Thursday, March 17, 2016

Spring 2016 Esther and Clara Update

It has been a few months since we posted so I thought I'd give an update on the girls and share some recent pictures. 
The girls being silly with some beard hats.
Esther is a very bright and fun little girl and is becoming more of her own person. She is still doing well in kindergarten. Just a couple of months until we will have a kindergarten graduate! She has several good friends and she recently attended her first "real" birthday party of one of her classmates.  She loves to read and is reading on about a 2nd-3rd grade level. She loves the Junie B. Jones book series and has read dozens of them. She still loves to draw, color, and do anything art related. Now that she is pretty good at spelling and writing sentences she writes some impressive (to us) books. Esther has also recently started soccer, so we will see how that goes. She tends to be really shy in new situations with people she does not know. We are hoping she has fun participating in a group sport.
Esther being silly at a birthday party.

Esther caught this baby goat.
Clara is still a mess! She is a very sweet girl who loves to help, and she is crazy and silly. She makes us laugh all the time. She is fearless and is not afraid to try things. She too loves art--especially if it involves glue, tape, and tiny bits of paper. She really likes music and singing. She is always singing a song, sometimes real songs, sometimes made up.
Clara with one of the baby goats.
They both love to play outside and be with all of our animals. They really like the baby goats. Esther is pretty good at catching them, though they are getting too big for them to pick up. Clara loves to help Josh in whatever he is doing. She opens gates, carries and stacks wood, and runs to get things. They both help do chores, both inside and out.

The girls putting compost on our fruit trees.

We are all enjoying the spring weather. We flew a kite for the first time this past weekend.
Building with sticks out in the pasture
They are fun kids and we are enjoying getting to more activities and go more places as they get older. In the past few months we have taken them to their first movie in a theater and their first shows at the Walton Arts center, We have been having some of their friends over fore movie nights which is always fun. We also spent the weekend in Branson with some friends a few weeks ago. Next week is our first spring break with a kid in school so we have some fun activities planned.

First movie in a theater - "The Good Dinosaur"
They got some snazzy hats in Branson.
We stayed at a hotel with an indoor water park in Branson.
First show at the Walton Arts Center - "The Snowman"
Movie night with friends at our house

We will leave you with a video of the girls band.