Quite the Battle

Our sweet son was able to compete at the district level Battle of the Books. He was also chosen by his team to be the captain. Here he is introducing himself. Notice how many boys. There were only 5 girls and 15 boys, wow!

Here is the team. They were the only 1st grade team that was able to make it to the district competition. The little boy talking to Leo was impressed with his tie. His first words were, "You look tight".

He does look tight.

The team did their best and made us all proud with a great job. They won some questions and lost some. While they didn't win the entire competition we think they were perfect.

Afterwards we let him celebrate with a milkshake.

Leo's Soccer Game

Our little Leo is playing soccer again this season

and can I just say that I am so glad we have moved past

the crying stage

and him yelling in frustration,

"the girl's keep taking the ball away from me!"

Leo is quite the player and there isn't a whole lot of standing around for him during his games.

He dodges and weaves...

plays defense and offense

he is a force to be reckoned with.

Leo has a teammate that he often partners with.

I notice that our son is often comfortable

to assist others to make the glory shots.

I love this little guy. Every once in awhile I get a

glimpse of what he is going to look like when he gets older

and I am always impressed with what I see.

The team huddle. He has got a very devoted coach that works them really hard.

Leo's #1 fan - or at least until the snacks run out.

Every once in awhile Ken gets handed the camera and told we need proof - as in I was there.

Decorating Eggs and Hunts

Our schedule has been so busy that I wasn't sure when I would find time to dye eggs. I had to work all day on Good Friday but I had a 1 hour lunch break and was working near our house so I ran home and we dyed a dozen eggs. It ended up working out great because the kids were all ready and they pumped them out.

The girls ended up going to stay with Mimi and Papa so when Saturday dawned blue skies we knew we would be able to take the boys over to an Easter Egg hunt at a local nursery.

Here are the kids waiting for the go signal.

They hide the eggs throughout the plants and let the kids search all over.

Baby Huck was thrilled with his one egg.

They have a large koi pond. Huck was impressed and threw his egg in for the fish. The fish thought it was food and went crazy trying to leap over one another and eat it.

Preschool Updates

First of all things have been crazy, and I have a ton of blog posts to do but I really wanted to make sure that I got blogged about preschool. First of all we started with show and tell. I thought this part was so sweet. V-girl brought this adorable treasure box filled with her best treasures (a tiny tea cup, a mirror, a disco ball - don't tell me you wouldn't have one of those in your treasure box ladies if you couldn't fit it in there). The sweetest part though was when she pulled out the baby Jesus from a nativity set and said that Jesus was her treasure.

Of course that sweet moment was transformed when C-boy said, "What is that red thing under Jesus's armpit?" It is a red bead, and it was as funny to 3/4 year olds as you all

laughing right now.

Of course we had to have our traditional puppet show. The kids love this (especially trying to shoot darts at the puppets while they are performing.) Each kid gets a chance to do a show.

Then in order to encourage Spring to arrive we made Spring time fairies. How adorable right!

The one thing I didn't get a picture of was gunny sack. The theme of the week was order and goal setting (yeah I know). I taught the kids that it is important to pick up their toys. I told them that we were going to make gunny sacks that would eat any toys that aren't picked up. It would hold the toys for a week and then spit them out. If it ate the same toy twice it wouldn't spit it out. I expected they might be a little unsure, but the looks of terror on their faces let me know they weren't really going for this project.

Here were the other comments:

"If the gunny sack gets all filled up with my toys will it throw them up?"

"Will the gunny sack eat remote control cars?"

"I don't think I want a gunny sack at my house. Can we make something else?"

So much for the joy of goal setting and order!

At least when I told them the snack was popsicles on the back porch we were back on track. You would have thought I hung the moon.

Another Tournament

Midge had another great swim tournament. This time her Mimi and Papa were able to come down and watch her. She was so excited to be able to see them there to watch her compete.

I wasn't able to get as many photos this time because I wanted to make sure grandma and grandpa were able to watch so I had to keep baby Huck entertained.

Ken was score keeping again. Baby Huck watched for some of it,

but he mostly wanted to get into things.

After the tournament the kids were able to jump off the high dive.

I remember back to the beginning of lessons when she was so scared and

wouldn't go off the high dive. Now look at her...

Here are the stats:

She improved in every event just from the swim tournament 20 days ago.

25 Freestyle: 19.27 (Personal Record)

25 Backstroke: 21.35 (PR)

25 Breastroke: 29.78 (PR)

50 Freestyle: 45.09 (PR - 5 second improvement)

50 Backstroke: 50.43 (PR - 8 second improvement)

100 Freestyle: 1:41.71 (PR - 15 second improvement)

Haircut

It was time to say goodbye to these sweet little curls.

Time to say goodbye to bangs in the eyes

Time to say goodbye to this...

and who could forget this.

Change is good right?

Tell me why he suddenly looks so much older.

I had to include this photo. All Huck wants to do is be outside with the older kids. Any time the door opens he races to get outside before it closes again.

I also included this video of Huck with his bunny ears. He is obsessed with these and loves trying to put them on by himself.