Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Springtime Fun

We have been busy over the last few weeks.  I thought it was finally time to update some new spring pictures.  I took Ellie and Ainsley with the rest of our Asian play group to the butterfly show at the Krohn Conservatory in Cincinnati.  I took Ainsley out of school last Friday since mackenzie was at the theatre all day for her performances and it was going to be too complicated to be in too many places at once.  She thought skipping a day of school without being sick was awesome!  The girls had a lot of fun looking at all the butterflies.  Ellie seemed to think it was cool but didn't want to hold the butterflies at all.  She was pretty tired and it got pretty hot in the room where they keep the butterflies so she really just wanted to have me hold her most of the time.  Ainsley on the other hand was all about holding every butterfly she could get her hands on and wanted me to reach daredevil heights in order for me to get her a few of them!  It was a lot of fun.  I may take the older two girls again since it is here through June and I think Mackenzie would really enjoy it too.  After the show we went out to lunch and let the girls play at the McDonalds play area.  They had a really good time and so did I.  

Mackenzie had her musical performance for Suessical Jr. on May 8 and it went great! Unfortunately my camera batteries were dead.  I did take a couple of pictures off of my phone my of course I can't find the transfer cord for my computer.  And honestly the pictures aren't very good.  I thought there was a video made but there wasn't so I have no real proof that after all the hours transporting Mackenzie to drama and the theatre that she actually performed in anything:(  Poor girl and poor scrapbook!

I spent this last week catching up on all the things I was too busy to do with the week before.  I did some cleaning in the house, picking up around the house and just generally catching up with e-mails and bills.  We spent this past weekend doing some work around the house and celebrating Mother's Day on Saturday evening.  We opted to not go out on Mother's Day since it is usually busy so Jeff took us all out to Outback Steakhouse on Saturday.  We had lots of run and I love Outback:)  

This week has been fun because the weather has been nice and sunny!  So we have done some walks while the older two ride their bikes and spending a lot of time outdoors.  We haven't been too busy and it has been nice to relax.  We are trying to do some summer planning so that we have things to do this summer in each month that are fun but not be too busy.  We leave for the beach in a little over a week which seems crazy!  We have a trip to SC for a week over the 4th of July.  We will also get to see Patrick, Kim, Moyer and Keturah Smith while we are there which is really cool!  This will be our first time to meet Keturah in person!  They are spending some time in the states this summer and since I didn't think we would get a trip to China anytime in the near future it will be fun to catch up!  

Jeff's mom is coming later in July which will be nice and we are looking at a few other options. Jeff gets an additional week off starting this year so we have more vacation time!  I am trying to plan a few trips to visit friends in the Columbus area, some activities at the library, and hopefully some VBS for the two older girls.  I think that will give us enough to have fun but not too much.

Here are some recent pictures of the girls over the last few weeks.














Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Sunny Days and Cloudy Days..

We have had some sunny days and cloudy days the last few weeks.  Both physically and mentally for me!  I just function so much better and have so much more energy when the sun it out.  All I feel like doing on cloudy days is watching a movie or reading a book.  So I am ignoring the fact that it isn't sunny today and trying to get some "things" accomplished.  I am doing laundry as I type and my list is pretty long for the day.  Hopefully I get it all accomplished:)
Last week I spent Wed-Saturday at an amazing conference.  Some of our Children's Ministry team went to the Orange Conference in Atlanta.  It was amazing and I learned some new cool things and some tips that I hadn't thought of before.  We of course had a blast and I am looking forward to thinking through more of what we learned soon.  However, since I came back we have been going at warp speed!  Mackenzie has had drama every day since last friday.  Saturday afternoon, Sunday afternoon and now we are into "tech week."  Which essentially means she lives, eat, breathes and sleeps drama.  Ok...not really but it seems that way!  I have to pick her up early from school at 3:30 to get her there on time.  Practices run from 4-8 and by the time she gets home, grabs a little to eat and does her homework it is closer to 10 than 9.  It is however only for a week as their performances are all day on Friday.  She will miss school that day but is looking forward to it!  I can't wait to see it either.  They are performing  Suessical so it should be good:)
So between getting her to practices, picking her up from practices and everything else in between we are hopping.  But next week looks like a MUCH slower week and only 14 more actual days left of school for my girls!