Springing into Summer

Spring Time is always super busy with 4 kids in soccer and 2 in track. Add that to the many other end of school activities and we rarely have a spare minute in our schedules.
Soccer
 Ryan was crazy nice enough to coach both Alissa's and Brylees team this year, so that added to the chaos. This season was Brylee's first time playing, so she was pretty timid on the field. Ryan really enjoys coaching Alissa's team. They are a very tight knit and skilled team and they work well together. It was a lot easier and more enjoyable to coach a team when actual rules and positions apply.

This is actually Alissa's team during indoor season. It was a humbling experience for them since during the normal season they are one of the better recreational teams on the field, but for indoor they ended up playing a lot of traveling teams so they got beat a lot. They still had fun and learned some new skills.

And Spring season...again a huge success for her team.

Brylee's team....biting their medals at the last game. (I guess this is a normal sports pose??)

This was one of the few times Brylee actually touched the ball. 

Track

No pictures of Katelin and Zacks soccer team, but here is Katelin running track. She did really well this track season as well.

Madi, Kate and I also signed up to do the color run again, but sadly found out later that Madi wasnt allowed to run while in school track. So Katelin brought a friend to fill in for her. 

Before... 

After... 

Speaking of Madi's track, her success continued throughout the season. She took 1st through 4th every meet and ended up going to state with her relay team. This was her qualifying mile run that got her into regionals.

(3rd back in the black shorts)

(2nd in the black shorts) 

 ITHS state relay team. 

Madi has made some close friendships with her track team. She was sad to see some of the Seniors go. This is at the awards dinner. Being our first one, we werent aware of the dress code. Oops. 

She ended up lettering and earning the freshman MVP award! 

The coaches that pushed her and helped get her there.  

Music

Aside from sports, we also had a variety of musical concerts. Alissa joined the school choir and they got the opportunity to perform with a couple other choirs at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. This is her large and very talented choir group. 

The elementary school also has a choir concert for each grade. Here is Zack at his, where they had to dress up from countries around the world. He is from Sweden. :)

And we cant forget Orchestra Fest where Madi. Kate and Alissa all got to perform this year.

School

Moving on from music, Katelin was inducted into the National Junior Honor society. Yay! 

Field Trips

With Brylee being the last one in school I am more availbale to help out with school parties and field trips. She had a couple right at the end of school. This one was at the petting zoo. It was her first time on a horse.

and milking a cow! 

Field Day

I have helped out with field day the last couple years and I thought Ryan would enjoy it too, so I talked him into taking the day off to volunteer with me. We were put in charge of this station...Dizzy something... Basically the kids had to put their head on this ball while spinning around it 1-5 times (depending on their grade), grab a tiny plunger with a ball on top and balance it while walking around a cone and back. Here is Alissa and Brylee getting dizzy... 

Kite Fest

To end the spring time madness we celebrate with kites. They have this kite fest every year with professional stunt kite flyers and a candy drop for the kids. As always, there is also food and shopping. It kinda makes me feel like we are at the end of the Mary Poppins Movie. Next time we need to remember to actually bring our own kites to fly. Here are a couple of the big ones... 

And the candy drop... 

Phew! That about summarizes the important event of spring time. Bring on Summer!

February

February always brings with it the schools annual Father Daughter Dance. Alissa was happy to be the only daughter on the date this year. I love this picture of her. 

She was either showing off her nails, or just being silly here. I think it was the latter. 

Of course they had a great time.

And we cant forget about Valentines Day. 

The girls always become envious when I get flowers, so this year, Daddy got them some of their own. I thought it was pretty sweet and thoughtful myself. It took them a while to realize the tulips were for them, and not that I actually unfairly got 2 bouquets this time. 

Brylee was of course excited to get a bag full of Valentine candy. Thats our little sugar addict. 

This was the extent of our Valentine breakfast....pink heart pancakes. I tried to make heart shaped bacon, but it failed....miserably. Pinterest lies sometimes. 

And this years edition of Valentine boxes for school feature a castle, a robot and of course, a minion. Pinterest is still good for some things. Turns out Brylee didnt actually need a box, but she was happy to play princess with her castle. Each one of these eventually fell victim to the dog. Looks like we have 2 sugar addicts in the house.

Madi made sugar cookies with the kids when we went out. Most of the pictures turned out blurry and with silly faces. Thought about posting the whole lot of them, but then decided to go with one decent one each. 

Looks like Zack was M.I.A. for the pictures.

 can I just say, I love that we have two girls old enough to babysit and handle all of this now. Its AWESOME!

Baptism

Well, another one of our children has reached the age of accountability. Alissa now has to take responsibility for her own choices and cant blame things on bad parenting skills. I could be totally wrong there, but either way...the decision to be baptized was all hers. Im amazed by how blessed we got to have 5 responsible, faithful, level headed children. (Well, mostly) I have no idea where that stems from! Must be Dad. Anyway, Here are a few of my favorite shots from her baptism photo shoot.

I like this one, because its just so her...when shes in her happy place, that is. Posing with a leaf...silliness!

Haha...this one makes me laugh because she really had to use the restroom at this point. I loved the background, but couldnt get a good smile under the circumstances! (:

We weren't planning on taking shots by the lake because we have so done that over...and over, but as we were driving back home I saw this sunset and couldn't resist. So we hurried and parked the car and ran to the lake before we missed it. I think its pretty perfect for not being planned.

Then the big day arrived. Grandma and Grandpa even drove in for the occasion. Shes pretty smiley and calm at this point, but she quickly got sick of pictures.

Alissa stayed true to her form when she started feeling uncomfortable by all the attention. She was so nervous and stated afterwards that "it didnt feel like the times when she watched other people get baptized (meaning it wasnt embarrassing then)...it was wetter than I thought it would be (?)....and when are people going to stop treating me different!? I just want things to go back to the way they were before I was baptized!" Not that she regretted her decision, just that she really hated all the attention and comments she kept getting. I do know where she gets that one from. Of course she inherits my flaws!

Also traumatizing to her was the fact that she had to walk through the mens restroom to get to the font, then after the baptism, the womens side was locked and there was apparently no key to open it, so she had to walk back through the mens side again to get changed. To add to her stress, we also forgot to pack a change of underwear (think I would have that down by the 3rd time!). So of course she was panicking about that while I was attempting to fan the wet ones out the best I could. She went from being okay wearing them a little damp, to deciding not to and just going commando with her tights...but that felt weird, so we changed back into the damp undies, and then cried because what if the water shows through her dress and she looks like she peed her pants!!!....meltdown...meltdown...meltdown, then more attention and an invitation to sit on the stand the next day with her Dad, which she was okay with before, but now it was freaking her out...Ahhh! I hope she is recovered from all of it by now otherwise, there could be some large psychiatric bills coming our way. She seems fine, but you never know. What was that I was mentioning about level headed children?  *Sigh*

Hopefully when she looks back on this day, she will have some good memories...or at least a good laugh! I know we will have both! We are still proud of her and love our little stress case!