Our Kids Blog

A few weeks ago we got a new membership for the Eau Claire Children’s Museum and we dicided to get the reciprocal membership that allows us to go to other children’s museums across the country. We decided as a last minute trip to head to the Minnesota Children’s Museum for a little fun.

On the room of the museum that had a natural art exibit. You could paint stones with water.

Kenny enjoyed the painting and we liked the fact that he didn’t get all messy with paint.

Kenny was a pretty busy boy, but he did stop to pose for the camera a little bit.

Emma never did quite stop to pose, but I caught here in the background of this picture.

Kenny liked the view from the roof.

Grandma and Papa Swany live less than a half a mile from our house and we drive by it whenever we go home. Almost every trip past Kenny asks to stop (he says “Papa, Papa”). We make some stops, not always, but this would be a pretty typical one.

Start with some Oreo Cookies. Kenny always eats them at the coffee table sitting on the watermelon stool that he carries from accross the room.

Pick and eat some blueberries. He knows not to pick the green ones.

Keep on picking. Keep on eating.

All done with the blueberries, onto something new.

Papa Swany finds a toad.

Kenny is interested in animals and has been pretty gentle with them…so far.

Emma and Landry enjoyed a week of Vacation Bible School at the same church where Emma will attend preschool this next fall. They did a lot of crafts and learned some more about the Bible. A pretty good use of some summer vacation time.

The girls made the tie-die shirts that they are wearing in the picture.

We had hoped to go to Noah’s Ark in Wisconsin Dells this summer, so we decided to use Emma’s 4.5 birthday as the backdrop for the day. Kenny stayed home this year with Grandma and Grandpa Swany, but Cousin Landry came a long.

As you look through the pictures, I got some help from Emma for some of the captions. Anything in quotes are her exact words.

Emma didn’t know that we bought a cake at the grocery store.

She was pretty surprised.

We did save the cake until after lunch.

A little lunch. This all took place at a rest area just north of Wisconsin Dells.

Emma and dad went down a lot of the slides together. Next time Emma said she will do them by herself.

Emma did go down this slide by herself.

The two girls did a little racing down the side by side slides.

Here is the finish. A big splash.

Here the two are taking a picture that Emma claims to be “kind of cute and funny.”

Emma says, “Landry went down the turtle slide really fast.”

Emma says, “We took a picture by the turtle and I smiled really kind of good.”

“Riding on the horse, heedy haw.”

“We were in the wavy water and we had so much fun in the wavy water.”

“Wow I jumped really high over the waves. I wanted to say ‘hee haw’.”

After Kenny’s nap we spent some time at the Edmond Municipal Pool. The kids had a lot of fun playing on the slides and making friends with one of the life guards.

We had a busy day today, so there will actually be three posts. We started the day at Sorghum Mill Christmas Tree and Blackberry Farm and picked some blackberries. The nice lady that we met at the mall yesterday told us about the place. It was fun and the owners of the farm said that they had a bumper crop of blackberries so it wasn’t too hard for us to pick a pint. A lot of the pictures do show red berries, but those were just blackberries that weren’t ripe yet. The berries were big and juicy. Our pint didn’t last long.

Our second day of our trip involved visiting our dear friends the Ongs. They visited us just before Christmas, but we wanted to visit them in St. Louis before they left to go back to Singapore. While in St. Louis we also wanted to do a little sightseeing. We, along with Grace Ong, made a quick visit to Grant’s Farm where the highlight was feeding goats from bottles. We also saw the Budweiser Clydesdales, parrots, giant tortoises, and quite a few species of deer. It was a lot of fun.

After Grant’s Farm, we went downtown to the St. Louis Gateway Arch. I didn’t mention yet that it was hot (mid 90s and humid). Well the Arch was so busy that we stood in line outside in the sun for almost a half hour just to get into the visitor center. Once inside we found out that it would be another 2 hours to get onto the elevator to the top of the arch. Needless to say, with too little kids and an 8 hour drive left, we didn’t go up the arch this time. We hope to be back someday and we will buy our tickets for the elevator in advance.

