The 4th grade class went on a field trip to Shedd Aquarium. The girls had a lot of fun. They were put in different groups, so that helped - ha! Here are some pictures the teachers shared.
Connor, James, Teddy, Emmett, Vinny, Joe, Tess, Morgan, Bianca, Ava
Morgan continues to like playing the violin (and continues to NOT like actually practicing the violin). The 4th grade orchestra had their Spring concert on Wednesday. The kids sounded great! You may even recognize a few of their songs!
On Saturday, while Avery was at dance, Matt and Morgan went to Chik-fil-A. Morgan was impressed by the flowers on the tables! :)
Later in the day, we hung out at the Wilkens' house playing basketball and dying Easter eggs.
He looks so bored - ha!
On Easter morning, the girls searched for all the eggs. Then, opened them to see what they got! Morgan ended up finding most of the eggs with money inside - ha! We made her share with Avery, though.
Then, we went to Uncle Brett's house for lunch and more Easter fun! They set up a big egg hunt where everyone got a specific color to find. Uncle Brett filled the yard with obstacles to make it harder to find the eggs... it worked! Each egg had a number in it and the kids got to grab a bag with that number on it from the deck. Aunt Sandi had made up bags with all sorts of fun treats! And she even made beach towels for each kiddo with their name on it - so cute!
For lunch, Uncle Brett made tie-dyed waffles for the kids!
It was so beautiful - Avery decided to break out her new towel!
All the kids sat on the trampoline... I think they were playing "last to leave".
We had so much fun and the girls were exhausted by the time we left. They crashed on the car ride home! Morgan didn't even bother to remove her tootsie pop!
Morgan tested for her brown belt... and a move to Level 3! You have to take a test, write an essay and then go through the in person testing with the black belts judging you. The test is held on a Friday night.
Look at that kick!
They have to break a board before getting their new belts. The kick they do is based on their belt level. Morgan had to do a reverse kick to break the board. It took a couple of tries, but eventually she got it! She got to work with Miss Maddie on her kick!
Morgan is lucky to have Miss Maddie give her her new belt again!
High Five with Miss Maddie!
She did it!
Congrats to Morgan! She is moving up to the higher level belts now and there are a lot of forms and techniques to memorize to keep going! She is doing great! :)
A black belt from an affiliate karate school in Costa Rica visited our school and taught a class recently. He was so intense and had everyone sweating! Morgan had a blast!
Beforehand, she had her tip-testing for her next belt. When you move from one level to the next, you have to tip test, which means you need to show you know all the forms, grabs and techniques from the previous level to move up. There are 3 belts in each level. Here she is showing one of her forms.
Here is everyone who made it to the end of the class and the guest teacher in the middle! Morgan is right behind him.
Milo gets so exhausted when he's boarding. He plays so hard all day! He's used to his all day naps when he's home with us! So, when he gets home, he crashes! And he also likes lots of attention! He kept coming up to me and "hugging" me, basically laying his body on my chest. It was so sweet! He missed us! :)
We left the cabin on Friday morning around 9:45AM. We had hoped to get to Lexington for lunch, but the weather had other plans. There were severe storms along the route we were driving, so traffic was slow. Going up and down the mountains in the rain with lots of traffic is not fun. We did see one big accident which slowed us down quite a bit. We ended up stopping at a McDonald's before that for a quick lunch. Avery was so nervous about the weather that she didn't even want to eat - poor thing! It started to clear up once we left Lexington. We made it to Indianapolis around 5:00PM and checked into our hotel.
I had picked this hotel for the pool and hot tub. We had such a small pool at the first hotel and it was packed so the girls didn't get to swim much there. So, this one looked a lot better! Avery was still decompressing from the drive, so she wasn't into swimming that much. But, Morgan loved it! They had an indoor/outdoor pool, so she kept swimming from one side to the other. Considering, it was like 40 degrees outside, she was the only one in the outdoor portion!
The swimming was cut short because lightning was spotted in the area and they close down the pool area during lightning storms. So, we got ready for dinner and walked over to the nearby restaurant, Firebirds. It was good and the girls really enjoyed the 5-layer lemon cake for dessert!
Then, some pretty severe storms rolled in. We were right in the middle of it all! We were on the 3rd floor of the hotel (which has 9 floors), so that was good. We could only hear the rain when it hit against the windows. The girls and Matt pretty much slept through the storms. I, of course, did not.
But, we made it through the night and packed up for the last leg of our trip home! Avery packed quite a few of her "favorite" stuffies - ha! As long as she can carry it all, she can bring it.
Morgan sticks to her favorite stuffy, Monkey.
On our way home, it was SOOOOO windy. The car was being blown all over the road. There were trucks driving with their hazards on and going slow. We came across a house that had been leveled by a tornado. I think a barn must have been destroyed because there were metal pieces all over the fields and along the sides of the road. At first, I thought it was paper. The traffic slowed down because of all the debris from the house on the sides of the road. I've never seen anything like that... scary!
Then a bit down the road, we stopped for gas and the power was out. So, we had to go to the next exit for gas. We also saw a semi trucked flipped over on it's side. They had six of those heavy duty tow trucks and I think they were going to try to get it back upright.
Needless to say, Matt was glad when we pulled into our driveway! Those last 3 hours were rough! The girls and I picked up some lunch and got Milo from boarding. He was so excited to be home! He was really stinky, so we had to give him a bath and wash his bed. It's like he rolls around in dog stink while he's there - ha! I foresee a lot of naps in his future to recover from his week at daycare!
