The Twins Are Eight!

 Since today is Dominic and Anne's Baptism Day, it is only fitting that I finally write about their 8th birthday, which occurred a week and a half ago.  They had a great couple days of birthday celebration!

Twins forever!

A present apiece after breakfast!

Littlest brother found a good use for wrapping paper.

After lunch, Dan took the twins to a movie, with popcorn and pop!  What excitement!  They got to see Smurfs 2.  For dinner they chose Shrimp Kebabs and Shrimp Cocktail.  Mmm! Then, it was time for the main present action.

Anne with her Fun Foals Gift Set.

A new camera!

A camera for Anne, too!

Dom watched Anne.

Anne watched Dom.

All the kids watched Anne as she opened her final gift...

Jasmine, the pony, just what she always wanted!

And the Dominic finale.

You can see he was very excited.

His Rippin' Rocket 2 Coaster!

 After a while, it was time for cakes times two:

Dominic and his Darth Vader cake.  All chocolate.

Anne requested a My Little Ponies cake.

 

The next day, the twins got to choose where we'd eat out for dinner.  They chose the Burger King with the playground, of course!

Happy girls!  Anthony was mad because I didn't give him any pop.

Dominic up high.

Anne and Dominic, 8 years old!

I really like this picture.

 By the following day, I think, Dominic had managed to put together his entire roller coaster by himself, even though the box said age 9+.  He was proud of that fact.  

The boys sat and watched the roller coaster car zoom around for a long time. 

Pilgrimage To The Cathedral

One day in the second half of June, we went on a pilgrimage/field trip set up by our homeschool group to our diocesan Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.  They had recently renovated it and we had not yet seen the improvements.  In fact, I'm not sure if the kids had even been there before. 

This whole area is brand new.

Waiting for our tour to start.

Beautiful statue of Mary and Jesus.

The cornerstone.

First look inside the renovated church.

Homeschool families gathered around the baptismal font.

Depiction of the Holy Spirit above the baptismal font.

Glimpse of the dome.

Looking up into the dome.

The kids around the statue of Joseph and Mary (and Baby Jesus in utero!).

It was a good tour, unfortunately it was not one of Anthony's good days, so I did not hear all of it and some of it I missed altogether.  It was nice to see all of the improvements in our Mother Church.

In Victoria

The rest of that weekend in mid-June, we hung out at Grandma's house.

Chocolate milk, anyone?

After Mass on Sunday, we went to the cemetery to say a prayer at Grandpa Brungardt's grave.

Where's Anthony?

Here he is, hopefully his presence counts as his prayer!

After lunch with Grandma, we went out to the nature trail with Uncle Joe.

Ready to explore.

And climb on fallen trees.

And walk down lots of shady trails.

And climb on more trees!

Don't fall!

Joseph spotted something.

So did Dominic.

Here we go!

We have to wear the kids out for the trip home.

At the top of a very steep hill.

Since it was Father's Day, we stopped at Freddy's Frozen Custard in McPherson on the way home:

Time to treat Daddy to frozen custard.

Anthony really enjoyed his.

The girls.

Sternberg Museum, Part II

After we finished looking at the natural history exhibits at the Sternberg Museum in Hays, KS, we went to a little area where the kids could practice digging up dinosaur bones!

Hats on, tools in hand, they were ready for discovery.

Catherine and Joseph found a long bone.

Anthony, the world's youngest archaeologist.

They could have stayed here for a long time.

After digging up bones, we made our way to the Discovery Room, which is a homeschooler's dream!  It was chock full of fun and interesting activities for kids to do, from puzzles and games to looking at things through magnifying glasses and balancing weights on a scale.  There were lots of books, stations for drawing, stamping, and tracing, a wall of live animals in tanks, even a spot by the window for identifying cloud formations.  You could easily spend half a day in this room. 

Joseph found a friend.

An attractive corner with books, puzzles, blocks, and tubs full of interesting animal puppets.

Working on a puzzle.

Right in the middle of the room, you could climb on this giant bone.

Anthony liked this giant spider sculpture.

Another great puzzle done by Anthony and Joseph.