The Post where I mention Gymtastics, Hula Hoops, Cube Steak, and Mother's Day

 Yesterday, my Preschoolers took our annual trip to Gymtastics.

Still the best field trip ever.

Kids have so much fun, Gymnastics employees take over my kids, and parents help.

I could leave and not even be missed, but I don't do that.  I just travel around and take pictures of all the fun.

 This trip is bittersweet because it means that the end of the school year is very near.

It means that I will be saying good bye to many of my students as they go on to other classrooms, some at our school and some scattered around the city.

The little boy making the big jump in the above photo has been in my class since he was just two.  I have been his teacher for four years and I am going to miss him.

Yesterday we sat together on the bus and talked about how different it will be when we are not together in a classroom.

The sweet part is that the year is coming to an end and that means summer is ahead.

A summer full of time spent with Tiz and Soli.

For that, I cannot wait.

 I am childless this Mother's Day.

We celebrated last weekend and will celebrate again next weekend, so I am not complaining.

John and I had wanted to go on a bike ride, but the weather is not very cooperative today, very, very windy and cool.

Instead I did some cooking and baking while John cut the lawn for the first time.

I bought myself the best Mother's Day gifts ever.

First I bought the cool hoop pictured.

Since I learned to hula hoop, I cannot get enough of it so this hot pink and gold hoop will serve me well.

 I also bought two new shirts for zumba and biking.

Since I am going to be working out, I figure I should look good while doing it.

 These are my badly needed PJ's.

 And finally, a new pair of shoes.

With these cute shoes how could working out not be fun!

 Now to the cooking/baking part.

Thanks to two over ripe bananas and a recipe on pinterest, I made these banana/applesauce muffins.

 Then I made this not potato salad that one of my friends posted on FB.

It has cauliflower in it instead of potatoes.

Looks really good, I am anxious to try it after it cools a bit.

 Finally I have cube steaks and gravy in the crock pot.

I have never made cube steaks before, but they are a comfort food I remember from my childhood.  Looking forward to them for dinner tonight.

Picked out this gerber daisy (my favorite, in case you didn't know) in a light up pot last night for myself, too.

 

I think I was really good to myself with gifts this year.

Happy Mother's Day to the best mom my girls ever had,

ME!

Our early Mother's Day Celebration

Charlie, my trusty weatherman, predicted a weekend of cool temps and rain.

Not a great prediction for my early Mother's Day weekend which I hoped would include a trip to Ebert's among other outside activities.

Courtney and Paul would still have Sitota and Delson with them, too, and I wasn't sure how four kids would be able to be housebound in our little house if the weather was bad, but

Charlie was wrong.

We had the best weather ever this weekend, sunny and warm on both Saturday and Sunday and we ended up having a perfect celebration.

Courtney, Lis and I started the weekend with a girls night out on Friday.

Paul and John held a movie night for all the kids so we could go out.

It was so nice to sit with my girls, drink beers, and just chat.

I loved it.

Saturday started out cool and cloudy.

I had a few activities to keep the kids busy.  We made shaker bottles, playdough, and watercolored.

The ladies (Courtney, Alissa, Soli, Tiz, Sitota, my mom, and I) went out for a ladies lunch.  We went to Applebees and had such a nice time.

Again, Paul and John entertained Delson.

By the time we had finished our lunch, the sun was shining and weather was warming up.

We headed to Ebert's.

 

 After purchasing some beautiful flowers at Eberts and just enjoying the scenery and together time, we came home.

We noticed many prom goers down at the park, so Courtney, Sitota and I walked down and enjoyed looking at all the beautiful dresses.  Sitota just loved it, I don't think she had ever seen so many pretty dresses in one place before.

John had made brats for dinner and we all enjoyed those.

It was another movie night for the kids and men while the ladies visited.  Mallory came over too, so it was nice to have her in the mix, also.

We all went to bed early.

 

On Sunday Courtney, Paul, Sitota, and Delson headed out early to get them home to thier parents who were returning from Haiti.

John, me, the little girls, and my mom left for church in Oshkosh where Tizita was singing and doing a flower ceremony for all the older people in the congregation.

It was a wonderful service, loved hearing Tiz sing.

We had a picnic lunch and took Soli and Tiz to their zoo and park.

It was a perfect grandparent day.

 

I loved everything about the weekend.

And here are the two reasons that I celebrate Mother's Day!

Sitota and Delson join us for a weekend of fun

We just had a wonderful fun filled weekend.

First of all, the weather was absolutely gorgeous, our first real spring weather of the season.

Courtney and Paul are taking care of two children, Sitota (adopted from Ethiopia) and Delson (adopted from Haiti) while their parents are in Haiti visiting their new sister who will be home eventually.

All of them came to Watertown for the weekend.

On Friday night we all went to a play at St. John's which we thoroughly enjoyed.

We had pizza and soda up in my classroom after the play.

Then we all came home and went to bed because we had a big day planned on Saturday.

 

 We took all the kids to the Madison Zoo along with half of the families in Southeastern Wisconsin.

The first nice day of spring after a long, long winter will do that to you.

We all had so much fun.

We enjoyed a picnic lunch together.

Sitota and Delson are such gracious children, they could not say, "thank you" enough for the food.

 Even though it is a zoo, the best part for this group was the huge play area.

Here are all the girls coming down a slide.

 Soli's favorite spot was in this tube and she especially enjoyed when Sitota joined her in the tube.

 Tiz is all about monkey bars.

 All the kids rode the merry go round.

