Sisters

Emmy and Addy, our two two-year-olds . . . 

These sweet sisters keep us on our toes :)

Robotics

Each person is blessed with unique gifts.  It's a privilege as parents to watch our children experience, experiment, discover, and develop their own special talents.  Davis' brain is wired for building.  He's always been our resident Lego master.  He comes up with the most amazing creations - utilizing simple machines to manipulate the blocks creating incredible working battle fortresses, vehicles, and robots.  He blows us away.

For his birthday, wanting to encourage him take his building to the next level, we invested in a Lego Boost kit: an introduction to robotics and programming.  He's already built through the set and has had fun being creative with the sounds and commands.

This summer Davis is looking forward to participating in a robotics camp to take his learning even further. 

Hammocks

With the warmer weather and bright sunshine, our kids quickly discovered the backyard row of pines is perfect for stringing up hammocks.

The kids are dressing like it's summer: bare feet, shorts and t-shirts . . . it's only 60 degrees, but that's a hundred degrees warmer than Christmas!  They're acclimating quickly :)

(blankets make the hammocks extra cozy and help protect against wind).   

Track and Field

This year is our first venture into school sports.  Jackson Tesfaye is competing on our local middle school's track and field team - Go Yellow Jackets!

Jackson T. has been interested in going out for a cross country team for some time - with our new location, he now has an opportunity to become a part of a State and National champion cross country team.  Ready to start in 7th grade, he joined the track and field team this spring.  For the past two months he's been training with the team 5x a week, under the direction of the cross country coach, running all over town (typically 5-7 miles a day plus sprints and strength training) and in all kinds of weather.  The middle school and high school teams all train together - so Tesfaye has been running with national champions.  He has always loved competition and pushing himself physically - he has thrived under this rigorous training. 

*The high school cross country kids are excited to have recruited their first Ethiopian :)

Jackson T. has really enjoyed being a part of this team.  

Now that the snow has melted, we've entered the season of track meets: lots of traveling, long bus rides, and fierce competition (and late night Dairy Queen runs with friends).  

This is all so new to us!

His first meet of the season was for relays - Jackson ran third leg on the 8th grade team in three relay events: 4x1600 (T ran the 800m leg), 4x400, and 4x200.  They finished first in two events and second in the third (it was challenging running in two events back to back!).   Mike and a few siblings traveled to cheer him on.  As an added bonus, Grandpa, having just flown into town for a visit was able to make it to the meet!  

His second meet, a full middle school team track meet, was held at home, so more of us were able to support from the stands.  Five schools participated.

Again, Jackson T. competed in three events: 800m, 300m dash, and the 4x200m relay.  

For the first run, our 7th grader competed in the 8th grade boys heat for the 800m - two laps around the track (half mile) - finishing 3rd overall.  2.27 finish. 

Tesfaye's second event was the 300m dash - 3/4 lap.  He competed in the 7th grade boys heat, easily finishing first overall.  47 seconds. 

His third and final event was the 4x200m relay.  Tesfaye ran on the 8th grade relay team, running the 3rd leg.  The boys ran well.  He was given a big lead to start his leg and helped to widen the gap for the team.  They won first place by a huge margin. 

It's been a great start - I think we have an exciting season ahead!
In the first two meets he's achieved 4 first place finishes, 1 second, and 1 third - wow!

*Tesfaye's favorite events are the longer distance runs - he's not a big fan of the sprints

We're quite proud of our boy :)

Grandpa

Our first family visit in Minnesota!!!  We were so pleased to have Grandpa (Mike's dad) up north for a weekend visit!

The snow melted (almost all of it!) in time for Grandpa's visit and we enjoyed lots of time outside with gorgeous springtime weather.  Grandpa's flight arrived in time for him to travel to see Tesfaye's first track meet and visit with us all for the evening.  The rest of the weekend flew by with garage projects, baseball at the park, playground play, dinner out with all, drinks at the local brewery (just Mike and his dad), Mass, swimming at the community center, Legos, story books, and plenty of donuts (thoroughly spoiling us all!). 

It's hard living so far away from our extended family, so this was a special treat to have a weekend with Grandpa.