Winning!

Last Thursday was the Awards Assembly for 3rd-5th grades at Hawthorne Elementary. We have always been very proud of the awards Tess has brought home in the past 3 years, but this year we are super duper ginormous big time proud.
Tess was presented with a Library Award(she is a total library mouse and enjoys the dewey decimal system) a Language Arts Award(for overall goodness at the English language, I guess) The President's Physical Fitness Award (with Obama's signature!) and.....drumroll please.......

The Principal's Award for having all A's all four quarters!!!!!

Third grade is the first year the teacher's actually record a letter grade for assignments and report cards. Tess worked hardest to keep that math grade at an "A", the rest were much easier.There weren't many kids that earned this award and accompanying medal, and I have challenged Tess to remember the feeling of receiving this award each time she wants to scream when I mention doing some math facts.
SO proud of this girl.

Princess Jane

We have had this toddler bed in Jane's room since Kate graduated to a bunk bed. Instead of wanting to sleep in it, Jane has used it to store her stuff on. Nothing could coerce her to move from crib to big girl bed. Can't say we pushed her too hard, we liked the idea of having control of when she could or couldn't get out of bed!
The youth at church are having a garage sale the first weekend of June and we decided no time like the present to get our girl to "grow up" and sleep in a big girl bed. After some brainstorming, Andy and I decided the only way to sell this new sleeping arrangement was to do an extreme room makeover minus the extreme. We took down the crib, moved the toddler bed to its old spot, hung a princess tent over the bed, put her pop up Dora tent in the other corner to create her very own clubhouse, and........tah dah!
She walked into her room, shouted "oh my gosh, this is AWESOME!" and started jumping on the bed saying "I'm a princess!" over and over.
She has only fallen out one time and didn't even bother to wake us up. She just slept on the floor till we found her the next morning.

The Granny Awards

Tess is in the "Drama Club" at Hawthorne Elementary and has participated in a fall and spring musical. The Granny Awards was the name of this play and Tess played the part of Granny.

The theatre seems to be a pretty comfortable place for my oldest daughter. She loves to perform in front of people and seems pretty at ease with a microphone in her hands. I have always told her to say her lines like she is talking to one of her great-grandparents.....speak slow and loud. We are so proud of her gift for performance and we are curious to know where this will take her. Not like as a career in acting, but if she will enjoy being in school plays/community theatre.

Although our life might make for some good reality T.V. if the offer was right.

Aunt Sarah

I'm an aunt now and it's so great...doo dah, doo dah

I'm an aunt now and it's so great...oh, doo dah day!

It's a cryin' shame how little I get to see my niece....if I had it my way we'd be in the Haskamp's business all the time. Of course, then that would eventually lead to them having to care about our business which is just too crazy right now. Someday we will be less busy, I hope! It is my ultimate scheme to steal this kid for sleep overs and the occasional girls day out.....The good Lord knew what He was doing when He gave me a niece to practice on first.

She is such a cutie patootie and her parents are doing a great job keeping her happy. Not as happy as her Aunt Sarah can make her, but pretty darn close.

Kate's pray

This blog is supposed to be a record of things about my kids. This is totally for my memory that I want to blog this (and hopefully for your enJOYment too.)

Tuesday night's suppertime prayer:
Dear God,
Thank you for letting me do so good in my gymnastics Olympics, and I really appreciate you letting Tess do so good as the Granny in her play tonight.
Thank you for this food, and thank you for our beautiful flowers. Please let them grow big and beautiful.
Amen.

Kate is our pray-er. She is the one that reminds us that it is time to sit down, shut up, and thank our Lord. I don't want to ever forget how she will say "guys! come on! it's time for the pray!" (not the prayer...the pray.) I also don't want to ever forget how cute her voice sounds, how sincere her words are, how random her thoughts can be.....and how proud I am for her faith.
She is my JOY.

Less than 24 hours in Branson= perfect

When we learned the good news that our Samantha would be playing in Springfield, we started making travel plans. Initially we were going to drive down, watch a game, drive back. BUT, asking our children to sit in a car for 3 hours, then sit and watch a ball game for 2 hours, then sit in the car again for 3 hours seemed pretty mean spirited......especially when we had a open scheduled weekend, money to blow, and only 30 minutes to Branson.

As a rule, we are not Branson-ish people. Not fans of country music, not fans of paying big money for entertainment, not fans of slow traffic on a two lane road. We are, however, fans of the outlet mall(love Coach and Nike) fans of hotel swimming pools, and new fans of the Titanic museum.

We arrived in Branson around 4pm, went to the outlet mall, power shopped, went to eat at a steak house in the hotel parking lot(no driving on the busy strip) and then swam the evening away at the hotel pool.

The hotel pool was above and beyond my wildest dreams when picking our hotel on priceline.com the night before. I just prayed for clean and fairly warmish. We got big, clean, and really warmish! JOY! and those that know me know that I need warm water to enjoy a pool. This water was delightful, even by my standards.
We woke up the next morning and swam some more, packed our bags, and headed across the parking lot to the Titanic museum(shown below)

We highly recommend this museum to anyone who enjoys history and learning something. Everyone in our family enjoyed this museum, even Jane! When you enter the museum you are given a boarding pass of an actual passenger on the Titanic. As you walk through, you can watch for your "story" and at the end of the self guided tour, learn if you survived or died on the Titanic. Thankfully, everyone in our family lived! Really great museum....totally worth your time and money.
Here is a picture of the four other family members.....I am out of the pool taking the pictures, so you are spared me in my swim suit, for which you are welcome. All the girls could touch in the shallow end. Jane had a real fondness for the hot tub, which she kept calling the "little pool". She would sit on the top step, lean back, and say "Ahhh, this is the life!"

