Mike and our preacher have been studying with one of Mike's co-workers for the past month, and this evening she was baptized in the pool in our backyard! (Our building is undergoing renovations so we are not allowed in it right now.) Please pray for Mardi as she continues to grow in the faith.

The day after Emily got out of school for the summer, we took our annual cabin trip with my family. This year we met at a cabin by a lake in KY in the Red River Gorge area. We all enjoyed hiking, canoeing, swimming in the lake, and just being with family. After our weekend at the cabin, we all headed to Lexington so the kids could participate in Mom's annual grandkids camp. Katelyn, Mike, and I stayed with Neal and Suzy, as Katelyn is not quite potty-trained, which is the one requirement for being a camper. Katelyn was okay with it and enjoyed spending time with Aunt Suzy. One day, Mike and I took a day trip to Cinncinati to see a Reds game. That was the first Major League Baseball game that Mike and I had ever been to; I enjoyed it more than I thought I would! At the end of the week, we drove home with our exhausted campers.

The following Monday, the kids and I made a list of things we would like to do this summer. It's now two weeks into our summer, and we've checked off several items from our list. Here's our list with astericks indicating what we've done so far:
*Go to Bass Lake - park only minutes away from our house; the kids and I walked the trail around the lake
*Play school
*Pool - we have an 8 ft in diameter, 3 ft deep pool that we set up in the backyard when we got back from our trip. With how hot it's been, it's been like swimming in bathwater.
Pawprint Park - our name for the playground at the school near our old house (one of the playgrounds has pawprints on the ground)
Beach
Lighthouse - we went to a lighthouse last year and Drew really enjoyed going up to the top
*Library storytime
*Emily's school park
Visit Dot - an elderly lady who lives in our old neighborhood
*Visit Grandma (Mike's mom; she has a Wii that Emily and Drew really like to play)
*Banana-eating race - done two times, Emily won both. I did not participate - eating a whole banana makes me gag.
Pie-eating race - Drew envisions putting his face in a whole pie and eating away. I envision individual-sized pies and I'll be using a fork.
Tea party
Go to Marbles Kids Museum
Go to Museum of Natural History
*Play with playdoh
*Paint - Drew found a recipe for Super Sidewalk Paint so we made it and painted on the patio
Sprinkler
Go to the Talking Trees and Rocks park - it's an educational forest that has recordings to learn about the trees and rocks
Visit Daddy at work
Go to Chick-fil-a for lunch
Go to a movie
Go to Harris Lake - a park about 20 minutes from our house

Other fun things we've done that were not on our list:
-Mike took Emily and Drew to a Mudcats baseball game. I stayed home with Katelyn; she rode Drew's bike around the block, we ate ice pops, and then she took a bubble bath. I think she found out that being left behind can be fun too.
-Last night and tonight, Emily is spending the night at her Grandma's house with her cousin there as well.
-Drew and Mike are camping out in the backyard tonight. Earlier tonight we cooked hotdogs over a charcoal fire and then roasted marshmallows.

I was a little worried that there would be a lot of fussing and fighting between Emily and Drew, but they've been playing together very well. It's two weeks into summer, and I'm having a great time!

We recently gave away our baby furniture and moved Katelyn into a twin-size bed. Along with the baby furniture went her chest of drawers, so Mike's dad agreed to make one for us. He brought it over Monday and it looks great! We think he did a wonderful job!

Yesterday, Drew passed gas at breakfast and complained that he didn't like the smell. I told him the smell would go away, and then I went upstairs for something. When I got back down, Drew complained that his pants were wet so he wanted to change them. After inspecting his pants, I discovered that he had sprayed his pants with air freshener to get rid of the smell. He smelled very strongly of Fruit Explosion air freshener for about 4 or 5 hours!

