The Rivers Ripple

When we last posted it was February.  Olivia will turn 18 months tomorrow and has blossomed into a toddler with opinions and personality.  Not that she didn't have personality before, just that she definitely shows it most days now.  ;)
We made it through the mild winter and managed to keep ourselves entertained and sane.  We hosted our 3rd Annual Murder Mystery Night at the beginning of March.  And enjoyed a short trip to OK for a Bayless Band gig with Dan.  It rained most of the trip, but it was good to get out of town for a bit.  And Dan even zip-lined.  April brought Easter and enjoyable family time and gorgeous outdoor weather.  May seems to have started with sickness and will hopefully make its exit germ free.
Dan is hard at work on his app for iphones for the Catch It Kansas sports-he's making progress!  He continues to play with Bayless and has recently picked up Diablo III (a video game) for his leisure time.  He continues to run and hopes to run a few 5K's this summer.  His last one was in April, finished with a PR!
Sarah continues to watch Xander on Mondays and Tuesdays.  She will be done with consult work in July for Rainbows so that she can just enjoy her time with Olivia.  It has been good, but the stress of getting everyone out the door and getting all of the other things she wanted done-done wasn't worth it.  She has continued to work for ViaChristi and enjoys that.  Hitting the Y with her friend, Amber, twice a week keeps her stress level down and Olivia's germ exposure up!  Sarah has completed Olivia's First Year Album and recently painted the upstairs bathroom.
Olivia spends her mornings playing, exploring, and testing her boundaries.  She enjoys her babies, cooking, purses, coloring, sand table play, and her sensory box play.  She is little Miss Social and greets people from a far in the stores with a hello and at church with a handshake.  She adds new words to her vocabulary constantly these days.  Today's word of the day: fan.
Brisco is trying to stay cool, since the weather has warmed up.  We do have the AC on now--85 in the house was a bit roasty for sleeping comfortably.
As always you can keep with the current at theriverscurrent.blogspot.com

A little reading.

Rockin' with Dan

Hi!

Playing in the yard.

Murder Mystery Night.

Aunt Mary came for a visit!

Rock Chalk.

Dying eggs.

Easter baskets.

At the Rainbows 5K

Dan and Olivia at the zoo.

Stylin'

Sick-Lots of Elmo.

Bubbles!

Pony Ride!

Assisting with cooking.

Look closely-this is paint hair and paint face!

Vicki here, for Tim, Erik and Samuel:

This is a picture of our snapdragons in front.  They have been quite pretty.

Here are my green beans - they really grew the last two days!

And here is one more of a couple of iris.  They are almost done.  They were really pretty this year.

So as you can see, I have been doing some yard work.  The fun kind:)  Now I have to get to the maintenance part.  Trimming trees and bushes (Tim does this one) and pulling weeds.

Tim has graduation tomorrow so we are hoping to see more of him.  I think he is ready for a break also.  They have had some personnel issues but it seems things are ending a good note.  He will have summer music camp the first week of June.  Samuel will attend also.

Samuel has about two weeks left of school.  He has his AP tests starting this week.  They played frisbee (now it's called Ultimate) today and continue to play as much as possible.  He took his solo to state and did a really nice job.  He had two memory slips so did get a II.  He says he is saving the I for his senior year:)

We brought Erik home Thursday evening.  He enjoyed his first year of college.  Has no big plans yet for summer as he will have his surgery May 24th.  For those of you who aren't familiar with this, he will have a stint placed in his uretur between the kidney and bladder.  He has a place where it is bulging out due to a kink or blockage of some sort.  The surgery is robotic and will be at the St Joseph campus since that is where the robot is.  He will have it in for six weeks.

We enjoy reading everyone's entries even though we don't always comment!   May you all have a good summer!

life at the moment

Hello all,

This is Kate taking the place of Chris for the blog. He is busy wrapping up the school year so we traded blogging places.

I have spent the past several weeks getting things together so I can enroll at WSU. I had to get a few transcript things figured out with Southwestern but today my transcript arrived and I excited to see that I have enough credits to qualify as a junior and have a 3.88 GPA. I am not sure yet how many credits will transfer but it looks like I will for sure have enough to be a second semester sophomore.

I am planning to enroll in women's studies with a concentration in Women's Issues in Society. I have looked at the courses and I am excited to see what I can get into this fall.

In case you haven't heard Benjamin (my service dog) will be arriving July 31st. We will have about a week of team training with the instructor from Heeling Allies and then we will be left on our own to navigate life together. I am excited to have him in time for school but it will be a short intense time of transition as school starts August 20th.

I am continuing to enjoy living in my apartment and I often spend two to three nights there. I often get together with my friend Allie. Right now our activity of choice is to watch trashy t.v. :D We have several shows we watch and are just finishing the first season of Pretty Little Liars (a true trashy show) on DVD. Shona loves going to the apartment and enjoys our walks we take there. She is much better behaved on the lead in Wichita as there aren't many things to chase.

Speaking of Shona's obedience skills, mother is going to be taking Shona to beginning obedience at the Kennel Club. This should truly be an interesting spectacle as mother has never trained a dog and Shona is well....not the most obedient of dogs.

One last piece of news before I wrap up this thourghly uneventful blog post is that I bought a Wii. I have wanted one for awhile and I gave into my to-buy urge a few weeks ago and purchased one. I have enjoyed figuring out what games I like to play. Currently, my favorite is the Just Dance Kids Version. It makes me and mother laugh. Oh and I also bought a membership to Game Stop. It is much cheaper and I can buy games from them.

I hope everyone is well and is enjoying their beginning of May.

Love,
Kate

Work Day at the Pasture

Saturday was the second work day at the pasture.  It was a bit cool
when we started but ended up to be a beautiful day.

A big THANK YOU to everyone that helped.