We are not a spontaneous family by history, mainly because it's hard to be spontaneous with three little kids, a husband that works 24hours every 3rd day, and me, who is a self proclaimed control freak. I am proud to admit that the spend-the-night part of our weekend was totally my idea! It is fun to know that the girls are old enough, even Jane somewhat, to recognize that vacations(even mini ones) are special....not to be taken for granted....and a chance to really enJOY each other's company.

How we ended up in Branson--Part 1

Our Samantha is a sophomore (technically a junior, now) at Drake and plays softball for the Bulldogs as their starting left fielder. They made it to the championship game of the Missouri Valley conference, which is the first step towards the NCAA tournament. They played in Springfield this Saturday, so the Martens, and nine other family members, made the trip. Here is one row of us, minus Andy(taking the pic), Paul(standing up to watch and pace), Shelley's father and his wife, and Shelley's uncle & aunt(in row front of us).

Kate, Bailey, Tess, Me, Jane, Conrad, Aunt Sue, and Shelley

Samantha plays left field for the Bulldogs

Samantha made the All Tournament Team...which means the coaches voted for one player from the conference at each position.....and they chose our girl! Although this wasn't the award she wanted to bring home(she wanted the Championship!) she was honored and we were so proud!

Samantha is home now for the summer and we are thrilled to look across the street and see her car in the driveway, and I can't wait for her to wander over to our house during the summer to see what's going on....I miss when her and Bailey were too young to drive, so they just walked over to our house for a change of scenery. :)

I ask for your prayers this Thursday as our Samantha has surgery on a hip that has been bothering her for quite some time. She has played a lot of softball in her 20 years and she has torn some muscle and ligaments in her hip that cause her a lot of pain and difficult range of motion. Please pray for a successful surgery and for her recovery that will take 3-6 months, which of course she plans to do in 2-4 months.

This is why we even left our house this dreary weekend. Stay tuned for where we eventually ended up!

Happy Mother's Day

Being a mom is the one thing I have always known I wanted to be.....everything else I have had to figure out, and make mistakes, along the way.

I am proud to know that being a mom is something that will never change. While I may not always get to be Andy's wife(till death do us part) I will always and forever be the mother of Brogan Tess, Kate Sinclaire, and Jane Gracen.
Happy Mother's Day to my mom, my mother-in-law, my sister-in law who is celebrating her first holiday, and all my friends who get called mom.

I am also the proud "other mother" to my girls across the street, Samantha Jean and Bailey Pauline. Love you girls......

Suck it up

Tess and I had one of our "come to Jesus" talks yesterday evening during a power struggle about practicing piano. We have this type of talk about once every few months, and it usually ends with me threatening to take away privileges and her crying. We both HATE these talks.

Tess takes piano and voice lessons and has now for about 3 years. (we added voice this last year) We are on our second teacher, because, well for several reasons, but this teacher is FANTASTIC. She is great with kids, she has a great grasp on music theory, and she thinks scales are important. Enough said.

I took piano lessons at her age for many years, and I remember practicing would severly cut in to my "fun" time....especially when it was nice weather and I wanted to be outside! Turns out Like Mother-Like Daughter. It is getting harder and harder to get Tess to practice on her own....without several reminders. She will do great for a while at coming home from school, taking a break to relax, then getting piano and voice done so she has the rest of the evening to do as she pleases. Let's just say it has been rough for about a month now, and it is getting pretty pathetic how little time she is devoting to her weekly lesson assignments.

The killer fact is she is very gifted musically. She can hear a song, sit down at the piano, and figure out the melody. She memorizes music too easily, which drove me crazy when she was playing little two stanza songs. She would look at the music, like NEVER, and play the song. Her teacher would give her a sticker and say she passed the song....although she never really learned the notes/note names she was playing. DROVE ME CRAZY.

While this teacher does challenge her a little more....and calls her shenanigans when she notices Tess isn't looking at the music....Tess still can slack off during the week practice wise and manage to stumble through a song at her lesson adequately. AARGH! How is that learning anything?

Last night I called her on her slacker attitude and pulled out the canned speech her father and I have been using for at least a year now. It goes something like this......
"Tess, quitting your music lessons is NON-NEGOTIABLE. No matter how much you fuss, we are not going to let you quit. Knowing how to read music is too important to this family for you to give up....and for us to give up on you. We know you think your friends are having more fun taking lessons/participating in other things (like dance, karate, gymnastics, soccer....etc) but this is something we feel is WAY more important than any of those things. Learning to read music and potentially play an instrument is something you will be able to do FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. People in dance will not be doing hip-hop or ballet in their 60s....probably not even in their 30s. (and on and on......that is just one of our examples.) We consider this a real investment in your future, and we KNOW that someday you will thank us."
whew.......too much you think?

Anyway, after exhausting myself, and her, emotionally, I finally just said "Tess, you are going to have to suck it up and do this. I really don't want to have this conversation again. Suck it up and practice." and walked away.
She came outside after about 15 minutes and said "Mom, sucking it up is hard......"(with teary eyes)
Me: "I know it is Tess, that is why it is called SUCKing it up....because it sucks"

Status Report--with a cute visual

I am happy to report that progress is being made. Turns out Jane really doesn't plan to wear a diaper for the rest of her life....just maybe for another few months. She is averaging 2 times a day actually telling us she needs to go to the bathroom. The rest of the time she acts completely oblivious to the "plan". M&Ms had been a nice incentive until Easter brought a deluge of candy to the house, so the M&Ms aren't quite the novelty they once were....
I hope she doesn't start asking for money. Although at this point, Andy and I could probably be persuaded.

Easter Beauties....