify as friends. This has been so sweet to watch. I love the little friendships my children have formed. As we talked a bit that day we realize that our seasons of life are in transition. The kids are getting older and school schedules don't always line up. Our days of frequent playdates are on hiatus until next summer which means we will have to be more inentional about finding time to connect with each other and time, for the older kids especially, to hang out together. So grateful for these little friends and their moms.

Tunnels in Town

The fact that I'm even bloggin about this tells you how corny I can be. But hey every small town probably has some tradition that most people hold on to but no one knows why. In Morton it was the tunnels. There is only one set of tunnels which is actually a lot, most towns don't have any. And you can ask almost anyone in town about them and they will tell you....you honk when you drive through. For many of us this is something our parents did for us when we were kids and now we do it for our our children. There was just something special about driving through those tunnels. But last week we said good bye. We had a whole tunnel parade of cars and everything. Our kids are sad to lose the excitement and childlike joy that driving through a tunnel brings. As our way of saying good bye we joined the parade and drove through no less than four time (honking each time) on the last night they were open.

Galactic Voyage VBS

The week after the twin's birthdays we had VBS at church.  The theme was Galactic Voyage and was very Star Warsy which went over well with our kids. There was a lot of learning about how big God is and just how far he would go to save us. This was the first year that all five of us got involved and though it was exhausting I think we pretty much loved every  minute of it. I really love when we get the opportunity to be involved with our church as a family. Paul was able to rush home from work every day to serve as a parking and security guy. I was lucky enough to be a leader in the 4th grade class. They were fun and challenging and I enjoyed engaging with kids that were not the same age as my own children. Jack was in the kindergarten class and though I didn't get to see him much during each evening he was excited every night about the things he got to do. He was especially excited about the nights his class got to go to worship twice and that he was selected to slime our Jr. High Pastor, Kevin. Schaeffer and Logan got to be in the preschool class which was lucky enough to get to participate in pretty much all the same things as the older kids. They really loved it and I'm hoping it's a sign of good things to come in preschool.

VBS exhaustion. VBS got done at 8:30 and by the time we got home it was after 9 every night. Our kids are used to a 7 o'clock bedtime! Needless to say they were exhausted by the end of the week and actually started sleeping in quite a bit. Here Schaeffer is clinging to his jet pack.

Happy Birthday to Schaeffer! Happy Birthday to Logan!

A few weeks ago we had the privelage of celebrating two birthdays in our family. Schaeffer and Logan turned 3 years old which I'm still finding hard to believe. They were so excited for their birthdays this year. Logan especially want to grow up so bad, I think he would have rather turned 5 than 3 but he was still plenty excited. They know at least a little that 3 year olds get to do more stuff, like preschool and tumbling and chewing gum. We told them months ago that they had to be 3 to chew gum. Thankfully, they have only had a few pieces and the novelty has worn off. 

Their birthday this year was sponsored by Monster's University. We took them to see the movie in the theater which they loved and they earned Sully and Mike stuffies for various potty training successes. And they were quite thrilled with my suggestion to make Sully and Mike cakes. Logan talked about eating Mike's eye for weeks before his birthday.

On their actual birthday we were excited to spend the day with the Winkelman cousins. Breakfast at Judy's followed by some swimming at the pool and then more swimming that evening at Grandma and Papa's house. The next day was their party and we had a backyard full of family and friends. There was lots of swimming and jumping. We are so thankful for such a wonderful group of people for our boys to grow up with.