First Day of Preschool

Today is Kiera's first day of preschool! I'm sure you've noticed from the pictures that we are doing this at home, but Kiera has no complaints! Because all her friends are going to preschool at Sioux Falls Christian, I decided she should experience some of the exciting first day of school preparations, so last Friday we went to get her school supplies. She was SO excited to pick out a backpack and new colors, paints, and markers. At one point in the store she asked me if preschool was fun, I said, "sure it is", and she said, "Well, I'm a little bit nervous". Too cute!!! When we got home from the store she wanted to get right to work. We picked up these penmanship dry erase boards to practice letter writing and she wrote ALL DAY! Before she went to bed she told me that she wanted to do it again in the morning. I told her that nobody goes to school on Saturday. She was pretty disappointed to have to wait until Monday.

Well, this morning she was super excited to start. She had to do all her chores first and then I told her to get her backpack on. We took the first day of school pick and then headed in the house to start! She has been working like a busy little bee all morning. I had to force her to take a recess. She then pulled out some fruit snacks she had stuck in her backpack for a snack. She is so precious and growing up so fast! I hope this enthusiasm lasts for the next 13 years!!! I'm going to have to scrounge online for more activities to keep her busy! I'm so thankful she is so excited and wants to learn!!! Well, my pupil is calling me to check her work, so I better go. Enjoy the pics!

A Princess Party

Our park system here is amazing! They have quite the activities scheduled throughout the summer. There are always free activities to do, so we thought we would take advantage of the last week of scheduled activities. The final activity was a Princess party. Kiera invited her friend Katelyn to come and so they dressed as princesses ready for the ball! They had face painting, crown making, painting a ceramic, games, and pulling a treasure out of the treasure chest. They had a good time together and we enjoyed a break from routine to do a fun outing. Unfortunately, it was about 95 degrees with 100% humidity and mommy decided we better stop for ice cream on the way home!

Precious Pics...

I absolutely LOVE these pictures...I plan to get these blown up for our wall! It warms my heart to think of how best of friends they are and will always be!!!

Lake day with the Links

Kiera LOVED the boat ride and swimming out in the lake!
Grandpa & Grandma Link and grandkids!
Look at all the fish!

Cousins and Oma

A Very Wet July

(Here's a picture of only a small portion of our basement that flooded. It gives you an idea of how much water there was. The red door in the right corner is where our well is that overflowed. We are hoping to put a sump pump in there to prevent this from happening again. )

I see that another month has flown by without a post. I must say that July has been very busy and not how I pictured it turning out. Ryan returned from his first SERVE project on July 3 and we spent a quiet week together with sick kids and doing a lot of projects around the house.
The second week I headed back up to Tami's in Duluth to spend time with my mom who had flown out. We had a great week all together just hanging out at the lake. I took my mom back that Friday to spend another week together in Sioux Falls. It is always WONDERFUL to have my mom here as she spoils us all and is such a big help. We definitely ate well and had tons of fun entertaining her! Ryan headed to another SERVE project and it was such a blessing to have my mom here to help. Unfortunately she had to leave that Thursday for the GEMS convention in Minneapolis. That night we received 6 inches of rain. I went downstairs and saw that our entire family room had water in it. Thankfully their were some great church folks who came over to help me pull up the carpet and clean up the water. It was a huge job and I was so thankful for the help I got. Once again, Ryan's gone and disaster strikes! I was rather frustrated! Anyway, Ryan returned on Saturday night and we left Sunday morning for Prinsburg to spend time with his sister and family who were there from Houston.
We enjoyed 4 days together catching up and even took a pontoon out one day on the lake. The kids had a great time, but we were ready to get home and find some normalcy after a busy summer and knowing we had a basement that needed a lot of TLC. We returned home Wed., and the next afternoon we spent pulling up laminate floor in the basement that had water under it. We put our carpet back down temporarily since it had dried and moved furniture back in so we could do some other cleaning. Well, that night we got another 6 inches of rain! That is one foot in 1 week! This time our entire basement from one side of the house to the other was flooded. We spent all day Friday (almost 12 hours) hauling our basement items into the garage, pulling carpet up and laying it outside, and sucking up water. What a huge frustration. This area has seen so much rain it is ridiculous! Thankfully we don't have it has bad as some who's entire basements have flooded all the way to the top basement steps. We are now without a basement and since it is so humid, the kids have been riding scooter and pushing their mowers around in our indoor playground! At least there's a bright side to it all.

Needless to say, July has been one big frustration and a ton of work. I'm ready to move to a high rise apartment in Arizona where the rain doesn't fall. I will try to post pictures of the month later this week, but wanted to catch you all up on what's been happening. Please pray that the rain stays away for a few weeks so that we can dry out and put our basement back together.