School's Out for Summer!

The fundraiser for Kara's t-ball team was selling tickets to a Rockies game and letting teams walk around the field before the game.  Kara had never been to a real baseball game, but she was excited!  It was Dad's first time down on field level at Coors Field (and Kara's, obviously).  It was a fun experience, and the Rockies even won (beating the NY Mets 4-3)!

Kara wrapped up her first year of real school at the end of the month.  She's excited to be a first grader next year!  She's got a busy summer planned with several camps lined up.

Emily is a pretty mild-mannered 3-year old.  She has the occasional melt-down, but her worst days are nothing compared to Kara when she was about the same age.  Emily is continuing to develop her voice and is getting better at communicating what she wants, which isn't always easy with a big sister like Kara who is very opinionated herself.  One of her favorite things to do is to sing the alphabet song to us.  She still has a little trouble with the middle (L-M-N-O come out ellam minnow), but she's getting better.  She can pretty easily count to 20 and can identify all the numbers up to 10 (though she sometimes gets 6's and 9's confused).  All in all, she's a pretty awesome kid.

Early May, we got out and started up our garden for the summer.  We planted a couple different kind of tomatoes, zucchini, beans, and pumpkins.  We'll see what comes up!

Link to pictures

Kara's Comic

Kara (completely unprompted by Mom and Dad) decided to start writing her own comic.  The first three issues of Jack Skeleton are below (with translations for those who have trouble reading the writing of a kindergartner):

Comic 1

Jack Skeleton

Jack’s New Friend

Jack’s New Friend

One day when Jack was at school… “Hi”

He saw a new monster! “Awoooo!”

And the new monster was scared!

When it was recess time…

The new monster just watched!

Then when Jack was playing… “wee”

He saw the swings…

And when he was on he saw…

The new monster!

Then he said, “Would you like to be my friend?”

And the new monster said, “Yes!” And so they did!

Comic 2

Jack Skeleton

Jack’s Problems

Jack’s Problems

One day at school… “Hi, hi.”

Jack fell! “Whoa!”

Then he got up… “Oof!”

And told his friend

And she said… “Watch where you are going.”

So he did…

But bonked his head! “Ow!”

Then he rubbed his head…

And told the teacher

He said…

You must be clumsy, Jack.

Jack said… I guess I am and he went to play!

Comic 3

Jack Skeleton

Jack Gets Angry!

Jack Gets A-N-G-R-Y-!

One day at school… “Hi!”

Jack said something mean to ghost. “I hate you!”

And ghost said…

“Hate is not a nice word!”

But Jack wasn’t listening!

So ghost told!

And the teacher had a chat with Jack!

And Jack said he was sorry to ghost. And so they went to play!

Kara's Brown Belt Test

Kara tested for her Brown belt recently.  She's come along way since her Yellow Belt Test.  Her forms have really improved, and she's kicking with a lot more power.  Her kick for breaking the board (Part 6) was particularly impressive.  This belt test included some sparring with the other kids.  She did pretty well the first round, but didn't do great the second round.  But she had fun!

Enjoy!

Part 1 - Exercises

Part 2 - Practicing Kicks


Part 3 - Demonstrating Forms


Part 4- Sparring Part 1 (Kara is in the blue)


Part 5 - Sparring Part 2 (Kara is in the blue on the left)


Part 6 - Breaking the board


Part 7 - Answering Questions


Part 8 - Presenting the belt

T-Ball and Blizzards

April was a pretty crazy month as far as the weather went.  It did the typical Colorado thing with flashes of warm weather followed by huge snow storms (our biggest storm dropped almost 2 feet of snow).  The girls and Dad were able to get out and make a pretty awesome snowman.

Kara joined a T-ball team this spring, which was her first organized team sport.  Dad volunteered to be an assistant coach (mostly just keeping the kids entertained while the head coach actually teaches the kids how to play).  Dad might be having more fun that Kara!  For Kara's Opening Day, the league put on quite a show that even Dinger (the Colorado Rockies' team mascot) attended.  So far, Kara's only had a couple of games (we had a couple of our games rained/snowed out due to bad weather),

Link to pictures

Disney World Hangover

Emily picked up a little bug our last day in Disney, which made the travel day home quite unpleasant.  Unfortunately, she continued to have a snotty nose and a cough after we got home.  Dad came down with the flu a few days later, Mom came down with a cold a few days after that, and Kara finally developed a barking cough a few days after that.
Emily seems to be fine now, but the rest of us are still fighting the cold.  Good fun!

Emily's birthday was the weekend after we got back from Disney.  It was a little subdued since we were all a little sick, but we still got a cake, of course!  It's kind of hard to believe Emily is 3 years old already!

We got 2 separate heavy snow storms later in the month.  We got about a foot on March 18th, which happened to coincide with Kara coming down with the cold.  She wasn't too sick to go out and play, though.  The weather warmed up right after that and all the snow had melted by the time the second storm came in on March 23rd.  The second storm came in fast and furious, and we had 21" of snow on the ground by that afternoon.  It was Kara's spring break, so she didn't get a snow day, but that would have been her third one this year.  Crazy!

Unfortunately, the second snow didn't melt quite as quickly as the first snow, so we had to do our Easter egg dyeing and Easter egg hunt inside.  It's not quite as fun as outside, but the girls still enjoyed it!  Emily knew what was going on and jumped right in searching for the eggs (stopping to open up each one as soon as she found it).  Later in the day, we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa's house for Easter dinner.

Emily is starting to develop into an annoying younger sibling (Tyler's words).  She routinely does things these days purely to bother Kara.  She's also developing a bit of a rebellious steak.  She enjoys running away and slamming doors when Mom and Dad are trying to get her to do something (like get dressed).  She's landed herself in time out a few times.  Fortunately, she continues to loves hugs and cuddles and is still very empathetic and sweet.....80% of the time!

Kara is loving school and all the learning and friendships that go along with it.  In fact, when we got back from WDW, Kara said she enjoyed the trip but wished she hadn't missed a week of school! :O  Her written stories are getting more nuanced these days, and she's started story-boarding a motion picture involving unicorn superheros.  There are also 3-D paper mock-ups involved.  She has requested a videocamera, so stay tuned.  She's a hoot!

Link to pictures