Great Wolf Lodge!

Eating at Fritz's train restaraunt

After lunch

Getting ready for swimming fun!

Storytime before bed in the lobby

With the wolf after storytime

Getting ready for bed! Love them so much!!!

Swimming

Just got done with the slide!

Swimming

Lazy river

We loved hanging out in the hot tub!!!

Finally conquered his fear of the slide and then LOVED it!

Jack went down the big slide!

The big waterfall!

We had a great time!

For the past 3 yrs we have taken a mini-vacation to Great Wolf Lodge in KC every year. This year we decided to coincide it with Ellie's birthday and asked her (ok "conned" her into it!) if she would like to do Great Wolf Lodge in place of a friend birthday party. Her class this year wasn't extremely close and Ellie has so many "random" friends that I was thinking it would be hard to pick who to invite, etc and plus I think a night at Great Wolf Lodge sounds more fun than a birthday party :) She agreed to it and so the weekend that we got out of school we headed down to Great Wolf and spent Sunday to Monday. The kids had a ball! We started off by eating at Fritz's Train restaurant. It's a cute little restaurant (fast food) that has trains running over your head and then your food gets delivered by an overhead train. The food is just "glorified" fast food but it was fun to have it delivered by a train! After lunch we headed to the lodge to check in and start swimming! It's funny that we go all the way to GWL and Ellie's favorite thing to do is swim in the big pool---not the slides, not the lazy river but just the big pool--she is easy to please! Her and Dave did go on a few slides the first day and we spent a lot of time in the lazy river! Jack is not so adventurous when it comes to water and much preferred splashing around in the kiddie area! By the 2nd day Dave had finally got him to (forced him to!) go down the little kiddie slides and low and behold he LOVED them and proceeded to go down them about 100 times! He's so funny--he's so nervous and cautious but once he's almost "forced" to do something he loves it (sounds just like his mom!!) What a hoot! He had a ball and by the 2nd day I was brave enough enough to go down the big slides with Ellie and guess what....I loved them! I only wish I had discovered them sooner because they were so fun. The past few times that we have gone I have always used the excuse that I would watch Jack while Dave and Ellie went down the slides but boy have I been missing out! So much fun!! The kids of course loved the hotel room and after dinner at Chipotle  we went down for the storytime before bed--such a cute tradition! We had a great time and always love going to GWL for a night! We didn't make it to the T-Rex restaurant like we normally do but we'll do that next year. On our way out of town to come home we stopped for an early dinner at the train restaurant again and then headed home! Great family fun celebrating Ellie's birthday! Now we have her actual birthday coming up and are looking forward to our annual Kobe tradition!!

Track and Field Day and Last Day of school

Wow...I am so behind on updating this blog. What a completely crazy time of year!! We are now officially on summer break!!! Yeah!! Super excited for lazy days and no schedule (I will start to go crazy in  few weeks but for now I'll enjoy it!). Ellie had her annual Track and Field Day/Picnic at school on the Monday May 14th. It's always a a fun day to go and watch all the kids have fun. It's so different than when I was a kid and we got medals and it was very competetive (I still remember Anna B beating me every year in the cross country relay!). Now they make it more fun and non competitve. But since Ellie is so incredibly fast you could tell she was wanting to win the races! She is so fast and everyone comments on her speed. We are thinking of trying out a track club soon to see how she likes it. Where did she get all the speed?? Definitely not me! Grandma Stephanie came to watch the events and then we all stayed for the picnic. It was an absolutely gorgeous day to be outside! The last day of school was Friday May 18th. We started the morning with a trip to Donut Professor for end of the school year donuts! Then Jack's class had a little celebration at the end of his class. His teacher puts together a class video for all of us to watch---tears steaming down my face! It was even more sad this year because his teacher is leaving to move back to California so we will have a new teacher next year. We love Ms. Lindsday and will miss her so much. We are so lucky we got to have her for 1 1/2 yrs! Ellie rode the bus home as usual and the minute she got off the bus I knew something was up. She looked so pale and looked like she was going to cry. I asked her what was wrong and she said nothing. She then proceeded to walk in the front door, sit down and the table and then vomited everywhere :( Not a good way to start summer vacation. Poor girl was burning up and felt awful. So needless to say we spend the last day of school camped out on the basement couch. She got sick a couple more times and ran a fever through the weekend but thankfully felt better by Sunday for our getaway to Great Wolf Lodge (post on that later!). And thankfully no one else caught the nasty virus! Hopefully we got our sickness out of the way at the beginning of the summer. We've got way too many things to do be sick!! End of the school year---always such a BITTERSWEET time. I can't believe my babies are growing up so fast and I will have a 3rd grader next year.....where does the time go???

So behind that I forgot to blog about Mother's Day-so here's a pic 

Mother's Day 2012

Mother's Day 2012

Track and Field Day Picotte 2012

All smiles!

Getting ready to run

She is SO fast!

Best part of the day.....popsicles!

Running hurdles

At the picnic

Picnic

Last day of 2nd grade--at Donut Professor

Last day of preschool 2012--at Donut Professor

Donut Professor with kids from my Bible Study

Last day of school 2012

Last day of preschool

Jack and his teacher Ms Lindsay who is moving away :( We will miss her so much!

Jack and his teacher and para's Ms. Cindy and Ms. Kathy

Odds and ends of our week!

