An Easter tradition

Our favorite tradition for Easter is dying eggs. Last year after Easter, I picked up several egg dying kits on clearance. Today we busted out three different kits and combined them to create Easter egg masterpieces.

Abby, Logan and Kippy worked together to design these fabulous eggs. Abby mixed the colored tablets to make very vibrant colors with some slightly different hues.

Each kid had varying levels of patience making many varieties of colors. We ran out of hardboiled eggs way before their creativity was used up.Dye, glitter, stickers, crayons, and shrink-wrap combined with laughter, a little whining and some spills equalled a great time and some beautiful eggs.

Here are each of their personal favorites... from left to right, Abby (pink & sparkly), Logan (orange & shrink-wrapped), Kippy (lavendar & stickered).

The adventures of flat Logan

There once was a boy named Logan who was in the First grade at Oakes Elementary School. He had a class project where he made a flat picture of himself and mailed it in an envelope. Logan is my brother Randy's youngest son, who is 7 years old. We were the lucky recipients of "Flat Logan" and these are the adventures we took him on.
First we took flat Logan to the Fish Fry Friday night, April 3rd at Our Lady of Victory. Abby and Angelique took pictures with flat Logan in front of their classroom doors and also by their school banner. The walleye was delicious, but flat Logan didn't eat any of it.

Angelique is 8 years old and in the 2nd grade.

Abby is 11 years old and in the 6th grade.

Saturday morning, Abby and Angelique took flat Logan for a walk to the Veteran's Home, which is only a 1/2 block from our house. They had to wear boots because of the recent snow, but didn't wear mittens because it was 30 degrees.

After lunch on Saturday, we loaded into the car and decided to take flat Logan to a few locations in Fergus Falls. The first place we picked was at the memorial of the Cyclone of Fergus Falls at Lake Alice in the middle of town. This cyclone was the 4th worst National Tornado disaster in history up to 1919. We noticed that flat Logan was wearing his "Oakes Tornadoes Rock!" sweatshirt so we thought he would appreciate learning about this tornado experienced in our town.

Our next stop was to the world's largest Otter, which is near Grotto Lake right in Fergus Falls. Fergus Falls is located in Ottertail County and our home team mascot is the Otter. As far as we know, Fergus Falls is the only team in the US with an Otter as a mascot. Fergus Falls also has the Ottertail River running through it.

This picture gives a better perspective on how large the Fergus Falls Otter actually is.

Our final stop of the day was to visit the community college called Minnesota State Community and Technical College (MSCTC) which is the home of the Spartans. Here is a little more trivia; one of the most popular team mascots is the Spartan. Those who are interested in Twilight will know that even the town of Forks, WA has the Spartan as their mascot.

Angelique thought the Spartan was wearing a dress, but in actuality, it is a part of his body armor.

Steve works at MSCTC as a psychology professor and also as a counselor.

This concludes the adventures of flat Logan in Fergus Falls, MN.

Deja vu.

This morning we went to Wahpeton to watch my two nephews compete in a Pee-Wee wrestling tournament. As we walked through the gym doors, I was hit with a serious case of deja vu. The smell of the gym, the noise from the full bleachers, the sight of the competitors... wow! I turned to Steve and said, "Being here really takes me back."
In my former life, I was a wrestling cheerleader. Before that, I was a spectator at my older brother's matches. I have definitely spent hours upon hours watching kids grapple. The difference is I am now watching the next generation. There were many parents in the stands who were classmates of mine at Oakes High School, watching their kids dual it out on the mats.

There were a lot of emotions going on in that gym... the exhilaration of winning, the agony of an injury, the pain of defeat. I told Steve that I thought wrestling was good "man-training" (I'll give a shout out to the handful of girls who were competing as well). It seems that wrestling teaches these mini-men how to be confident; how to be competitive; how to control their bodies; how to be good sports; and how to suck it up when things don't go as planned.
Here is Logan, who is 7 and in first grade, winning his third match. Look at the anquish on his opponents face. It about breaks my heart!

This is Kaleb (maroon singlet) during his second match. He is 12 and in the 7th grade.

Kaleb had a quick pin and ended up in 1st place in his section. Hurray, Kaleb!

As I was watching the matches, I had cheers ('You've got to pin to win!', 'Take down for 2') running through my head. Luckily, I didn't loose my cool and start shouting and clapping like a dork! Like I said, deja vu.
Kippy was patiently waiting with Logan after his final match so he could get his trophy. Logan finished first in his section as well.

Yay Logan!

For those of you who haven't ever been to a wrestling tourney, there is a lot of bleacher time. We watched Kaleb and Logan compete in 4 matches, which totaled less than 15 minutes, but our elapsed time at the gym was almost 4 hours.

So, we needed to indulge the kids in some snacks... mmmmm yummy ice cream bars!

We had a great time watching our nephews compete. And we are so PROUD of them!