Sunday, June 12, 2011

Let the Summer Begin!

Preschool graduation is in the books and we officially have a kindergartner!!  She can't wait to start school and already wants to go shopping for her backpack and lunchbox, clothes and supplies.  


We took an afternoon to visit Grammy and Poppy's farm in Deep River and had lots of fun on the tractor!


We've gotten to check out the pool at Emma's friend Zoey's house.  We're gearing up for Nana and Papa's pool to be finished in a few weeks.  Swimming lessons this week!  We're excited!


It's been a while since I've last posted, so I'll give you a recap of what we've been up to!

Summer has finally started!!!  I went to a three day conference in St. Louis with nine coworkers and got lots of great ideas and insight on professional learning communities. Of course, we did some sight seeing and had a great time.  I signed up for Twitter (@townsleyaj), which I never thought I would do.  Eric has been an avid "tweeter" for some time... (@EricTownsley).  I can't believe all of the techy things we can do to stay updated on best practice in the classroom!  I'm still working on my master's degree through Graceland University, with which I continue to keep busy.  I'm also trying to keep up with getting all of Grandma's poems typed.  This has turned into quite an adventure, but I'm enjoying every minute of it!

Emma is trying to learn to ride her bike. She's working on it, but we've got a ways to go. She's also putting more and more sounds together to form words and starting to read.  She's a miniature teacher, and she loves to work on her books.  Emma does a great job with helping with Oliver and her little brother.  She's turning into a little lady right before our eyes!  It's crazy how fast she's growing!

Kaiser loves to chase Emma around when she's on her bike, so this makes for an interesting sight :)  He also enjoys being into everything EXCEPT for what he should be....but this is typical, I guess. Kaiser has recently learned to climb, and he climbs up on anything and everything he can reach, and finds a way if he can't reach.  This will be an adventure, I'm sure.  He goes in for his second haircut this week.  Hopefully he does as well as he did last time!  His favorite words are NO!, ball, Mommy, Daddy, Pup, Buzz, Sis, n-night, sit, up, you, please, more, milk, and eeehhhhh!  He loves his tractors and cars, and I'm working on teaching him how to say, "John Deer yucky..."

Eric is staying busy with work, golfing, and things around the house.  He is excited to actually be able to spend the WHOLE week with us on vacation this summer in Minnesota....and so are we!!  He doesn't have football practice to get back to, and he has a few weeks off in July...minus his work trip to Orlando, again!

That's all for now.  Maybe I can be a little more regular with posting this summer, but then again, we hope to be outside as much as possible, so I can't make any promises :)

Shine on!