Happy Birthday Shelby!

Jenna Pre-K Program

Jenna has spent the school year being educated by the wonderful staff at Busy Blocks.  Today was the last day of school.  Jenna is going to miss it tremendously!  She is already talking about how long until school starts again! 

During normal school time they had a program to celebrate the things the children had learned.  There were 16 in her class. 

She was sitting next to Isaac C.  Isaac's mom was the one that helped transport Jenna back and forth from daycare to preschool, as she worked at the daycare. 

They sang a song about the colors.  Jenna was brown.  I took this picture, as these two little girls, Brylee and Nellie, were Jenna's best buddies at school.  Jenna was waving the brown ribbon and I was videoing during her verse.

 

No preschool program would be complete without a picture of the child and the teachers.  Her teachers this year were Miss Diana and Miss Lori.

 

(I have posted several additional blog posts tonight, so keep on reading!)

 

Gardening

We are going to have a garden this year!  YAY!!!! After 2 summers without a garden, I am looking forward to a year of fresh produce and weekends of canning again!  The real stuff just tastes so much better than the stuff sold in the stores.  Lance and I planted tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, brussel sprouts the other night.  He tilled up more garden so we would have a spot for the other veggies we wanted to add.  So we got 0.5 inches of rain overnight and by 6:30 pm the following evening we are out in a freshly tilled garden planting green beans, peas, cucumbers, and zucchini.

 

 The girls were using their tools that Mawmaw got them for Easter.

Jenna was using the hoe to "tamp" the spots over the green bean seeds. 

Shelby was raking the fresh soil. 

Meanwhile, Toby was supervising! 

Toby 10 months

 

Today, Toby is 10 months old!  It is amazing how the time flies!

Here is Toby with Boomer.  He wasn't happy about Mommy stretching him out on the changing table and not holding him.  He has become very clingy and he loves anyone who will hold him. 

He is 100% on the bottle and is down to 10 bags of mommy milk. 

He is working on his top two teeth.  He only has his bottom two at the moment.  He can get himself from a flat on his back position to a sitting up position without assistance.  He can also get up on his knees as if he wants to pull up.  He is not crawling, per se, but is army scooting and still moving in reverse.  He would much rather be on his feet than on his hands and knees.  I fear this baby may skip crawling altogether!

He had his 9 month well child appointment on the 5th.  He is running behind due to the illness he suffered over the winter.  He measured out at 19.7 pounds (25 percentile) and 27 inches long (25 percentile).  Doctor said it looks as if he might be short.  I think it's still too soon to tell. He seems to be growing and developing, so that's all that matters!

 

Kitty House

Some people have a dog house, we have a cat house.  Lance got some plywood and paint and built a cat house.  We have an issue with neighbor dogs that run loose getting our cats.  Lance decided to build them a house to "escape" from their predators.  Saturday, Lance and the girls build the contraption.  Sunday, the girls got to paint it.  I put them in trash bag dresses, to protect their clothes from their ability to paint.  

 

Jenna picked the color blue. 

Shelby picked the color green. 

Jenna is a lefty, so her painting was not as neat as Shelby's. 

Shelby put a lot of attention into the details!

Jenna was a little quicker at completing the painting job. 

I thought Shelby looked cute with the little streak of green on her face! 

Now it just needs the roof and some inhabitants.

Easter (a little late)

We celebrated Easter (on Easter Sunday, I know I am late blogging about it) with the Rentchler Family.  I asked my Mom to take a picture of the Hofmann group to replace my Christmas photo.  This is the best one of the group.

 

 The girls enjoyed their Easter baskets from Mawmaw, especially the bubbles!

 Mawmaw had filled some eggs and had Lance and Matt hide the eggs in the yard.  We held the eggs hostage until we got a picture of the girls (Toby was napping).

 And their off!

 Every Easter egg hunt needs a supervisor!

Nothing beats a little team work either! 

More supervision was needed by the dads. 

We had a wonderful Easter and enjoyed the time with family, as always!

A Sunny Sunday

 

Today, I took all the kids and went to church. Meanwhile, Lance want to help his dad and Leon plant corn. 

We came home from church, made a picnic lunch and met up with Lance. He was planting a farm just south of his parents house. 

Jenna and Shelby both got a turn riding in the tractor. They thought it was pretty neat that the tractor was set up on auto steer and was guiding itself through the field. 

We left the field and headed to the park in Cory. It is a nice park for older kids.

Toby loved the baby swing. 

Jenna is getting really good at keeping herself going on the swings!

Shelby still needs to be pushed. 

Keeping all 3 going by myself was quite a chore!

Jenna has mastered the firemans pole. 

They both loved the rock climbing wall, too.

It turned out to be a little much for Toby. The swing knocked him out. I think the way he was holding on to it was precious. 

Shelby loved the slide. 

It was a beautiful day. We left the park and went home to go mushroom hunting. I found 3. Shelby found 1. Lance  and Jenna were both looking, but didn't find any. 

Our friends Jonathan and Melissa and their two kids came over for supper. We had a nice time visiting, catching up, and meeting baby Ethan.

New Kitchen Furniture

A couple months ago we headed over to Tuscola, IL to an Amish furniture store to order our kitchen table. This is something we have been planning to do sine we drew up plans for our house addition. We wanted to order a table that was going to be our lifetime table. We wanted a very strong wood, so little people cannot dent or ding it. We decided to go with a hickory wood with a medium stain. 

When it is fully extended it is 42" x 130". It fills up the room , but you can easily have people sitting in all chairs and walk all the way around it.

The table itself is 42" x 80. The table has 4 leaves, which the table will self store. With all 4 leaves it measures 42" x 130". We figure it will seat 14 comfortably. 

We ordered a bench, because we thought it would be utilized elsewhere in the house when the table is not fully extended. 

We ordered 2 captain chairs, with arms. 

We ordered 8 chairs with no arms

We also ordered a china cabinet. 

We also ordered 4 bar chairs to sit up against kitchen countertop bar. 

We are excited to finally have a table that easily allows us to have dinner guests!