Earth Day 2009

Happy Birthday to our beautiful earth! It was a gorgeous day with 80 degree temperatures and we were able to spend most of it outside! The kids always have a big celebration at Earhart to celebrate with games, activities, crafts, door decorating contests, poem writing and our favorite part...cake decorating contest. We made a dirt cake with worms and won 4th place(I think more because of Grace's popularity rather than how awesome our cake looked...).

Brock and I spent the morning celebrating with them. Jaxson's classroom door award was "picture perfect" with a picture of each child on a little earth where they explained what their perfect earth would be. Jaxson's perfect earth "would have flowers, no trash, and he would hear birds chirping and the beautiful wind". Grace's classroom door award was "best seed planter award" and has a picture of each child in a flower pot as seeds saying, "we are planting seeds today for tomorrow's future".




Jaxson also entered the poem writing contest and here is his poem:
Earth
Beautiful Flowers
Falling Leaves Off Of Big Trees
Cool Air At The Fair
By Jaxson Acker


His friend Grace Evans won first place and they didn't announce any other places, but he is sure he won second or third place!;]

After we left the school we picked up Isabella from Pre-K and met our friends Karen and Maxi and kids at the park for our weekly luncheon. Brock got his first sunburn...he is my child with the most fair skin!
It was a great day and we are grateful for our earth and the lessons we learn on how to take care of our earth to leave for the generations to come and the respect we have for the beautiful place we live!

Link for Life

Our family participated in the Link for Life run at the Sedgwick County Zoo. It was a fundraiser for programs for suicide prevention. Jaxson ran this race last year as his first race ever and since then, we have all competed in more races and we have made quite the improvement in one year. Jaxson's time last year was 35 minutes and didn't know how to pace himself last year, but with his new MP3 player, he did great this year, running in 29 minutes. Sophi beat us all, and this was her first race, finishing in 27 minutes. Grace and I ran together and a few months ago she raced and ran in 41 minutes and this race we finished in 35 minutes! I was really proud of her, she didn't get nearly as angry as she has in the past! Then Isabella won in her age group...and was a head taller then all the other 4 year olds-Jaxson told her she just had to beat the bunny that was leading the race...and she did(you can barely see her in the picture...just behind and ahead of the bunny)! Thanks Derek for coming out and supporting us and watching the little ones, you're a great dad and husband! After you finish P90X, your gonna blow us all out of the water with your running skillz!!

Great friends!

One thing we have loved about Wichita is the great friends we have made here. Most of them are spread out all over the country from Florida to California but we have maintained great relationships and hope to plan a reunion some time in the near future!
The last family in our original group of Wichita friends to leave us was the Michaelsons! Jared, Noelle and their two daughters Mya and Peyton. We connected with them quickly as they are also from Colorado and Jared was actually born in Montpelier, Idaho. We probably have some of the same relatives!! They were a great family and we had a lot of fun with them. We went camping, to our timeshare in Branson, boating, many dinners on the weekend, lunch on Wednesdays and lots of birthdays and weekends just hanging out together! They were always great for a good laugh and a deep political or religious discussion! We will miss them so much but know they will do great and have a bright future ahead of them in Austen, Texas! Good luck Michaelsons...we love and miss you already!!!

How cute is he!!

Grace's spring project

Grace did her spring project on zoo animals. We never actually made it to the zoo..busy year..but thank goodness for the internet.

Silence....

There is a daily struggle I have with myself. I rarely have quiet "me time" and so on the rare occasion I do...I like to enjoy it. So here is my struggle, at some point in the day there is a moment of silence and so I have to try to make up my mind if the small moment is worth the clean up I will inevitably have to do later or if not, I better run off and find what is keeping Brock occupied. This morning I chose to take the silence and after my 10 wonderful minutes of peace, I found Brock in my bathroom, quickly throwing make-up in the drawer and trying to close it and run before he's busted! My eyeshadow was broken all over the floor and my new mascara was all over his cute little kissable face!!! So even though I lost make-up and about 15 minutes of clean-up time...I believe it was still worth the 10 minutes of silence...

April Fools Day

I'm a little behind on my postings but we had a really fun April Fool's Day so I want to blog it so we can keep these memories!
The night before I froze cereal in water and in the morning I put a little cereal and milk on top and Jaxson was so confused and then caught on early that it was April Fools...Grace was completely oblivious to the fact that it was frozen underneath and kept eating..LOL. Then Sophi was so surprised that I even made her breakfast(we teach Independence around here;)...) so she started eating too and was a little confused but kept eating so she wouldn't offend me...ha ha!! Then I said I'd make them their real cereal and I put blue food coloring in the bottom of the bowl and cereal on top and then when they poured their milk it all turned blue! FUN FUN!!
The kids had all kinds of jokes to play on friends all day and I even put a fake spider in Sophi's purse...I don't think she has even found that yet...that will be funny!
For dinner we served cupcakes and ice cream...or meatloaf in a muffin tin with mash potatoes colored pink for frosting and white for the ice cream! Kids loved it!!

We played a few jokes on friends and family too. I texted all my family that Derek was offered a job, training other Chem-Dry's in Logan, Utah. I can't believe I got so many of them to fall for it, I actually got hung up on by Jan and a very upset mom...sorry guys...maybe one day!! And thanks to Boozie, we left a message for Jared Michaelson to call Mr. Fox with Fox Attorneys and left the zoo's number. Gotcha Jared! I love this day!

Jaxson's Spring Project!

Jaxson picked the horned toad lizard this year for his second grade lift spring project. He had to do a one page report on the lizard and give that orally by memory and a visual to go along with it. I wanted him to decorate the roomba up...I thought that would be funny, but he opted to do a clay scultpure instead. We bought a 10 pound brick of clay and after some good advice to use thread to cut it, I walked away and nervously told him to go at it! He definately has the creative side that I lack and so a half an hour later, this is what it turned into! I was so surprised and pleased with his work!! Absolutely amazing!!! He is only 8 years old..very impressive if I do say so myself. He usually always does well on his projects, but struggles with the oral reports because his voice is so soft when public speaking. He had it memorized and practiced several times and he just got his grade back. He scored 4/4 on the oral(woo hoo!!), 3 1/2/4 on the written and 4/4 on the visual!! 11 1/2/12 total! Yea Jaxson!!

Sophi turns 17!!!

Sophi's Birthday! She is now 17, which was my favorite age! It's so fun to have her here to celebrate her birthday with us and share in this exciting time of her life! Her birthday fell on a Sunday so we woke her up early with presents(she was actually already up on the phone with Germans friends and we sent her back to bed!! Family tradition!) After church we had a our first ward linger longer and we brought a cake to church and everyone sang to her and Clark Rogers who shares a birthday with her! It was a fun yet relaxing day. With her crazy schedule of school and soccer, homework etc., she enjoys Sundays so I'm glad she got to have her birthday on a relaxing day!! Happy Birthday girl! Make it a great year!

Gannons visit for Spring Break!

All the Gannons(except for Jamie) came out to visit us for their spring break! Poor little Logan was sick for the first half of the trip so we had some good down time to just hang out and be together! Once he was feeling better, we stayed busy at the mall, chuck-e-cheese, movies, restaurants and celebrated Sophie's birthday early at Sumo, our favorite! It was great as always!
Bella and Michael got along soo well! Their favorite activity was taking a bubble bath together! This was done NUMEROUS times throughout the week!
This was the only picture I happened to capture of the week! Grant, you need to send me the pictures you took so I can post more! Great week, thanks for coming Gannons!!!