Romans 12

Gabrielle has been working the past several weeks to memorize Romans 12. The prompting came from her Kids Connect teacher, Amber Bailey. Gabi was blessed to have her dear teen friend, Alexis Manes, come alongside her and partner with her in the memorization process. It was treasured time and a sweet relationship blossomed from their time together. 

Amber treated a total of 11 kids, 1 teen (Alexis) and 2 additional adult chaperones to Worlds Of Fun on Wednesday, June 5th. The weather was not kind with lots of thunder and rain showers in the morning hours but soon cleared allowing the group to have a blast!

Gabrielle's favorite ride was The Detonator. She is a fearless one for sure!

(Please remember to mute the music on the sidebar of the blog before watching video) 
We are proud of her determination to memorize Romans 12 {the girl had her eye on the prize!} but more importantly we are overjoyed at her dedication to hide God's word in her heart! 

Color Run

I participated in my first organized 5K on Saturday, June 1st. The Kansas City Color Run or also known as the happiest 5K on the planet! It was held at Arrowhead Stadium. 

I ran with Heather Buelow and Daina Skorbutanas (soon to be Mrs. Justin Buelow!). I am NOT a runner. Shoot, I rarely exercise in any fashion. Within minutes of finishing the race, pain took up residency in my left knee. Heather was also experiencing discomfort. Fast forward to Saturday night and that knee pain kept me up all.night.long. I may have any cursed it once. Within a couple of days the pain/discomfort was nearly gone when I took it upon myself to re-"injure" it running after Little Miss at Science City. It is now back to normal PTL and the lesson I took away is this. I am no longer a 20 something year old and this nearly 38 year old body of mine let me know that :) 

It was an incredibly fun morning spent with friends and a great way to give back to the community in a very small way. We had a delicious post race lunch at Cafe Gratitude {I'm SO looking forward to going back.} I will definitely sign up for next years Color Run and may even allow the munchkins to tag along for some happy color action! 

The School Year comes to a Close

School is out for summer and that means one thing to me. More time with my kids which equates to making memories intermingled with times of complete madness and mayhem. I've really been anticipating this summer as Little Miss is at such an incredibly fun age. She is old enough to be independent in a lot of areas and is always, always following in her older siblings footsteps which makes for quite the adventure at times. Picture a 2 year old determined to master a razor scooter, dribble a basketball, jump rope, enter any activity and she is making her best attempt to keep up with the older two's antics.

Gabi on her last day of 2nd grade

Noah Eckert and Gabrielle

We are really looking forward to checking things off our summer fun bucket list.

In reality I'm sure a lot of this ^^^^^^ will be happening this summer.

Goofing around in addition to fighting and making up, lots of popsicles and sweet treats, bubbles and sidewalk chalk, playdoh, parks and pool play!

When I look at these pictures of our children I feel incredibly blessed. They can be loud, disobedient, disrespectful, messy, picky eaters, stubborn and strong headed. Yes, they can be all of these things, but they are absolutely beautiful in my eyes and they are mine! 

Sporting Tykes

We finally bit the bullet and signed Dawson up for his 1st organized sports activity - Sporting Tykes Soccer through the Olathe YMCA. Our neighbor facilitated coaching and sent out an inquiry regarding interest in participation from kids within the neighborhood. It was fun for Dawson to team up with Leah Brunner, Madelyn Scott, Cole Burris & AJ Nickel from the n'hood.

I took this picture the night of his first practice. I think it is apparent that he was stoked to say the least! We were hesitant how Dawson would do since his only other exposure to soccer was a two hour clinic he attended last Spring. In short, our fears were very quickly curbed. He owned it! 

He was great at advancing the ball, 

kicking,

playing defense & being goalie. 

When it was game time, Dawson turned it on and went full force until the final whistle was blown. He was action packed and took the game very seriously. 

Where he really shined was running the ball up field and scoring! 

{A shout out to Cecil Carder for the above two images}

A final team shot at the season's close. 

Madelyn and Cole are absent from the photo. 

We're looking forward to future soccer experiences with our little man but for now we've moved on to T-Ball :)