Josiah had another great season of karate at the YMCA this year. He learned enough to earn his yellow belt before our instructor went back to NC for the summer. He has really enjoyed learning karate and we are hoping to find a class for him to get involved in in Arkansas! Kylie even took it this year and had a lot of fun with it, too.
Last friday was a fun, yet crazy day for our family. Josiah's class had a field trip to a blueberry farm (where we rode around the farm and saw how they grew the blueberries) and then to the packing plant (where we took a tour of the inside...which got down to 34 degrees...and saw how they put the picked blueberries on a conveyor belt and got them ready to send to the stores. It was a lot of fun (they got to pick some blueberries at the farm) and very interesting.
That same friday, Kylie's grade was having field day at the school! So, Tom and AJ (after dropping the twins off at a sitter's house) went to the school and watched field day for a little, and helped grill hot dogs for lunch for all the 3rd graders. 
The battle of the books competition was this past tuesday evening. There were 6 kids on each of the teams from the 5 elementary schools in hardee county. Kylie's team spent the past two months meeting before school, after school, and some in between learning the ins and outs of the 15 sunshine state ready books for 2008. The competition was set up in a double elimination bracket... with each round having 14 questions about those 15 books. The kids would answer the question with the title and author of the book that the question was referring to. It was an incredibly stressful competition....my stomach hurt most of that night and I was drained by the time we got home. Thankfully, Kylie wasn't that stressed over it. :) Wauchula elementary didn't win (sadly, they went out b/c they didn't answer a question in time...even though they had the right answer)...but they did a great job and we were very proud of them!
The twins have started to really get into dressing up. Here's Leighton in her pretty shoes. Matthias was wearing the pretty shoes with his firefighter helmet earlier, but had them off by the time I got the camera. The latest on Leighton is...I took her to the pulmonologist and she had a chest x-ray which was "the best chest x-ray (the dr.) has ever seen on her!"...which was good news. She has had a cough that she's had a hard time getting rid of, so he increased her flovent prescription with the hopes that that will help over the next month or so. She has been up every night for the past 3 or 4 weeks, usually between 3 and 4 o'clock...the other evening we found her fast asleep in the hallway in front of our bedroom door...usually she opens the door and comes in, but for some reason she didn't that night. Needless to say, tom and i are both exhausted and are hoping for her to return to sleeping through the night normally, soon!
I am blessed to have these 5 sweet, wonderfully different, beautiful children.....what a priviledge to be their mother. And, thanks, Mom for being my mother...and thanks, Rose Marie for being my husband's mother! Happy Mother's Day!!!
A twin moment.
Kylie's piano recital was last week. She played and sang a piece, and she was in an ensemble, singing, too. We are very proud of how much she's learned in our two years of taking piano lessons here. 
Leighton's last day of TB meds was last thursday!! We were so thankful for Teresa from the health dept. coming by every monday and thursday for 6 months....but we're also very glad that she's not coming by any more. :) Leighton had gotten to running to the opposite side of the house and hiding whenever Teresa would arrive. 
Josiah's class this year.
