Preschool Graduation

Graduation Day at preschool. It has always been an emotional program to get through...watching your child walk up with their cap on, marching to Pomp & Circumstance. However, this year was very hard as my babies are now moving on to BIG SCHOOL! It was also hard to say goodbye to preschool & the 4 wonderful teachers that have been a big part of the Hart family for the past 6 years. I was up late the night before writing thank you cards to all of the teachers and cried my way through them...and cried again during the songs...and again saying goodbye to the teachers. I am so happy that technology allows us to stay in touch so easily - Facebook is wonderful! - but it won't be the same. They have given our children such a strong Christ centered foundation for their future schooling.

Here is my Willy Billy walking to the front...
And my beautiful Maddie Lou (a nickname I call her...not really her full name!)

Unfortunately, we were late for the ceremony! I thought it started at 10:30, so we got there early (10:10)...only to find out we were late! Mom came in late too (thanks to my mistake!)...here is Maddie spotting Grammy coming in the back door. I love her wave and face lighting up!

Getting ready to sing one of their songs.

It's official!!!

Will & Maddie with their wonderful, loving teachers! We love them dearly and will miss them even more!

The older girl's finished their school year the day before, so we were all able to go to the graduation.

Playing, Boxing & Eating in Freeport

For the past 11 or 12 years, Matt & I have made an annual trek to the northern IL city of Freeport around May/June. It is a great city with some beautiful parks and a great ice cream shop (yes, it compares to Whitey's!). Once the kids were born, we stayed with the tradition. We've bought flowers there (when Matt was delivering flowers for a local wholesaler), double couponed at the Eagle's, visited different parks, garage saled, ate at different restaurants and of course (in the past few years), letterboxed.

We were thrilled to see that FireNeck has been busy this past year - 13 new boxes in Freeport!! We decided last Sunday would be a great day to head up north. We left first thing in the morning for our 2 1/2 hour drive. Once in Freeport, we stopped at the Stephenson County Welcome Center to find the first letterbox, "Welcome to Freeport". Despite the wind (which took 1/2 of the box with it across the field!!), we loved the stamp image and knew it was a great start to our boxing day.

We then headed back into town and located a few boxes hidden near FireNeck's high school and grade school...yes, they are known as the Freeport Pretzels!

Dandelions were the flower of the day!!




After finding those 2, we headed to find "First Love". Another great park where the kids got out and ran around while Matt logged in.


We stopped for lunch and then headed out towards the community college (which has a nice bike path around it) to find "Mountain Dew Series: Kiwanis Bike Path". It was a great walk to get out and stretch our legs. At this point in time, Will had a couple of good one liners:

Will (out of nowhere): I guess today is a great day!!

Later, as we were walking back to the van, Will kept tripping over his shoes (new and a bit too big). I kept telling him "Good save" (I was holding his hand so he was good to go). However just before reaching the van, he was no longer holding my hand and tripped...and fell. As he got up, his comment was "Ugh Mommy...guess I forgot to save" : )

Our second box at the college was a bit more of a walk, but everyone did great! The kids were excited to go find the "Pixar Friends" box. This is a box that people can add more stamps/characters. The kids couldn't wait to see what stamps were in the box. Unfortunately, we were first finders so the only stamp was the "Pixar" stamp. Just gives us an excuse to head back to that box next year. We were able to see a bunch of baby canadian geese on the way back to the van - so adorable!!

Will: Mommy, can you find me??

It was Will's turn to find the box, so Matt carried him back to the tree (tall grass and lots of thorns). Will enjoyed the ride! From here, we headed to our favorite park - Krape Park. Not only is there a super cool wooden play ground (why didn't they have stuff like that when I was a kid!!), there is a carousel, miniature golf, frisbee golf, a small river with canoeing & paddleboats, an old fire engine & fire pole, tennis, tall waterfall, climbing rock/arch and many other things. It is beautiful and right inside the city! Here are some pictures from our visit this year.

We played, rode the carousel and looked for 4 different boxes this year as well. We ended our day heading downtown to Union Dairy for super yummy ice cream! We were able to find the recarved/rehid letterbox, "Three's Company box #2: Ice Cream Cone". We also found two other letterboxes right downtown, "City Coffee Co" and "Winneshiek Players". All in all, we ended our day 13 boxes in 13 attempts...we swept the city clean!! That feels good!

Driving home we hit a MAJOR thunderstorm. We ran parallel with it most of the drive. I don't know that I've even been that scared before - I don't know if there were any tornadoes produced from that storm, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear that there were! We got home and within 30 minutes our tornado sirens were going off...so we spent the rest of the evening in the basement. We were happy to see that storm system pass over!!

Roosevelt Field Day

Another year of Field Day to share pictures of! Amid all the crazy cold & rainy weather we've had the past few weeks, the sun was shining (a little too warm!) for field day.

I ended up keeping Maddie & Will out of preschool that morning so we could help Alex to get & from her field trip. It was a walking field trip to the library and Whitey's (local ice cream shoppe). Unforunately, Alex had fallen pretty hard on her knee the night before and couldn't walk very well! So, walking a long distance would be hard to do. It was hard for her to participate in field day as well, but she managed!

Maddie & Will helped me get Subway for lunch and then we headed to field day to have lunch with the girls in the school yard. We enjoyed our lunch together, packed up our stuff and then waited for the games to begin.

Here are some pictures of Alex



And Katie



The twins & I stuck around for an hour or so after lunch. It was pretty hot - leading to thirst issues and sunburns. We headed home to relax before picking up the girls from school for the day.


It's hard to imagine going to Field Day all by myself next year...very hard to imagine...

Mother's Day

When we woke up on Mother's Day, we realized it was a beautiful day outside (contrary to what we've gotten used to around here!). I debated whether to head to Dubuque to visit the Mississippi River Museum or stay home and get some yard work done. We talked it over and decided to head to Dubuque.

On the way there, we stopped in Delmar, IA for a quick history lesson! Matt had seen this Train Depot years ago while working and wanted to show us. It finally worked out! The history of this depot was all about the Orphan Train. To help with the overcrowded orphanages on the east coast (over 250,000 children, aged from infant to 16), the orphans were boarded on trains bound for the west. They would disembark at every train station to possibly be adopted by people in need/want of children. Unfortunately, some were mere slaves put to work on farms. I'd like to think that many were placed in loving homes. Either way, this is an amazing piece of American history. Over 10,000 children were placed in Iowa between the years of 1854-1929.


We were thrilled to find out that our local zoo membership helped defray the cost of this museum with its recripical program. It was a wonderful museum with a lot of great exhibits...but it would've been too pricey for us to go as a family of 6! We were extremely thankful for this! In the end, the favorite by far were the otters. They were so fun to watch as they played around right in front of us. Brought us lots of laughs! It was a great Mother's Day!