As I sit here writing this my house is so peaceful. Dave and Ellie went to the CU/NU baseball game and Jack is in bed. Ahh...peace and quiet for a minute! I know someday though I am going to miss the constant noise around here. We've had an up and down week. Sunday was a beautiful day and we decided to take the kids downtown to walk around the Old Market. We walked around and got a smoothie at Scooters, walked through the Christmas store which is so fun to do in May, and of course stopped at the candy store to get some Jelly Belly's. I totally remember as a little girl walking to Makin's in Westwood Plaza and getting bags of Jelly Belly's. My friends and I would walk from our house to the store all by ourselves---crossing Center St at that! That would never happen these days--sometimes I miss the innocence of letting our kids be kids and not be so worried about safety, etc. Anyway after the candy store we walked over the giant slides at Gene Leahy Mall. Ellie has been before but Jack had only been when he was a baby so he didn't remember it. He was very timid and wasn't interested at first. Finally Dave got him to go down with him and then he kind of liked it. Ellie is the daredevil in the family and just kept going and going. Seriously they are probably one of the dirtiest things in the city but they are so fun! Definitely good people watching! I am so bummed because I had left my camera in the car so I didn't get any fun pics of our day :(
Monday Jack was fine all day and then went to soccer and came home and went to bed. Around midnight we heard him coughing and super agitated. He was pretty much up coughing the rest of the night and was so agitated. On Tuesday I kept him home from school because he was not doing well at all (struggling to breathe, super lethargic, etc) I was so bummed to keep him home because that was his Track and Field day at school and he had been looking forward to it. So we were bummed he had to miss that but we knew he was in no shape to go to school. I finally got him into the pediatrician and she took one look at him and knew he wasn't well. His lungs were so tight so she gave him a breathing treatment. The first one didn't take very well or help much so she gave him another one. Meanwhile she said if the second one doesn't help she wasn't letting us go home. Poor little guy was miserable. The second treatment helped immensely and thankfully we were able to go home with orders of doing the breathing treatments every 4 hrs. We have been so lucky and haven't had to do breathing treatments with him for probably 2 yrs so we were bummed that he had to do them again but glad that they were helping. Today was better and hopefully he will be feeling much better by tomorrow. Hate seeing my kiddos miserable.
Monday was also our last Brownie activity for the year. We made ice cream sundaes and decorated t-shirts. It's always nice to be done for the year even though we have a great group of girls in our troop! And Monday was also the last day for one of our favorite teachers at Saddlebrook Community Center. Jack takes a ton of classes there and Miss Molly is one of his most favorite teachers. She is done with her Masters so she is looking for cross-country coaching jobs so she will most likely be moving away over the summer so her last day at Saddlebrook was today. Our group of friend surprised her with a gift card to Village Point and we had cake with the kids. We will really miss her!
Today was a big day for Ellie. Last week she passed the final math timed test (Division). When the kids in her class pass Division they get to go for ice cream with their teacher after school. So today was the day that she got to do that! After school her and 2 other girls and the teacher drove to TCBY and had ice cream together. Ellie was so excited. I think it's so neat that her teacher does that. What a neat incentive! We have been so lucky with such great teachers every year so far! So overall we've had a good week! Looking forward to more gorgeous weather over the next few days! I'm loving springtime. Can't believe the kids get out of school in 7 days---yikes!!!

Miss Molly's last day at Saddlebrook

The Brownie's getting ready to make their ice cream sundaes

T-shirt decorating at our last meeting of the school year

The troop with their decorated t-shirts

Ellie and her teacher Mrs Coolidge after going for ice cream at TCBY to celebrate passing Division

Field Trip to Lauritzen Gardens

Ellie with some girls from her class!

Pointing to a flower that has "Elie" in the name--she thought it was neat to have a flower with her name in it!

Ellie's 2nd grade class with Mrs. Coolidge at Lauritzen Gardens

Today Ellie's class took a field trip to the Lauritzen Gardens and I was able to go with them. I haven't missed one of her field trips yet and feel so blessed that I am able to attend because I know Ellie really enjoys having me there (for now at least--sigh!!) It was an unseasonably hot and humid today and we were outside the entire time! I was in charge of 4 girls from Ellie's class which is no small feat when you are dealing with 100 acres!! I know I mentioned in a previous post what a gem the Lauritzen Gardens are. It is the neatest place. The kids, despite being hot and hungry, I think enjoyed the field trip. We walked a lot and got to see a lot of the gardens. It was so beautiful and such a wonderful place!!

Zoo

We took advantage of a day off of school for the kids and headed to the zoo last Friday! Jack and I go to the zoo a lot when Ellie is at school but she doesn't get to go that often. It makes me totally miss the days that it was just her and I when she was little and we would spend many a days at the zoo with our friends :( I miss those days a lot! Now I almost have to "drag" her to the zoo--it's not her favorite thing anymore! We met our friends Lucy and Henry for the afternoon. It started storming toward the end of the day so we had to make a run for our car in the rain! Overall it was a nice visit for a day off of school!

Father/Daughter Dance

Beautiful girl (with the new haircut!)

Showing off her wrist corsage from daddy!

On Sun April 28th Ellie and Dave had a special date...the 1st Father Daughter Dance! It was the 1st yr that our Girl Scout Council has put this on and Ellie was so excited! She decided that she wanted to wear her First Communion dress which was fine. She had just cut her hair (see previous post) so she was "sporting" her new "do"! Dave got her a beautiful wrist corsage before they left. He surprised her and took her to Olive Garden for dinner before the dance. She always talks about Olive Garden and wanting to go there so he thought this would be a good time to do that. By all accounts they had a great time at the dance! Dave said it was a lot of fun and all the girls seemed to be having a blast! I hope it is something that they do again next year because I know one girl who would love to do this again! What a great memory for them!!