Miriam's Desk Project

Miriam has reminded Casey several times recently that she doesn't have anything in her room that he built just for her.  Peter has a fire truck bed, Esther has a loft bed, and Miriam has the Barbie doll house, but that was originally built for Esther.  She really wanted a loft bed, but we decided that wouldn't work well in her room, so she settled on a desk.  Casey built the desk and shelves himself and we got the chair at New2You and he painted it.  All the paint colors were her choice... very bright and fun!

First Day of School!

Here it is, the annual post...

Today was the first day of school for the kids.  As usual, the summer went way too fast and it was bittersweet to start another school year.  It's exciting to start a new year and new routines, but sad to leave the lazy and fun days of summer behind.

Esther is starting middle school (5th grade), while Peter is in 3rd and Miriam in 1st grade.  They are all excited about their teachers and looking forward to a great year!

End of Summer Fun

We have had a fun last week of summer vacation.  The kids start school on Monday and I will have meetings at school next week as well.  It's always a sad time of year when summer has to end, but exciting to start a new school year too.

This week we've had fun with Aunt Karen and also our friends the Langs from England.  The kids had their open houses at school and Esther had a little orchestra camp too.  Here are some pictures from the week...

We were going to go to Meijer Gardens,
but it was a rainy day so we went to Catch Air
instead.  It was a fun place to play!

We always have lunch at Olga's
when Aunt Karen is in town!
We had a girls' lunch while Peter
and Grandpa went to Culver's.

Peter washed Aunt Karen's car
to earn some extra money!

Fun play date with friends!

Playing in Grandpa and Grandma's
driveway

What else would you do with a big pile
of Smarties, other than build a pyramid?

We used our last pool punches for the year.  :(

Apparently Miriam is not all
that sad about the pool
pass being used up for the summer??

Karen and I took my Dad out for
a belated birthday breakfast.
We tried out Anna's House
and it was delicious!

Casey won tickets to the Berlin Raceway at a
golf outing this week.  We had 4 tickets and kids
were free tonight, so we went with the McCaul family.
The kids had a great time, and boys especially loved
watching the various types of cars racing!

Fun in Rockford

This morning the kids and I went to Rockford with Karen and my mom.  We usually go up there and bike the White Pine trial, but my dad had an appointment and couldn't come, so we decided to just go hang out without the biking part.

We started by checking out a couple of the parks/playgrounds.  Then we walked to the dam and had hot dogs from Corner Bar for lunch.  We finished with ice cream!  It was a nice morning to be outside.

Not surprisingly, Miriam was the only
one who wanted to wade in the water

Karen captured this string of pictures... crazy kids!

Peter's Statue of Liberty
ice cream cone pose

After that we headed to Schuler Books.  They have a summer reading program that allows the kids to earn up to $15 in gift cards to the store.  The kids love that store and there are so many fun things to shop for there, so they worked hard to get their reading logs all filled out before the end of summer.  They had fun perusing the store and choosing their items!

Esther got this mustache pen,
a crayon pencil, a Mad Lib book,
and a stuffed animal raccoon.
I forgot to get a picture of
the other items!

Miriam got these cute elephants!

Peter got a fire rescue Lego set
to add to his collection.