Kyra pre-haircut. You can see Emily, our friend
and part-time cosmotologist, in the background.
Kyra post-haircut. Don't we all wish for such
shiny locks?
Kindergarten picnic. Left to right-Kelsie, Jenna,
Charli, and Kyra. Jenna and Charli were Kyra's
best friends this year.
Kyra looking like a teenager at the picnic.
The family at the zoo. Naaman looks grumpy because
he's not used to the heat anymore. You can see the old
carousel in the background...only $1.25 to ride and pretty fun.
Yea! The kids are out of school, and we are fully partaking in the summer fun here in Normal. I have to say that it's nice living in a place where people appreciate the summer. I love Austin...don't get me wrong. But every one of you Austin readers knows that you don't love going out a lot in the summer. Let me tell you that the long winter (we just finished the book by the same name by Laura Ingalls Wilder 2 weeks ago:) is more than made up for by the amazing summer here. It is still hot. (It hit 90 degrees over the weekend.) But we actually go out in the summer here. Our family went to a graduation party at a neighbor's house across the street on Sunday, and people sat outside and ate without sweating. Rudy was wearing jeans, no less! We were not bitten by a single mosquito even though we were in a vegetated, shady backyard and were out there for over 3 hours! By the way, there are no large cockroaches in this part of Illinois either. I have not seen a single roach in a year. There are also very few snakes and no poisonous snakes. I will get back to the amazingness of summer here in a minute. I shall diverge into a couple of fun stories about my sweet little girl, Kyra.
Kyra finished kindergarten this year and did very well. She learned to read simple books and is pretty good at simple math. She excels in the arts and performed in her first music program with the rest of the kindergartners a few weeks ago. As you can see by the pictures, she looks more and more like a teenager every day. We had a lot of fun at her kindergarten picnic last week. Unfortunately we have no pictures from Naaman's second grade picnic thanks to it being rainy and cold on his day:( Kyra also had her very first professional haircut last week and was able to donate to Pantene Beautiful Lengths. Yes, she had her hair cut by a 4 year old once in our very own home. Then there was the period of time where she pulled all the hair out from the top of her head. She actually looked like a monk for about a year. When she was wet during that period, she looked more like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. Suffice it to say...it was bad. It was a big accomplishment to actually grow enough hair to be able to donate 8 beautiful inches to wigs for cancer patients. Yea Kyra! Don't forget to notice her cool new earrings in the picture, too. We were in the mall last week, and Kelsie announced she wanted her ears pierced, too. We're making her wait a few more years. She's not nearly as big as he thinks.
Back to summer fun in Normal. I posted a few pictures from the Bloomington Zoo, which is about 10 minutes from our house and not too big. They have some pretty cool animals, though, and the animals are much more active up here because they aren't baking in the sun all day long. I think it's just really fun that the Twin Cities (as they call Bloomington-Normal) would even have a zoo. What's really cool about the zoo is that it's in the midst of an awesome park complete with shady picnic tables and a HUGE playground with adjacent splash park. Super fun! They really spend a lot of money on their parks around here. Now that was all well and good, but my big awakening to the kid friendliness of this town was this past weekend, when they re-opened our favorite Normal pool. I am not kidding when I say the place has been turned into a water park. The pool was already great. It had a shallow end with a beach-type entry and a water slide for the little kiddies, a middle area that is a little bit deeper with lanes and such, and a deep end with 2 water slides and diving boards. There was also an adjacent volleyball court. They actually added another section this year that reminds me of the water slides at Sea World. No kidding. There are 3 water slides--one goes straight down, one is an inner tube slide that you can go down single rider or double rider, and the other is a body slide with tons of twists and turns. It's ridiculous. They actually have hired life guards to work at the top of each of these slides to tell people when to go down. I couldn't get over it. It was really crowded on Saturday because it was opening day, Memorial Day weekend, and the other local pool has not opened yet, but we still had plenty of room to swim and only had to wait 10 minutes for the inner tube slide. Anyway, they actually had a cover band playing live music from the 80's--lots of power ballads. I was in heaven. Today the kids and I went to the pool again, and we had a major breakthrough with Naaman finally starting to swim underwater. His best friend from school, Christian, was there, so I think he got inspired. Hooray!
Tomorrow we will be going to a local theater for the weekly free kids' movie. (We're taking Christian along to that.) Then we'll go sign the kids up for the reading program at the Bloomington library before going to the pool again. Good times. And I just found out today that the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, which is just a few minutes from our house, offers free kid friendly performances on certain Wednesdays and Saturdays. Isn't that cool? Rudy and I are excited about seeing the adult plays because they are showing two we've never seen before. Last summer we weren't as excited because we had seen A Midsummer Night's Dream several times, but this year they are doing The Tempest and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Anyone want to come visit and go to a play with us? You're invited! We have a guest room and everything. Hope to see you soon. I'll be having fun here in Normal til then (well in between work and vacations anyway.)
