Day by day happenings

Calvin, looking cool after Uncle Jeff put on his shades.

Mango decided to have a snack of applesauce. He was waiting for an important phone call, too. This was just after we were on the phone with our realtor about the house sell. Too cute!

Emers in her serious face.

Daddy, what are you doing?

Calvin's not so sure about this!

Emerald is showing where Calvin hurt his lip.

Calvin's form of cheese.

Poor little guy!

Boys will be boys! Calvin took a spill on the stairs the other day and shredded the inside of his bottom lip. It was so fat for about a week. Lucky for us, we are pretty good friends with our pediatrician. We called him at home and asked about stitches, and we opted out of that (for now, we know with Calvin the day will come soon). Thanks Dr. Mike! Poor little guy had a little trouble eating for a few days. Emerald was a very sweet big sis to him.

Calvin also got his hair cut by daddy. It was interesting, but then we broke out a sucker and all seemed to be a little better......sticky, but calmer.

Emerald continues to be quite a little fireball. She loves her dresses and showing off when the camera comes out. She did enjoy having friends over for Memorial Day. My former college roommate, Sarah, and her husband, Kris, and thier dog, Spike, stayed with us on their way to Arizona. We wish them the best in their new hom. We also had Rene, Jessie, and Noah over. It was fun!

Drum roll please.....................

In the famous words of Emerald Rea Pankewich (adapted from Big Bird and/or Dora), "We did it, we did it, la la la, la la." (This is a phrase she says many thousands of times a day!) We are officially finished with our Texas house! :) and :( We signed the papers and mailed them off yesterday and heard today that it is all done and official. Down to one mortgage, what will we do with ourselves?? It has been a stressful and busy year, but we finally feel as if we are settling in to our new lives and finally feeling completely "Kansans" now.

We couldn't have done this without our agent, Emily, and her husband. Thank you so much for all your help! If any of you Texas friends drive by our old casa, wave for us and tell the new owners to take good care of it.

Independence day is not just in July.

Emerald's big thing these days is dressing herself. Yes, I was one of those crazy people who used to wonder "why would you ever let your child wear such a thing?" Now I understand. We pick our battles with her, and there are too, too many to pick to worry about what she wears around the house. She usually goes through at least 5 sets of pj's each night before finding one that works. Then, she loves wearing dresses, as each one is "just like Cinderella". For those w/o kids, yes, we have tried to stop her. It didn't work. Don't worry we don't let her go out in public in these things.

Calvin is a copy cat extraordinaire. The song I mentioned before, "I wanna be, just like you." fits him to a tee. If his big sis is doing something, he wants to do it, too. Here, we had to help Daddy sweep the floor. It was pretty sweet.

We are supposed to close on the house next week. They are working away replacing our roof as I type. We keep praying it will work out. Skip is going to Taiwan the second week of June. We hate for him to be gone from us, but what a great experience. He will be home in time for Laura & Shane's baby shower that will be hosted at our house. This is awesome, because we were afraid that he'd miss seeing them entirely. It all worked out.

A Happy Mommies Day Indeed

This emu's name was Blue.

A few of the emus gathered together on the farm. Have you heard these guys before? They have this throaty call, sounds a lot like a drum. They say that in the fall it gets really loud!

You can only imagine that this was the favorite of our little cowgirl.

We have a little hill in our yard. Emers loves to run down it.

We sing a little song often in our house.......it goes something like this, "I wanna be, just like you, I wanna be, just like you, I wanna be, just like you because I love you." Little copycats!




Mommy loving on her sweet babies. The stick, you might ask......Emerald's imagination is huge! She was making it go up and down with all of us. We were "taking a carriage ride with Bobby" (see earlier post of her carriage ride with Heidi and Jeff).



Daddy keeping the kids away from the electric fence. Calvin was ready to go touch the alpaca.



These are beautiful animals that live about a mile from us. Their eyes are just amazing to look at. We are so happy to be able to share this type of activity with the kids.



This was a pigny (spelling?) goat. Emerald thought it was the funniest thing in the world that he would be all curled up in his food dish. The farmer gave us treats to feed the goats, but they were too busy sleeping.

This was as close as we got to the llamas. Too much spitting. There were quite a few emus at this farm.



We spent the day relaxing together for Mother's Day. Heidi and I went shopping on Saturday (how fun is that). Then, after church we went on a farm tour in our county. We visited 3 different farms. In our adventures, we saw emus, alpacas, chickens, goats, llamas, horses, cows, and a variety of plants. Calvin really thought they were all "dogs" (reminds me of Emerald calling everything "moos" when she was his age. The kids had a great time seeing a different variety of animals. Skip and I had such a great time watching their wonder, awe, and curiosity.


Happy 3rd birthday Sam! We miss you. Both Jamison and Jack turn 1 this week. What sweet little boys!

We are having 2 cousins!!!!

We are so excited!!! Aunt Laura and Uncle Shane are having a baby boy cousin for us to play with soon! We even get to see them next month when they fly to KC for a shower at our house. It will be awesome to visit with them.

We also found out Aunt Heidi and Uncle Jeff are having a baby cousin for us too (or at least that is the ONLY way Emerald will look at this situation). Emerald keeps calling it a girl, but it is too early to tell for sure. We will keep you posted.

Aunt Laura's baby is due on September 12th and Aunt Heidi's baby is due December 23rd. What an exciting fall/winter we will have.

Congrats to both of you and we will continue to pray for you each evening. Emerald, all on her own, says each evening, "and pray for both my baby cousins". Then she gives the biggest smile ever. It is so cute.

Slides are so fun

Calvin seemed pretty scared the first time he went down our little slide. Then he decided it was ok. Emerald tried to comfort him. By the end he was climbing up all by himself.

Calvin wearing Emerald's skirt as a hat. Guess who put it on his head? It's great to have a real-life baby doll to dress up.


The kids enjoyed visiting with Grandma and Grandpa.

We are so excited for the spring. Emerald asks me every hour to play outside, go for a walk, or have a picnic outside. I can't seem to keep her in the house these days. She even offers to help Laney go potty outside (nice excuse). Calvin gets so upset if you pick him up after his feet have his the ground outside. He is going to be the child you see in the stores throwing the massive tantrum. Look out for the Calvinator!

On the home front, we are almost there on selling our Texas house. We have some major issues we are trying to tackle, but really, really want to sell the house to this family. Hopefully we will be done with it in a few weeks and be able to breathe a little easier. It is quite stressful trying to keep track of 2 households. Don't think you'll be seeing us as the "vacation home" family any time soon. :)

Calvin's language skills are exploding. He seems to be coming up with new words every day. Emerald has taught him wonderful words like "mine" and "no" and he has surprised us with words like "strawberry" and "snack". It is sweet to see him communicating with us and his big sister.



Emerald is still full of independence. Her favorite thing to do these days is change her clothes "all by myself" about 5 times a day. We never know what we will find her in when we tuck her in each night. One morning it was just her tap shoes and underwear. Too cute!

Skip may be traveling to Tawain next month for a week. I know he will miss us, but I might just miss him a little more. I am spoiled in having such a wonderful husband to come home to us each night. Skip did represent Garmin in the Corporate Challenge golf tourney last weekend. They only chose 2 people from Garmin, so he felt pretty excited. The Corp. Challenge is where all the companies in the KC area get together and compete in a variety of sports. It is lots of fun. I am pretty proud of him. He is playing for our new church/school this week. That will make 3 golf games in a row. Pretty good since he hadn't touched a club since his last day at UST. Hopefully that will keep up.