go blue!

Soccer.
Soccer is so fun.
Venna and Jonah are playing in a community league.
Every Tuesday and Thursday they practice for half an hour and then have a game.
This is kind of annoying and kind of OK.  
Two nights a week is a lot but no Saturday games is awesome.
 Both Venna and Jonah have nice coaches.
They aren't on winning teams full of talent, but they have fun. 

 Venna is such a fast runner.
When she turns on her jets no on can catch her.
She likes to play offense and run up and down the field.

 

 Jonah skips up and down the field.
He also likes to play offense.

 Goalie is a boring job. 

 The most exciting thing about soccer for Jonah is he miraculously ended up on the same team as his best friend from school.

 Jonah is great at getting right in the clump and coming out with the ball.

Of course Tucker loves soccer too.
He is always attempting to escape to play like a big kid.

2 year old Tucker

In one week Tucker will be three.
Let me just be a little cliche and say I don't know how that happened.

He is such a little sneak.
That squirt bottle is proof. He snuck it from the closet.
He is obsessed with electronics, and he loves to sneak them.
He can navigate the internet with more ease than a grandma.
(You know that's true, Mom.)

Tucker gives the best/funniest prayers.
He's thankful for everyone and everything he sees.
If a preschool aged child walks by, Tucker claims him as a friend.
Sometimes we all just sit around and laugh at Tuck.  He's funny.
He also likes to lie a little.
He blames everything on Jonah or Crumbcake.
He tells everyone he's 5, because he thinks that's the magic ticket to get on the school bus.

 I'm sad to see 2 year old Tuck go.

2nd grade Venna

Today Tucker and I ate lunch with Venna:

Venna loves school.
Unless it's hard.
She can add and subtract big numbers.
She's still a rock star speller. 
I don't know if I told you this last year, but in first grade Venna never missed a single word on her spelling tests all year.  This year she's missed only one.
Minecraft. Minecraft. Minecraft. She's obsessed with the game.
Her friends are very important to her.  
She tells me lots of funny anecdotes about them. 
She prefers to do her own hair.

Venna's class has silent reading after lunch.  She anticipated finishing the 5th Harry Potter book during that time.  She only had 5 pages left.  Do you know how many pages that book has?! Over 800.  That's dedication, my friends.

2nd grade Venna is pretty cool.

kindergarten Jonah

Today Tucker and I visited Jonah for lunch:

I'm very sad for kindergarten to end.
He loves his two best friends Ryan and Aidan W.
He's known as "JonahB" by every classmate.
He sneaked eating breakfast at school for nearly two weeks before we caught on.
He has THE WORST handwriting. 
He can READ!
Almost everyday he figures out a math problem that astonishes me.

He loves his teacher. 
Jonah got out of bed last night sobbing.
The problem: "When I go to first grade I'll forget Ms. Sanders."
You can see he's tearing up in the picture. 
Is that not the sweetest thing ever?!

I love kindergarten Jonah.

some snow

Why?!
It's Spring Break for crying out loud!!
Josh and I went out Sunday to do some snow removal.
One step in the beautiful snow and I had to get the kids.
Snow this wonderfully perfect doesn't happen every winter in the Midwest.
It was fluffy and thick.  Just the right consistency for building and playing.

 That kid in the t-shirt is our crazy, super nice neighbor.
After he finished up his driveway he came over to help us.

a visit

We loved our visit from Grandpa and Grandma Burkhardt.
Grandma Beth is an expert at kid crafting.
She brought us a box of stuff that kept us busy for hours.
And we loved our short visit to the zoo.
Tucker can never get enough grandpa love.

Visitors are good.

egg hunt

 At 4 AM Jonah crawled into our bed, and I left to sleep on the couch. 
Tucker had already been snoozing away between Josh and me for hours. 
Jonah is always bewildered when I tell him there's no room for him in our bed.

A church by our house had an awesome Easter egg hunt this morning. 
So many eggs.
Doughnut holes. 
Hot chocolate.

I wondered if Tucker would get it...

 

 Boy, howdy, did he ever get it!
I had to tell him they said you won!! to get him to stop picking up eggs. 

 Jonah and Venna were in the same age division.
The field was huge and there were so many eggs.

 Venna could not wrap her head around the idea of the egg hunt being a week before Easter.
She warmed up to the idea real fast.

 Jonah's plan of attack killed us.
He left his bucket on the ground and just walked around picking up random eggs.
We kept yelling pick up your bucket!! but he didn't want our advice.

 I don't think we would have survived our move to Springfield if we hadn't met the Noakes family. 
Our kids love their kids.
Yes, that is their baby in the stroller back there.