Emma's First Field Trip

Emma and I went on her first field trip a couple of weeks ago to a natural history museum. It was a lot of fun because there were tons of hands on exhibits.

Here's Emma with duck-tails and (almost) bubbles, waiting to get in. When the kids walk in line, they are supposed to put their hands behind their backs like a duck tail and pretend that they are holding bubbles in their mouth.
Emma has a really small class so we only had a group of 4 kids. This is Emma and her partner during the field trip in front of one of the big skeletons that they have on display. Here's Emma with one of her friends that she plays with all the time. Emma always says that they are sisters. What cute girls!
They had these fun dinosaur puzzles all throughout the museum.
Here's the group.
Can't you tell that Emma was thrilled to take this picture with me? I think she was hungry by this time, but how could I pass up a picture opp on a turtle?!

Easter 2010

The Egg Decorating!

All of my favorite people!

Concentrate . . .This egg dying is serious business. We used a whisk to help keep little fingers out of the dye, but it kind of splattered so I don't know if it was much help.

The Easter Egg Hunt!

The Easter bunny didn't realize that in warm Arizona, you can't really put chocolate things in the plastic eggs because even though they were only outside for about 1/2 an hour, they all melted.

Anya finding Daddy's tricky rock colored egg. He was so proud of his concoction of mixing all the colors.

"I found it!"

Hunting with Grandpa. There was one point where there was an egg right in front of Anya next to her feet. We were trying to get her to find it and she would not look in the right place. We asked her where her feet were and she pointed to them, but didn't find the egg. She finally found it when she started to walk away and she stepped on it!
How did I get such cute girls? Where did they come from?
The Baskets

What a doll!

Enjoying her first peep. (I don't think she even finished it.)

The Feast!

Most of the kid's table.
The adult table. My favorite is Sam giving us the "talk to the hand."All in all I think our first hosting of Easter was a success. We had way too much good food. Played some fun games and had a really nice time.

The Ostrich Festival

After 7 years of marriage, I finally wore Mike down so that he would take us to a fair. But we didn't just go to any old fair, we went to the Ostrich Festival! I guess Chandler used to be a big ostrich farming place. In honor of that, they have a festival every year that is geared around ostriches. They have races, ostrich burgers, ostrich paraphernalia, and much more. When I was younger we went to the fair every year with my family and it was always so much fun. I have been begging Mike to take me every year and finally all the pleading payed off.

Anya's favorite part: seeing the little piggies and watching them race.
Emma's favorite part: watching the Ostrich races.
Mommy's favorite part: that we got to go to a fair!Daddy's favorite part: when it was time to go home. :-)

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of seeing and ostrich race, here's a little sneak peak. (I couldn't get the whole thing from where I was standing.) Basically they stay on the bird for about 1/2 the race and spend the rest of the time trying to catch it again and hop back on. 100 % of the racers chase their ride across the finish line.

Why We Love Teaching

Here's a conversation Mike had with one of his students the other day:

Student: Mr. Chipman, you know how people give kids class labels?
Mike: No
Student: You know, like "the smart one," "the good one," " class clown" . . .
Mike: Ok, yeah.
Student: Who do you think our class clown would be?
Mike: I don't know.
Student: I know who the class clown is!
Mike: Who?
Student: You!

Kids, you gotta love them.