Farewell

May marked my 13th year at Riley.  I've spent the last seven years in surgery and I'm confident there's no place I'd rather be.  I drug the kids in today to celebrate our anesthesia nurse practitioner, Mattie, on her last day.  This woman leaves us after 40 years and at over 70 years of age, I'd say she's doing it in style.  She's been a wealth of knowledge for me and instrumental in the success of Child Life in surgery when I started.  I'm quite certain I won't make it to 40 years, but I sure hope I have her energy when I walk out that last time.  What a blessing it's been to work with her each day!

Race Day

We survived another hot Indy 500!  Craig joined us as we biked to the track and spent hours in the 90 degree heat.  We drank tons of water, used lots of sunscreen and were very thankful for some cloud cover in the last half of the race.  Our seats were again in turn three.  We could see the cars coming down the backstretch and all the way through turn four.  This is a fun tradition we hope to continue.

Last Day Shenanigans

Another school year comes to a close! The kids have soared all year long and we couldn't be more proud.  They celebrated with a superhero themed field day.  They loved the time with friends and enjoyed getting soaked on this hot day.  We can't wait for the chance to make more memories this summer.

4th Grade Program

The 4th grade classes had a program at MCE last week.  Alivia loves music and singing, but is not a fan of these programs.  (She clearly gets that from her parents!)  The kids played their recorders, moved with flags, played the xylophones and several had a speaking part.  Alivia was selected to say the closing.  She did great!

Alivia is the 3rd from right on the back row.

Cardboard Arcade

Alivia and Drew are both in the high ability classroom daily.  Their last project of the year was to create an arcade game out of cardboard and duct tape.  They've worked on this for quite some time and have been saving candy for the last month.  Last week they finally got to show the school and parents what it was all about.  I had fun playing the games and seeing the smiles on their faces.  They truly enjoyed it. :)

Marissa and Alivia

Alivia, Emily & Marissa with their "Putter" game

Gavin, Drew and Ryan

These crazy boys made a challenging ring toss game with lots of yellow tape!

Mother's Day

We celebrated Mother's day with lunch at Riviera Maya with Mom and Leslie, then enjoyed the afternoon and evening relaxing at home.  We took a bike ride to Dairy Queen for ice cream, too.  These kids are such a joy and the gift I've been given to be their mom is such a treasure.  They challenge me, love me and make me so proud every single day.  I was surprised with hand scrub that Drew made at school and Alivia made me this Top Ten list that is sure to always make me smile.  I'm thinking we should make this a tradition and have them both come up with a list each year.  I can only imagine how it will change!  Drew led our prayer before bed and said "thank you for a mom that loves us and always gets us what we need and sometimes gets us what we want."  We couldn't help but laugh.  The gift of being a mom is priceless!

Happy Mother's day to all of the important mom's in our lives.  The kids have no idea how fortunate they are to have three grandmothers that would do anything for them.  We are blessed!

Playing Up

Drew was asked to play with the 9U team Friday night as they were short players.  This was his first time playing in a kid-pitch game, so we were anxious to see how he'd handle it.  Brad said he was full of questions on the way to the game (Alivia and I came a little later).  Not to anyone's surprise, he loved it!  He lead the team in hitting, going 4 for 4 at the plate, stole several bases and had the chance to play 1st, 3rd and outfield.  After getting a taste of this, I think he'd be okay playing at this level all the time.