To start our trip to Oklahoma, we actually left from Welch, MN where Kenny had one week intensive Occupational Therapy with a lady named Sheryl Field. Our goal was to make it to St. Louis on this first day, which we did. Most of the driving actually was not on Insterstate Highways. Instead we took a lot of local highways. As a result, our first stop eneded up being in Pine Island, MN at an A&W.

The actual recital went very well and Emma enjoyed performing and watching the other dancers perform. The grand finale involved all of the dancers and the younger dancers literally looked up to the older dancers to help with the routine.

The last couple of pictures are just to show Emma’s hair which Tammy did for the recital.

The Sreckov’s came over for a visit to watch Serbia play Ghana in the World Cup. The Sreckov’s have Serbian blood, but even with their cheering Ghana still came up victorious. The kids all got their soccer jersey’s on for the event. It was hard to let Emma wear an England jersey just one day after playing them to a draw, but it was all that we had.

Emma was in a dance class all year and as with most dance classes, the year end event is a recital. This first post is actually from the dress rehearsal where we could get nice and close to take some pictures.

UPDATE: Here is video of the dance.

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On the last day of school for me (and usually on the first day back in the fall) Tammy and the kids bring me lunch. It is tradition. Whenever the kids come to school they need to write on the whiteboards. To keep the markers from staining the kids clothes they get to wear some of my old undershirts. Fun memories.

After going to church last night, we headed to the local Renaissance Faire. We didn’t stay too long, but the weather was great and we had a lot of fun.

Tammy started the day with a free archery lesson. She only fired one arrow and she actually hit the pile of hay bails on which the target was attached.

Kenny didn’t eat enough iron for breakfast.

Emma started with the cup of corn for the goats, but she did give Kenny a turn before the corn was all gone.

Kenny did a little feeding.

Even when the corn was all gone he still tried to do some feeding.

Kenny moved on to try to give the goats some water. He was quite confused though, he would dunk the little flower pot into the water and within two steps of leaving the bucket the water in the pot would be all gone.

Kenny is hoping to give some of the imaginary water to this “woof-woof.”

The had a few rides and one was a lot like the swings at a regular fair, but the seats were a little more relaxed and the whole thing was operated by two men turning a big crank to get the thing to go around.

Kenny and mom didn’t get to go for a ride, but they did try out the seats.

Emma still likes princesses, but we had to pretty much force her to put on this princess dress (the face tells that story). She has been anti dress lately.

We got to take in a little jousting. This show was just a preliminary joust involving cabbages and rings. Later in the day would be the “joust to the death.”

Petting the horses was a treat.

Emma soon forgot that she had the dress on and enjoyed herself again. Kenny was wearing a pirate costume that we got at a garage sale.

One last ride. Another spinning ride that was all, in this case, women powered.

We ended the day with an elephant ride. This was a little bit of a surprise. Yes, the elephants themselves were a surprise, but the bigger surprise was that when we sent our little girl to ride the elephant without either of us, we assumed that one of the workers would be riding with her. Nope. Our little four year old was all by herself.

After wards, Emma said she didn’t want to say anything while on the elephant, but she did get a little scared when she thought the elephant was going to tip over (not just her, but the whole elephant). Just a little scared though.

We often head up to Great Uncle and Aunt Maloney’s on Sunday afternoon. One of the activities that has become a favorite of the kids is to ride on Uncie Dayle’s scotter. Their nice big driveway makes for some nice rides.

Our kids have been growing up going to Waterworks at our church, Jacob’s Well. Kenny hopefully will soon do a better job of not just crying while in his class. Emma really enjoys all the fun and learning about God that is a part of her class. There is a toy in the toddler class that both Emma and Kenny have enjoyed…a rocking cow (cows are more popular than horses here in Wisconsin). So here are shots of Kenny on the cow, a present day picture of Emma on the cow, and finally a picture of Emma at age 18 months on the cow.