Birthday Surprise!

Today, Charity, Ellie, Anderson and I drove to Galva for Elizabeth's 40th birthday surprise party.  She was very surprised.  I took this picture shortly after she arrived to a room full of women in her basement.  Sarah and Laura worked hard and had a wonderful lunch for us!  Yesterday, on Elizabeth's actual birthday, I received a phone call from Heidi (pictured above) who said, "Grandma, we are going to have a baby."  So now we have another little blessing to look forward to.  Some of you have read the poem Elizabeth wrote and put on our email forum.  Anderson will have a Endress cousin to play with as well as his Emch cousin, Milan. 

Here's Anderson.

Here's the Emch bunch.

In January,we expect to have 17 grandchildren, Lord willing.    -----Carol

Oregon

Perry and I returned Wednesday night from a 5 night stay in Oregon.  My mom celebrated her 90th birthday, and, the evening of her celebration, my dad (87) went to the hospital with gall bladder problems. Four days later, he had surgery to remove his gall bladder and open a clogged bile duct.  He went home today and is doing well.  Perry and I enjoyed our favorite place on the coast---Inn at Spanish Head---where we went on our honeymoon and have been back several times since.  The restaurant is on the top floor with a fabulous view and the balcony of our room (8th floor) had a good view also. ---Carol

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers in the family - and a special remembrance of a very special father - grandfather - greatgrandfather - great,great,grandfather.

Last Book Report

Since I put all of Thad's other book reports on here I thought I'd share his last one of the year.  I had some people ask me if the teacher required them to do videos or if this was his choice.  At the beginning of the year she gave them a list of 20 different ways they could do their reports.  They could choose anything off of the list but they could not do the same project twice.  It contained things such as:  Poster boards, oral reports with a Powerpoint, a mobile containing characters and events from the book, a commercial to sell the book (Thad did this one), an interview with a character from the book (another one that he chose), you could do a classroom bulletin board about your book, create puppets of the characters, write a song about the book, and many more ideas.  They just had to let the teacher know a week in advance what they were planning to do so she could get them a rubric to make sure they had the correct things covered in their report.  Thad chose projects that he could make a movie of, because that's right up his alley.  Ben will be in this grade next year and I tend to think he will choose the dioramas, posters, and projects that require making something with his hands.  That's more his personality. 

For his last book report he had to read a mystery.  He chose HOOT by Carl Hiaasen.  And for his project he chose to write a song about the book.  I apologize for the bad audio on this.  He wrote the song to the tune of The Gated Community, which is a Veggie Tales song.  After he had the song written, we could not find an instrumental version of it for him to sing to.  I went ahead and wasted a half a day trying to figure out how to separate the lyrics from the music on the computer.  Finally I gave up on that and he just sang it over the Veggie Tales song with the music playing softly in the background.  Incidentally, he did get A's on each of his reports!

Unbroken

Based on Cleve's comment here, I just finished reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. It is an excellent read; I could hardly put it down and accounted for more than one night that I stayed up later than is typical.

I will say that if I were to go through those experiences I'm quite sure the title would be Broken instead of Unbroken. It's an amazing true story of WWII POWs in the Pacific.

While I know Uncle Jay's SeaBees went in after the fighting to repair and build, it makes me again mindful of the Greatest Generation and all who gave up their lives at home during that time to serve.

Build-A-Bear

Here's my first attempt at posting!

 

Last weekend while visiting Aaron & Kara & my nephews in Indianapolis, I told Cooper, age 5, that I wanted to take him to Build-A-Bear.  I had done this with Caleb & Carter when they were about his age.  Cooper picked out this cute monkey & decided to name him "Monkey".  I asked him if wanted  to think of a more original name, but he answered with a cheerful "I can call him something else later.  He doesn't care!"  I had to agree that Monkey really doesn't mind.

 

I was also able to see Caleb & Carter's baseball games.

 

~Crystal K.

 

 

Cooper, age 5 & Caleb, age 10

 

 



Vacation Days 3 and 4

On Day 3, Brett and I left all the kids for a day with Grandma and Grandpa and had a "date" at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. That was really interesting and worth the visit. All kinds of memorabilia from different time periods. I especially liked the Inaugural Dresses worn by First Ladies. Brett liked the History of Transportation. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures there.

On Day 4, we took the twins with us to another Air and Space Museum by Dulles Airport. Also worth seeing. It had one of the retired Space Shuttles (Discovery).

He didn't want to go up in the tower
because "towers are for princesses!"

Once we got inside, they all loved
watching planes take off and land.

They want to be the first twins in space:
Riley the pilot and Gavin the space walker

Vacation Day 2

Our second field trip was to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Some of the highlights:

Exploring a Cockpit

A rocket

A plane

Lunar landing module

Ethne's

Catie's (with some help)

The Wright Brothers' Plane

Ethne's is 3D

Catie's version

We watched an IMAX on the Hubble telescope

Catie looked at the Big Dipper with hers

I especially loved this because Ethne
learned about the Orion Nebula this year.
It was featured in the movie

We walked past the Capitol

Catie's version

and Ethne's

Hard at work with her notebook

Our final stop of the day was the National Archives to see the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. No pictures allowed, but no problem with drawings!    

                      

Heiniger Family Vacation

My in-laws, Ron and Kayleen, spent a month in DC at the AC church house, as Jerry and Ada have done in the past. We were able to spend a week (including travel days) with them. It worked out that the girls had two school days left to finish out the year, so we turned our vacation into field trips. Brett and I, along with my brother-in-law Todd and his new bride Joan, took the girls around the National Mall on day 1. Here are some of our pictures along with the girls' "notes" they took. The note taking is something we started on a field trip last summer, and it really helps the girls remember what they saw.

Washington Monument

Ethne's interpretation

Catie's interpretation

World War II Memorial

As seen by Ethne

As seen by Catie

MLK Memorial

Profile view a la Ethne

Catie dutifully copied it

The Lincoln Memorial

Ethne liked the quote

Catie made sure to add shoes

 

Our "Tour Group"

As we left the Lincoln Memorial, we saw Marine One (Presidential helicopter) fly overhead, make a left turn by the Washington Memorial, and head for a landing at the White House. I wasn't fast enough to get a picture, unfortunately, but it was exciting.

"He's actually in there, Mom!"

Catie drew this before seeing it, and was
excited to see there really were guards on the roof

Ethne

 

FLOWERS

Just a few more flowers. I love watching them grow and bloom and now that the wind, rain, and clouds and the sun is shining, they are making good progress. The peony bush on the side of the house is one of several was moved from Jerry's dad's garden in Chenoa to our home in Minonk and Jerry moved them on to Gridley. We've had them on the north side and they've just never been very pretty. So he moved them to the west side last fall and they are growing pretty good for the first year. This one is doing the best and we're hoping that by next spring they will all be in full bloom. Jerry thinks they are probably 75-80 years old. The other bush is also from the Chenoa house.