Day at the Zoo

School Days

This was Maddingly's first week back to preschool, and she was SO delighted! She is now in the 3-a-week (MWF) program and is loving going to school more frequently. Part of her excitement stemmed from the fact that we went to the open house last week and received her first ever "homework" assignment. She set to work immediately and enjoyed diligently attending to it all weekend. It was an "All About Me" poster, and she did ALL the work herself! (Including the cutting, with mommy supervision of course!) She's growing up so quickly! My baby girl will be 5 YEARS OLD in only a few short months! YIKES! Where does the time go? All I can say is, really enjoy and cherish those childhood years, they certainly don't stay small for long.
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Cassandra

The new HOT pink folder

The Homework Project

The Locker

Bye Mom, I got it from here...

Poolside

Well, the village pool officially closed this last week. (Just in time for the HOTTEST week of the summer on record!) The kids and I will miss being poolside to cool off from the Nebraska heat and humidity. Maddie was such a fish again this year, diving and swimming under water already! Looks like Brody can't wait to be big enough to join her. The kids always had friends to swim with, so that was nice too. Bye Bye Poolside!
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Cassandra

The Double A's

A few weeks back we had the pleasure of having Tony, Alexandra and Addison here to visit for the day while Lisa was at a conference at Concordia. The "menfolk" mainly relaxed outside with some beverages and baseball. The children enjoyed playing the day away inside in the nice A/C! In the end, lots of fun (and berry buckle cake) were had by all! Lisa came by later (No thanks to Tony....ahem) and had supper with us all. Thanks for coming to visit guys, hope to see you again soon!
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Cassandra

Alexandra and Kavan likey the cakey

Maybe Kavan likes it a little more....

Ummm, are you HUGGING me?? I'll have to think about that....

Now THAT is Tony all over!!!!

A Daddy Nap Disturbed

Hey Mom, look! Dad's trying to take a nap!

Do you think he'd mind if I just climbed up here...?

Hehee, GOT 'em! No sleepy for you today, Daddy!

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Cassandra

The Butterfly Whisperer

Maddingly is in love with catching anything and everything that crawls, creeps and flies in the great outdoors. A few weeks back, Kelly bought each of them a "bug box" for them to keep their amazing creatures contained (instead of using mommy's jars!) and they have been happily filling them on a daily basis. At any particular time you will find these cages full of praying mantises, crickets, ladybugs, roly polies, grasshoppers, toads or moths. Maddie is forever on the hunt for that ever elusive Butterfly, and today she finally caught one! She was absolutely thrilled! She came in screaming so much that I thought she was injured! Of course they spent the rest of the day fighting over whose turn it was to hold the cage. The butterfly ate supper with us in the middle of the table, and slept with the kids last night on their dresser. She is currently outside helping Kavanaugh and Daddy with the yard work. :O)

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Cassandra

Anatomy of a Jump

Kavanaugh has really taken to swimming this summer, which was a great relief to me as he was so pool shy last year. Here he is doing one of his "big boy jumps". Splash it up!

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Cassandra

Our Village Heritage Days

A few weeks back our little village here in Nebraska held its annual Heritage Days Festival. There was lots to do and see for the whole family the entire weekend, and plenty of fun to be had with our friends! The weekend started off with a pancake feed on the main street with the "Pancake Man" and entertainment provided by the Ultimate Dance Force Cloggers. (Clogging is big here....I'm not sure why, it just is...) So we ate up and enjoyed the dancing (Kavanaugh the eating and Maddingly the dancing, lol.)

Next there was a craft show, antique/old tractor show and a car show. We stopped in to see all the happenings and then headed over to the "Party Bounce". Maddingly was having so much fun bouncing that I could barely get her to leave for lunch! Kavanaugh, on the other hand, very much wanted to try but then freaked out when we actually put him in there. (Note: We later figured out that it was because there were too many kids in there who were a bit bigger than he, and that's what caused the fright. We had another chance to attend the bouncing house the next day at the park, and the nice man let Kavan have a jump all to himself. He was elated! I unfortunately didn't have the camera, but needless to say, he was as hard to pry away as Maddie had been! I'm so glad he was able to enjoy it after all!)

After that we headed to lunch out in the park with our friends! There was a parade that afternoon, at which the children collected FAR too much candy, and then horse rides (Maddingly's personal highlight of the day) and train rides on the square! I couldn't take pictures of the train rides because I was ON the train, lol! After the rides there was a tractor pull for the kids, which I had never seen in my life, it was very "small town Nebraska", and Maddingly WON her division, ha!! As you can see in the next picture, she's one of the smallest in her class (only two girls are shorter than her) and yet she's as strong as a little ox! We can actually go to the State Fair now and have her compete there if we want, but I doubt we will. That night there were fireworks at the park, and it was a pretty good display. We could see them from our backyard, which was nice because the mosquitos were pretty thick! The next day was a little more relaxed, with a few kid games at the tennis courts and a stick horse rodeo at the park. We ate supper at the park and that was the end of celebration! We really appreciate that the village puts on such a nice weekend! Come visit us next year and we'll take you around with us!
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Cassandra

A Baby Brody Blog

Here's a few more pictures of Brody's latest antics that forever amuse his mother. I think he's pretty happy....ummm, yeah, I think so.

Brody and Kelly have a nightly ritual of listening to the Yankees game out in the garage, Brody sees Kelly get the Bjorn (the baby carrier) out and starts flapping his arms about in excitement! They really enjoy that time together, and Brody often falls asleep there on papa's chest. True contentment and comfort in the safety of daddy's presence. Too cute.

Brody takes his baths in the Big Boy Tub now that he sits up so well. He's crawling all over the place these days trying to keep up with big brother! He has a very interesting technique, let's just say that we call him "frogger". He's also pulling up and standing. We found him standing in his crib last week and I about fell over! We had to lower the mattress before the acrobat took flight!

We also stumbled upon a great new teething "toy", the wonderful Cantaloupe! I have the most adorable video of him eating this piece, but I haven't quite figured out how to get that on the blog just yet. More on that later....

Chew on my littlest dear, chew on.
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Cassandra

A Hair Affair Revisited

Maddingly recently attended our church's VBS week and we attempted the "double braid" for the singing service on Sunday. Here she is wearing her "Quest for Truth" T-shirt that they made. She did a lovely job singing that morning, she loves her some Jesus music!
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Cassandra