Preschool Preformance

Parker has completed his first year of preschool. They had a small graduation ceremony to mark the end of the schoolyear.

Don't forget to pause the playlist while your watching the video. I love how he is so concerned about getting his hands back into his pockets!

This was his teacher, Mrs. Lee, she liked to wear lots of different hats to school.

He misses the cut off date for Kindergarten by 4 days so its another year of preschool for Mr. Parker next year.

11th Birthday

I can't believe Brady is 11!!! 11!!! I mean holy cow how is he 11??!! He is such a great kid! We celebrated alittle over the weekend with a Red Robin birthday burger and a stop at the batting cages in Hershey. Had lunch and cheesecake (one of Brady's favorites) with Carlton's family on Sunday. And on Monday May 4th his 11th birthday we had my family at our house. We celebrated with a "lego" cake. That is my version of lego bricks all over the cake. I'm not very artsy and he only mentioned a "lego" cake the night before so that was as good as i could get it. His cousins enjoyed watching him open presents...some new Poke cards (as Parker calls them), Life boardgame, DVD's, and of course.....

LEGO'S!!

We gave him a membership to the Brickmaster Lego club and every 2 months he will get an exclusive lego set in the mail, he is pretty excited about that gift. (the gift that keeps on giving)

New Kitchen

Finally, pictures of our newly remodeled kitchen!! I love it! I love all the extra counter space and cabinet space. I still have a shelf or two thats empty! Wow what a change I used to store pantry items in Brady's bedroom that is on the first floor then i moved it to the office when we remodeled his room. Now i can actually keep all kitchen items in the kitchen!

We decided to sand and restain the kitchen table also. That was maybe the one "laboring" item that I actually did. Carlton might have been the drywaller, painter, electrician, plumber and framer but I worked real hard sanding that table down! I also reupholstered our chairs. We decided to utilize this wall with our refridgerator and a pantry. Previously there was no cabinetry or appliances on this side of the kitchen. You might notice the door style is different from the other cabinets. We went with a beaded door style for the pantry, it was my favorite.

We also added a pennisula to give us extra counter space.
This project took most of the winter and we were without a sink & running water for weeks but it was definitely worth the wait & inconvenience!

Easter Weekend

Last weekend we took advantage of the long Easter break

and headed up to the cabin.

This was Parkers first experience driving his own 4-wheeler. Every other time up till this weekend I would sit with him and drive. He was a little shy of the throttle which was just fine by me. But he has come out of his shell and is now riding all by himself now!!!

Brady got some new protective gear, gloves, and a jersey as an early birthday present from his grandparents and is loving it!!

I enjoyed standing outside watching them and taking pictures until the nats got bad. They were literally out there for HOURS!!! I thought ahead and brought a laptop and 2 seasons of the Gilmore Girls and enjoyed a little quiet time inside.

The Penn State Harley Davidson also had an Easter egg hunt for the kids. So we headed into Penn State for the boys to hunt some eggs and we ended up with alot of candy! If you look closely you can almost see all the colored eggs in the background.The Harley Hog joined in on all the fun!
It was a great way to spend a 5 day weekend!

Relief Sale

Tonight we headed up to the Relief Sale at the Farm & Home Center in Harrisburg. The kids really had fun helping with sorting coins in the Penny Power booth. Penny Power raises money for Mennonite Central Committee's projects of peace, relief and development around the world. The idea that small change can make a BIG change. Many churches including ours collected change and then brought it to the relief sale to be sorted & counted. Of course while we were there we enjoyed some of the delicious food they had to offer. I could have skipped dinner and went straight to the homemade vanilla ice cream!

To learn more about Penny Power click here: http://pareliefsale.org/211664.ihtml

Basement Bowling

Brady challenged me to a game of bowling on his Wii. It was my first time so I was having a hard time adjusting to the controller. If you turn that thing the slightest bit to the left or right its a gutter ball. As you can see I was defeated by my 10 year old son. But i definitely enjoyed bowling better than boxing!! I won't even include a picture from that.

Kitchen Remodel

Well we have been remodeling our kitchen. I really wish i would have done a better job of taking "before" pictures but here are a few while we are in the midst of tearing up old vinyl and cabinets.

We couldn't have done this project without the help of construction worker Brady & Parker.

We donated our whole kitchen to Habitat, it worked out great for everyone. They even came here to pick it up.

We've got it completely down to the plywood. Next on the list is new vinyl, then cabinets, then appliances, then countertops, then backsplash.

Check back soon for a picture of the finished product!