Again there were so many thank yous from Sitota and Delson.

Sitota was not adopted until she was 8 years old, so she does remember much from her early childhood in Ethiopia and for that reason, I think she does not take anything for granted.  Everything is such a treat to her.

 John waited in the train line with all the kids.

 Here they are in their giraffe car.

 After our zoo adventure, we felt a stop at Ella's Deli was necessary.

What big eyes as the kids looked around at all the fun things.

And the ice cream was so yummy.

Tiz was telling me to "stop" doing something in this picture.

There is also a merry go round at Ella's so after ice cream, we rode on that one, too.

Tiz was so excited with her pink horse!

 

We all came home tired, but full of good memories.

Everyone left early this AM to get home in time for church.

The weather was again absolutely perfect and John and I got our garden ready for planting.

I should mention that the kids dug out the garden after the zoo.

Apparently they were not as tired as we were.

What started as just a fun digging in the dirt turned into cleaning out our entire garden, so it was ready for John to add topsoil today.

Thanks kids!

What a fun, fun weekend.

Of Zumba and Hula Hoops

I have heard lots of things about Zumba.

I used to love going to Aerobics back in the 80's when my girls were little.

I even owned the records (yep, it was that long ago) with my favorite aerobic routines by Jackie Sorenson.

I had an itch to try Zumba since it sounded somewhat like an updated aerobics.

 

Well, on Tuesday after school, I had my first Zumba experience and I loved it.

It did, in fact, remind me of the old aerobics with a lot more hip shaking and belly moving.

I have a long way to go before I will know the more difficult moves, but the important thing is to just keep moving and I was able to do that.

I will be going back.

 

When I walked into the class, which, by the way, is held at my school and run by our day care director, so that in itself made it easier to try.

Anyway, when I first walked in, I saw a pile of hula hoops.

I immediately said, "I did not sign up for any hula hooping, I don't know how to keep it going."

Tonya, our instructor, showed me the secret (at least, I think it was a secret) to keeping the hoop going.

I can now hula hoop for hours on end if I want to.

The trick is in rocking back and forth as opposed to moving your hips in a circle.

I really impressed myself!

 

So Zumba and Hooping, welcome to my world.

A fun night in Blo-No

 Another weekend is coming to a close.

It was another busy one and it went by quickly.

It started out with the Early Childhood Fair on Saturday morning.

Always dread going, but it always turns out to be a fun event.

I think I have been going to this event for twenty years.

The Milwaukee Public Museum

 On Sunday, we took Soli and Tiz to the Milwaukee Public Museum.

We have taken Tizita to the museum each year and we were thrilled that Soli could join us this year, too.

We started our our day in the Butterfly area.

At first both girls were a bit afraid of the butterflies, but Tiz soon learned that if she stood nice and still a butterfly would come visit her.

 She was so excited to have this one on her dress until it started crawling up toward her face.

 Both girls posing amongst the butterflies.

 I just love Soli's expression in this photo.

 Soli even attracted a butterfly.  One landed right on her little shoe.

 Finally, Tiz had one land right on her finger.

Her patience paid off and she was thrilled.

 We had lunch in the museum cafeteria and then went to the Dinosaur area.

Again, both girls were a bit on the skittish side, but soon excitement took over.

This was one area of the museum that Alissa refused to enter when she was a little girl.

 We always need a picture in the igloo.

 The girls enjoyed looking at the exhibits while Bumpa explained things to them.

 Here they are talking about the shells we will find when we go to St. George this summer.

 One of Courtney's favorite things in the museum was this lady with the big butt.

We had to show the girls, not sure they liked it as much as their mom did.

Alissa favorite area was the big junk pile which is no longer there, replaced by dancing Indians.

Our last stop is always the gift shop.

The girls each picked out a soft seal to remember our day at the museum.

Wonderful times with our beautiful grandbabies.

Our Saturday with Sweet Soli

 We just got back from a very busy, but fun filled weekend with our sweet grandbabies.

I am going to do a few posts on the weekend starting with our Saturday with Soli at the Appleton's Children's Museum.

Courtney, Paul, and Tizita went to a baseball game which was a reward for a reading program at Tizita's school.

The weather was horrible for a baseball game, snow flurries and cold windy weather, but they had fun.

While they were cheering for the Timberattlers, we took had our time with Soli.

The museum was warm and full of adventures for our little lady.

 She enjoyed shopping in the little Kwik Trip area and even made a little friend.

 She served us some yummy food in the restaurant.

 She and Bumpa enjoyed watching the long green snake.  I stayed away from that creepy exhibit.

 Here we are on the plane.

We never did hear where our destination was.

 No matter the museum, Soli loves driving the vehicles.

 She managed to get quite messy in the art studio, but that is what good artists do, right?

 She and I relaxed in these little rockers.

Look at the mess in this area.

This would have made me very nervous in my classroom, but it didn't bother me one bit since it is not my museum!  Someone else can clean this up.

 The water area is always fun.

 On the way out, Soli decided a nap on this giraffe was in order.

 And, just like her sister, the best part was putting coins in the coin thing.

She loved watching them zoom around.

We ended our day with a big cookie from Caramel Crisp.

It was a great day full of Soli sweetness.

 

On Saturday night, we had dinner at Red Robin, (Tiz's choice) with just Tizita.  It was so much fun to spend time with her and catch up on the lives and times of a six year old.

We ended our day by babysitting.  We all snuggled on the couch and watch old Cosby shows.

Perfect ending to a perfect day!