24 May 2009 - Summer's Coming

Hi Everyone!

It may still be spring, but this week felt a lot more like summer. School's out for W&J, which helps Joanne and I feel summer more, but the kids still have a week or so left -- except for Madeline, who finished with the year end picnic on Wednesday. She had a fantastic time playing at the park with her BFFs.
This ends a four year chapter in our family. When we moved to Washington, PA in January of 2004, Jessica was in preschool. Everyone recommended Church of the Covenant Presbyterian Preschool, but they were full and couldn't take mid-year starts, so Jessica finished preschool at JFK Catholic Preschool. That fall, Emily enrolled at Church of the Covenant 3 year old preschool in Miss Joanne's class. She had two years with Miss Joanne, and just as she moved on to kindergarten, Madeline began 3 year old preschool with Miss Joanne.
Although Emily had a different teacher's aide, Madeline had Miss Amanda as her second teacher for both years, so we feel very connected to these two.
Perhaps what's made it feel most like summer is the fact that it got downright hot. It wasn't anything a little run through the sprinkler couldn't fix though.
The warmer weather also allowed me to finish the painting on the playhouse that I wasn't able to finish before the weather turned cold last fall.
This week should be a good one too. Aunt Jennifer is here for Memorial Day weekend, and the annual church picnic is tomorrow, so more good pics should be coming this week.

Matt

17 May 2009 - Ice Skating

Hi all,

With graduation this past weekend and ward conference on Sunday, I've been pretty swamped. The girls have taken up ice skating lessons. It's kind of nice because now that it's spring, a lot of kids are in soccer or baseball, so the ice skating classes are almost like private lessons.

Emily and Madeline are not in the same class, but their classes are back-to-back and they have the same teacher. She's very good with the kids.
Between lessons there is a 10 minute free skate period, so the girls can skate together for a short time.Most of the time in Madeline's class, it's only her an one boy.

Enjoy spring!

Matt

10 May 2009 - Mother's Day and Baptisms

On Friday afternoon, Jessica's class had Mother's Day tea at school. When Joanne went there she found out that Jessica was supposed to have paid four dollars for the gifts that were handed out to all the moms. She asked Jessica if she had asked me for the money but Jessica said no, she had used her own money to pay for it.After school, we jumped in the car and headed to Delaware to spend the weekend with the family of Joanne's brother Karl. His oldest son, Jacob was baptized on Sunday. This picture is his youngest son, Trevor, reading books with Joanne.For Jacob's birthday, we went to a Chuck E. Cheese style place called xbos. The adults even had a little fun at the bowling alley there.Emily and her cousin Calista had a good time driving this little red car.
It was also cousin Amber's birthday, so she and Jake shared a birthday cake.
Trevor doesn't need his pizza cut up like a baby, he just digs in with both hands and all of his teeth.
In the evening, the kids worked on stained glass painting for Mother's Day gifts.
This is Karl and Jake, ready the real reason we all came together this weekend.Here's the entire group.
If you're a Mother, I hope your Mother's Day was excellent and I wish you a happy and peaceful week this week.

Matt

3 May 2009 - Farms and Fairs

This week was Madeline's preschool trip to Springhouse Farm. It was a rainy, gray day. But at least she got to pet a baby calf.
And she got to milk a cow. She thought it was awesome.I thought this picture was funny because Madeline is the only kid holding her nose.She loved to hang out in the rain with her preschool chums.
Saturday was the annual W&J Street Fair. Although it was gray, it didn't rain. They had a hot air balloon to give rides, but they were having troubles getting it to stay up, and we had to leave before the kids got a chance to ride. A student of mine told me they continued giving rides until after 9 pm Saturday.As always, the balloon artist was there.They also had a build-a-bear type stuffed animal booth. You know how much I love stuffed animals. We waited in line for an hour and fifteen minutes. We figured we might as well make it worth our while, so I even got one. They all have W&J t-shirts.We had a Stake Conference broadcast from Salt Lake on Sunday. L. Tom Perry and Thomas S. Monson both spoke to us. We were grateful for their words of encouragement and guidance.

Matt

26 April 2009 - More Emily B-Day

The week-long Emily birthday celebration has drawn to a close. The grand finale was a slumber party -- our first ever -- with some friends from church and from the neighborhood. It was warm and sunny, so they all played outside for a while.More presents arrived. She's been opening presents all week!They played Piggly Wiggly, which consisted of hiding in one another's sleeping bags and having each other say "oink, oink" in funny voices so they could guess who was in there.And no girls sleep over would be complete without an evening of makeovers.All in all, it wasn't too bad. And she even got us to sing to her one more time, until next year.

Matt

19 April 2009 - Grandma's Visit

For family home evening this week, we went to Phil and Beth Conklin's farm. Phil and Beth are the Gospel Principles teachers in our ward.They have two baby calves that need to be bottle fed. Emily did it, but she wasn't too crazy about it.
Jessica did fine with it, she even pushed their heads out of the way if they got a little too bossy.
The word sounds cheesy, but Madeline was genuinely delighted by the whole experience.
Since Grandma was in town, we had an early mini birthday party for Emily. She was pleased to have early gifts and lots of attention.
We made it official, with a bunny cake, hand decorated in a most painstaking way by Joanne.And after all that work, we just set it on fire and then cut it into pieces.On Saturday, we had a baptism for twin girls in the ward who just turned 8, followed by a birthday party in the gym.
We also, finally, filled the sand box in the bottom of the playhouse that I built last summer. It took 800 pounds of sand to fill it.
As you can see from the sandbox picture, we have been fortunate enough to have a couple of sunny days recently. The rain and gray have returned now, but we were grateful for the warm and bright days we had for the weekend.

Matt

12 April 2009 - Easter

We were excited to have Grandma Fails come for Easter week/Spring Break. She got here on Saturday, and the girls were very anxious to color Easter Eggs.
They all worked diligently on getting the eggs ready to roll.On Easter morning, there were a few token offerings.The girls helped mommy make chocolate suckers.Joanne got the girls Easter dresses in Mexico a couple of weeks ago.Grandma with the Easter dress girls.On Saturday we also had a primary activity (Easter egg hunt), a wedding, and a baptism. I didn't get any pictures of the wedding or baptism. It was the second wedding I've performed as a bishop. I don't have as much practice with wedding as I have with funerals. We did get this shot of the girls with the bunny crafts they made at the primary activity.

Happy Easter!

Matt