Church Christmas Program

On Sunday, the children were part of a Christmas program.  All of the girls were angels, and the boys were shepards.  Allyson had a speaking part reading some paragraphs of the Christmas story, which she said she really enjoyed doing.

Here are a few pictures of the kids before singing one of their songs.  The things they are holding are chimes, and it sounded beautiful when they used them.

Not quite a happy angel, but Janae did a terrific job singing :o)

I can't believe I actually can do this AND figured out how to, but here is a video of the song they sang along with the chimes.

Fun in the Snow

We didn't have a white Christmas, but I think the girls are still happy even though it was a day late.

Christmas

This year for Christmas we spent Christmas Eve Day with Rodney's family, had our own little family time Christmas morning, and then headed to my parent's house for lunch and the afternoon.

Here are a few of the pictures from that time.

I thought this was a good picture of all three of them.

 Allyson got a CD by one of her favorite singers - Britt Nicole.

The girls recently got one of Veggie Tales latest videos "The League of Incredible Vegetables" and they love it.  Do you think Janae is excited?

I had to put this picture in because for some reason when asked what she wanted for Christmas, Janae said a penguin.  Fortunately for me I found one.  :o)

More Veggie Tales toys!

I got the girls each a new outfit.  Since Allyson isn't wearing it, I'll post a picture once she does.

One of the new shirts and new jeans.

Isn't she adorable?!

Some Updates

I know it's been a while since I've updated my blog (Uncle Dan), so here are a few pictures from the past month.

Several weeks ago Kaycie sat down with her doodle pad and wrote all of the ABC's.  This was the first time she did it without asking "what comes next?"  :o)

Thanksgiving weekend we were invited to my aunt and uncle's house out in central Illinois.  We had a lot of fun seeing family we don't get to see very often.  Here are the girls enjoying the tractors out in the garage.  This was soon after we got there, so they were quite ready to expend some energy.

Today Allyson received the honor or distinction of "Model Citizen".  This honor is given to four students in each grade 1-5 during the course of the school year.  Each teacher nominates kids who demonstrate the requirements in order to receive this honor: 

                                                 M - make positive comments

                                                 O - organized

                                                 D - do my personal best

                                                 E - effort in academics

                                                 L - lifelong learner

I knew she was going to get this about a month ago as her teacher called wanting to know her shirt size, but, of course, I had to keep it a secret :o)  Yesterday, Allyson came home saying that today was the Model Citizen reveal day.  She was all excited clearly thinking/knowing that she would get a t-shirt.  Why?  Because she's been nominated every grade.  This makes the third shirt now - her shirt colors are red (1st grade), black (2nd grade) and now light blue (3rd grade).  I even had to go downstairs and get her too small shirt from 1st grade out of storage so she could have it up in her room.  It's actually been kinda hard for me to get her to wear these shirts after she gotten them, but according to her now, she is going to wear it a lot more now :o)  

Field Trip Fun

Today was the kindergartners field trip to a dairy/pumpkin farm.  The weather wasn't perfect, but it was a whole lot better than the day they were originally going to go (Wednesday).

The owners of the farm split the kids into 3 groups.  Our group got to see the dairy cows first.  Here are some interesting cow facts we learned:  the brown guernsey cow's milk is best used in ice cream, cheese and yogurt.  The holstein cow's milk is best for drinking.  Cow's eat 70lbs of food per day and drink a bath tub full of water (approx. 40-55 gal) per day.

Our next stop was the pumpkin patch.  Since the farm was closing to the public in a couple of days, the kids were allowed to have two big sized pumpkins (meaning no larger than your head) and as many little pumpkins as you wanted.  The only catch was that you had to be able to carry them :o)

After that was the hayride!  And then we were able to walk around their corn maze.

Class picture while waiting for our turn on the hayride.

Our last stop was to pet the new calves.

It was then lunch time and then finally play time!  They had about 7 different areas to play in.  One area they had for the kids was this slide.  It took a bit for the kids to start going to it, but once they noticed it, they flocked to it.

Fortunately Janae wanted to try it out before the big rush :o)

Another area was the big trike race track.  She had to wait for a trike that she could ride, but it was definitely worth the wait for her as she loved it!

The other play areas were swings (which Janae loved - I pushed her and some friends for quite a while), a sand box, a hay bale maze, a big sling shot where you could shoot little pumpkins and gourds into a pond and a duck race track.

It was a great day overall.  I loved seeing Janae interact with her classmates and to get to know the kids instead of just hearing their names.  Another interesting thing I noticed on the way to the farm was that a bus full of kindergartners is a whole lot quieter than a bus load of 2nd graders!  Yes they were noisy, but not near as loud as when I went on a field trip with Allyson last year.  Now that was loud!  When I told Janae's teacher this, her response was "they just don't know any better yet." ;o)

Here are the girls posing with the pumpkins Janae and I brought home.

Kaycie's First Field Trip

This morning was Kaycie's first field trip, and she was definitely excited about going to the apple orchard.  The weather was almost perfect too as you can tell the kids aren't bundled up :o)

Here all the kids are listening to "Mrs. Apple" talk.  An interesting thing she told us was that their orchard lost 97% of all their crop due to the weird spring weather we had this year.  She also stated that every orchard grower from the Mississippi River east lost anywhere from 60 - 100% of their crops!  Once the growers realized that their crops wouldn't happen this year, they started calling around the country to find apples.  A lot of their apples came from Washington State.  She told us that Washington was having an overly abundant year for their apple crop - that is until a hail storm came about 2 weeks before the harvesting time!  Lost quite a bit of apples from that.  What an amazing year for apple growers.  Mrs Apple said this has been their worst season in over 100 years!

Enough of that . . . as I stated earlier, here the kids are listening to Mrs Apple.

Kaycie and I on the hayride - her favorite part!  She even waved to the cars driving past :o)

We drove around the huge field of pumpkins.

At the end of the hayride, all the kids and parents got to pick a gourd.

Nothing in Particular

Here are some pictures from the past month or so.

Kaycie playing computer games.

This is how Kaycie takes her afternoon naps - I have to make a tent for her  :o)

Had to throw in this picture of our cat Punky sleeping  :o)

The Girls

Today the girls wanted to go outside and play.  It didn't take long before Allyson came in and wanted me to rake the leaves in a pile. I told her "I'm not gonna rake no leaves!"  I told her she could do it, and she was able to get the rake and go at it.

While Allyson raked, Janae and Kaycie picked up leaves with their hands and put them on the pile :o)

The coveted result - a pile of leaves to play in!

Kaycie and Preschool

On Monday Kaycie got to bring home the class puppet, Albert the Alligator.  She was totally excited and even read Albert a book soon after she got home.

Today was Silly Day at preschool.  Here is my silly girl with mismatched socks and . . .

. . . silly hair

Last week all the kids at preschool got to paint a shirt they brought to school.  Today (Silly Day) was the first time they got to wear them and bring it home.  Here is Kaycie's painted shirt.