14 years

Lynne is an awesome sister and a the best Aunt.  She has given us three dates in the last month or so, which is amazing considering she was gone for a whole week over the holiday. 

This weekend Robert needed to be picked up in Des Moines since he was leaving the Chevelle overnight at a shop.  We drove down at 1:00 pm to pick him up then headed over to Lynne's place and traded kids and cars with her.  She traveled back to Ames, and we took her car for our date.

 

Since I am mildly addicted to Trader Joe's plantain chips we had to stop for my monthly stock up.  Robert was in the market for a raincoat/jacket so we headed quickly to Scheels after TJ's. 

And next the best part.  We finally tried out Flix the movie theater in Merle Hay Mall.  Now, we love movies, so this was completely awesome.  I ordered tickets the day before, picked our seats (they are assigned).  It is recomended to show up 30 minutes prior to the movie start time.  We made it about 15 minutes.  The theater was nice, clean leather seats, a desk like table in front of us that you could pull out to fully extend near your body. There were little LED lamps under the ledge of the table to see your menu or food once they dimmed the lights for the movie.  We ordered beers, popcorn and a 10" pizza to share.  The beer was good.  Did I mention Flix is also a microbrewery? You can get many other drinks and beers, but they carry 8-10 of their own brews.  Every seat has their own call button so you can flag a waiter down if you want to order once the movie has started. (you better believe we did that as well!)  They leave you a little note pad to write what you want and you place that on the edge of the desk/table thing.  I didn't find any bit of it disruptive.  It might have ruined movie going for me.  I am not sure I can go back to the Cinemark 12 in Ames, with out beers and a waiter...  Oh, and we saw Pitch Perfect 2, it was excelent. Go see it!

 

 After the movie I wanted to hit up Old Navy, and so because we are seasoned married people, I suggested Robert stay and have another beer while I shop a bit.  Flix also has a basic bar/resturant type space outside of the 5 theaters you can have a drink or mingle until or after your show.

We though we should get a little something sweet before we headed home.  Snookies was the recomended spot.  It is a seasonal malt shop in Beaverdale.  I had a Hot Fudge Sundae and Robet got the Butterscotch Malt. 

May pictures

 jumping

 End of the year Awana Awards, Emily has over 200 verses memorized

 This little tooth has NO room

Our bed is always the best

 current silly face

 holding a beer and a sword, wearing a life jacket

 We still haven't shown the kids Star Wars, yet it is such a pop culture event he knows all about it

his sprayer broke about a 100 times.... but coat one is done

Dear Summer

Dear Summer,

It is so glad to see you again. The first trip to the pool was lovely, and chilly. Hello over night lows of 40 degrees!  Kids don't care about cold water.  Emily was very nervous about taking/passing her deep water test.  Nervous to the point of crying about it.  I know she has the skills to pass but doubt was taking over.  I was trying to be kind and nurturing but I also wanted to play my mom card and make her go take the test.  In my mind it was better to get it over with on day one, less to linger on, ya know?  After she calmed down and played a bit, I suggested we go over and watch the lane they were testing in.  Then I made her do it! Mean mom... but she did great and was so proud.  I am sure she will be wearing that little purple bracelete on her ankle all summer.  Dallas is still content to not be in the big pool.

Dear Summer,

It was so glad to retire long division, remainder 2, reducing fractions, adding fractions, sounding out words ever so slowly.  I know we will meet again soon. Real soon, as we still need to finish some stuff up, but we were ready for a break! The rest will be considered summer school. 

Dear Summer,

I am so glad we gave the kids a trampoline for Christmas.  It is such a delight to see the kids play, jump, lay, bounce balls, and even read.  I can't believe I lived so long without you.  I also love the creativity you have inspired, I bet the kids have come up with 10 or so original games since we set the trampoline up.

Dear Summer,

Thanks for not raining that "one" day last week so we could stain the deck.  Let us know the next time you will be rain free for 24 hours so we can apply the second coat. We are ready to get out the table and chairs.  Come on over, we are ready to BBQ and host you for some backyard sitting!

Dear Summer,

I love all of your food.  Berries, grilled chicken, chips and sun tea. I will eat my way all through this season. Just wait until the garden is giving tomatos!

Dear Summer,

Thanks for giving us opportunites to gather with friends.  Especially friends with fun water toys.  Seeing Emily and Dallas kayak for the first time was awesome.  And then watching Emily try stand up paddle boarding, AWESOME.  I want all the toys, and then a bigger garage, and maybe a place on water!

 I love this picture, says so much about Noelle

 This is my fridge 30 hours after buying $70 worth of groceries. We sure eat a lot around here, and what they say is true, eating healthy does cost more, but glad to be able to feed everyone good food. 

 My phone had several dozen pictures pretty similar to this one!

 Lego house with garages custom fit to their vehicles.  They want to be in the Lego magazine so we are submitting this picture.

 Look, our Christmas present is here.  There was even "snow" on the ground.

 Robert is the MOST patient person ever!  Long day at work, comes home to put the trampoline together, all 96 springs - on and off twice. And he lets them help, he teaches along the way.  I would have shooed all the kids off.  He is like the Ying to my Yang.

 May Day arrived like clockwork.  Noelle was thrilled to participate more this year.  In past years I let her do one or two houses because it is such a pain (and not fast or steathy) to get her in and out of her five point harness seat. 

 We had a little visit from Robert's college roommate Dusty.  He was driving home from a meeting in Boone.  He has a pretty cool job on the railroad.  We don't get to see him often so it was a nice surprise.

Last official fieldtrip of the school year was to the Zoo in Des Moines.  The hour long presentation was pretty neat, we got to touch and learn about several animals that are not on display but instead used for educational presentations.  But I would say the next most interesting thing they found was this old Toyota you could climb into, the back window is actually the window into the Tiger enclosure.  Emily was interested in a bunch of stuff but the other two would have rather been watching Wild Kratts.

Emily Reads

Noelle Sleeps

We had a bit of the revival of the nap last month.  Sleeping kids are so precious.

 On my bed

 On the couch

 

 On my bed again

 Van sleeping

 More bed sleeping

 Her bed sleeping

carpool sleeping



 This boy has huge knees, or skinny legs?

 We renewed our pass to Reiman Gardens and have gone weekly since, glad for this little treasure in Ames

 Emily's first time ordering off of the adult menu, she is in a hamburger stage, and the kids menu at the Cafe did not have one.  She also ate three hamburgers for dinner one night, although I do make them a bit more slider size at home

 Getting ready for the next recital and also participating in an ISU research study.  We find out next week if she will be in the control group or the experiment group.

 These two decided they wanted their seats washed. They unassembled them, I washed them, then they reassembled, which was quite the puzzle.  Then they pretended they were rocketing off to the moon. seats tilted back and face skin flying!

 Best picture I could manage

 Date night in the Chevelle, by the way Fast and Furious 7 is good, just what you might expect of it

 Dallas prize was a monster cookie he did not have to share for winning the Kibbe family March Maddness tournament.

 This is a great book, reading it aloud to the kids right now.  I would say it is a little Harry Potter and little princess.

It was dance weekend.  Noelle tapped to Lollypop, Lollypop.  I'll see if I can upload the video soon.