Happy Birthday to my lovely daughter Gretchen! She chose to be at camp this week as long as we had a party for her so I hope she has a great birthday at camp. I can't wait to see her!!!
Dropped the girl off for resident camp yesterday. She has three weeks of it this year (her choice). The timing is such that she will be gone a week and home a week for the next 6 weeks. The programs she wanted weren't in June so this is how we ended up timing it. She also chose to be at camp over her birthday. She reasoned that if she's having a party for her birthday, it is okay to be gone on the actual birthday..... If you say so I thought. On the way to camp yesterday she asked us if we would celebrate it without her. Ha! We told her no but one of the letters I wrote for her this week I tell her that me and Steve ate her birthday cake. Joking of course!
G and Steve went to the annual Girl Scout He & Me Dance. She was a fashion diva as usual....
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| Blowing me a kiss |
I've been really busy and
haven't posted here in forever. We had a great Christmas. We spent
the week after going down to St Louis for some family fun. We hit their
Science Center, Zoo (for Christmas lights) and City Museum. The kids
loved the City Museum so much that we're going back there soon to visit
it again. It's been a cold winter - kids have missed several days to
the school being closed for "coldness". All three kids are back in swim
lessons. Gretchen is enjoying swim a lot but has started asking about doing cheerleading again. I'm on the fence because she hated going to the games and wearing the uniform but she loved practices and competition. Not to mention, cheer takes over your life! We've had a lot of fun with girl scouts this year. We did a winter camp out (indoors) and saw a coyote. And as many of you know, we just finished up the cookie season (may I never see another cookie....). Gretchen has started playing Minecraft which oddly enough may be good for her directionality since it forces her to use both hands (she has trouble with the midline). All of the kids are anxious for winter to go and for spring to come! Lots of pics on Flickr from the winter. Check it out....
More questions about the fat man but she was good just in case!
It was a bitter cold Halloween and Gretchen had these plans to go with her friends trick or treating. I had offered up to go if her friend's parents were not going and with temps of 35 degrees they were not. I layered up and put on a hat and we went. We took the boys around the block and they got the opportunity to go with their friends on the block. Once Evan's bucket was full, he wanted to go home so we dropped them off and headed over to another girl's house that Gretchen new. The three of them plus her friend's little sister and grandma along with me were out the rest of the evening. Gretchen has never wanted to walk too far on Halloween so I didn't think she would fair well in the cold this year but something about being with your friends, you just don't care. We were outside for three hours and not until the end did she complain about sore feet and coldness. I enjoyed listening to her be a girl.
Gretchen wanted to be a witch this year for Halloween. I promptly went to Goodwill to see what I could find. I already had a spiffy feather rimmed witches hat. I stumbled upon a dress that had fur around the arm and matched the feather beautifully. Gretchen liked the dress so we were a go! However for a few weeks we couldn't decide what kind of witch it was.... I said sparkly witch but she did not like that.... The day of Halloween Gretchen was prancing about her room checking herself out in the dress and hat and said, I feel like such a fashionista...
She's a fourth grader now (scared and excited all at the same time).
Steve
and I did our best (well mostly Steve) to make the last week before
school a fun one. The kids went to the movies, the park, visit with
Grandma, Six Flags (twice), the zoo and MSI. Also they took their first
Metra ride (commuter rail) to get to the city. All in all, it was a
tiring week but I think they had fun!
This past Saturday ended all of the girl scout hiking I had planned this summer (3 hikes total). We walked about 2 miles at each outing. Even though there was much groaning about a 7am hike, these girls did it without much complaint.... Progress made....
We did our annual camping trip to Devil's Lake this week. It happen to fall during the boys birthday (the 22nd) so instead of hiking we went to Mount Olympus Amusement and Water Park in the Dells. The boys were appropriately surprised and happy. We didn't get a hike in but the water park walking wore us out anyway. It was a great trip!