Since Mike has officially dumped pleo in favor of facebook, I guess it's now up to me to update the non-facebookers (all 2 or 3 of you!) of the happenings in the Tidwell home. My latest posts were about the kids' birthdays. Since then, Mike and I have both celebrated birthdays, although I'll refrain from posting pictures since we look basically the same, with just a few more gray hairs. Mike and the kids baked my birthday cake - the chocolate cherry cake that I ask for every year. Drew helped me make Mike's birthday cake (his help mainly consists of licking the beaters, although he has gotten pretty good at cracking the eggs). Mike gave me a bike for my birthday, and I gave him a bike for his birthday. Now we all have bikes except for Katelyn, although she is getting good at pedaling the tricycle. Neal and Suzy gave us their bike trailer that Dylan has outgrown, so that's what Katelyn rides in when we go bike-riding. Emily has ridden her bike to school a few times since Christmas, so I decided one day to put Drew and Katelyn in the bike trailer and ride my bike up to the school to get her. Half of the ride to the school is uphill, and I ended up walking the bike up most of the hills. I was sore for two days after! I don't know when I'll attempt that again.

Emily is doing a great job with reading, and is reading about two levels higher than what is expected of her in kindergarten. I recently bought a set of books by Roald Dahl, and when Emily saw "Matilda", she started reading it (we have the movie). She's now about 6 or 7 chapters into the book; of those I have read 2 of the chapters to her. There are some pretty big words in the book, so I don't know how much of it she's actually reading when she does it on her own, but she has really enjoyed the book. I think she gets the main idea, and it looks like the movie followed the book pretty closely, so I'm sure that helps.

One of our neighbors teaches piano, so Emily started the year taking lessons from her. She has done well, but she lacks the discipline to practice as much as the teacher requested. After talking to the teacher, we have scaled down what is expected of Emily, and that has helped keep her interest. We told Emily that after 8 lessons, she can decide whether or not to continue. I really have no idea what her decision will be.

Drew is into imaginative play, with his favorite game being "travel to Nana and Papa's house". His favorite "vehicle" is the stairs, but since his idea of travelling is to load up the vehicle with half of everything that's in his room (and other people's rooms), he doesn't usually get to travel on the stairs for safety sake. Usually his bed is the vehicle, although we recently travelled in the tub. I think the main attraction of the game is putting all his belongings in a pile, which is why I'm not too fond of the game since he doesn't like to unpack the vehicle! He also likes to play store and school. He is looking forward to the Fall when we plan to enroll him in half-day preschool for three days a week. As mentioned before, he loves to help me bake, mainly because he likes to eat sweets.

Katelyn loves Dora the Explorer and can often be heard quoting from the show. Today we were going upstairs to change her diaper, and as we walked, she was singing, "Where are we going? To change my diaper. Where are we going? To change my diaper. . ." She also likes to say, "Say it with me," just like Map does. Katelyn continues to suck her first two fingers, especially when she's tired. As she sucks on her fingers, the spit rolls down to her hand. When I'm holding her, she wipes off the spit with her other hand and then smears it on my neck. Maybe marking her territory?? Drew recently got close to my neck and told me I smelled bad. So that's my new perfume - Katelyn's spit.

Last weekend, we received our first (and hopefully only) snowfall of the season. It snowed Friday night into Saturday and we ended up with about 3-4 inches of snow, with a layer of sleet on top. The kids enjoyed sledding down our driveway and yard. On Sunday, the snow was just right for building, so Drew and I made a snowman. Then Emily came out and made what she called a snow owl. Our church services were cancelled on Sunday, but one of our neighbors invited us and some other families over for a Bible study. We studied the Tower of Babel and then visited afterwards. We had a nice time with them and got to know some more of our neighbors. School ended up being cancelled Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. By Wednesday, most of the roads were already clear, but they said on the news that many of the school parking lots were still icy. We finally had school on Thursday, although it was delayed one hour. Emily was really missing school and was very happy to go back today!

Hope you enjoy the update. It will probably be a couple of months before I write again! :)