Wildfire next door!

As of this morning, this wild fire is 0% contained and burned 37,000 acres. For those of you out-of-town, this fire is in our county just West of us about 15 miles. We're hoping for a reprieve in the weather. The wind was bad yesterday, so the smoke was worse at some times than others depending on which way the wind was blowing. We were sure we would be heading to Cheyenne to stay with Jim and Debbie this morning since our house (minus the basement) seemed full of smoke last night, but it's not too bad this morning. We'll see how the day goes and whether the boys' games are cancelled due to bad air quality. Anyway, pray for the fire to contained, the people who have lost their homes or been evacuated, and the firefighters.


This was the view last night from our tree house.


Above our house...


Pretty ominous looking cloud of smoke!

Last day of school!

It's here...the last day of school. We decided to plan a surprise for the kids. Starting with a message on our chalkboard...


a banner for a theme...with some dollar store Hawaiian decor on our table.


It's our last day! Mac's teacher took some stats at the beginning and end of the school year and he's grown 2 inches and gained 9 pounds. Seems like a lot for a school year. The boys are excited for Summer.


So for our second surprise, we waited for the kids to get off the bus with water balloons in hand...


We don't usually pick them up from the bus stop, so they were already wondering what was up.


Then we started to pummel them.


We expected the kids to all have smiles like this...


but I think they were mostly confused and shocked. The bus driver gave us some honks though! They'll be more prepared next year...


Afterwards we invited the neighbors over for hotdogs and a balloon fight.




More kids showed up as their schools got let out...but I only got pictures of the Bauder kids

The kids in our neighborhood go to three different schools, so this was a fun way to get the kids all together before the Summer. We hope to make it a "Last day of School" tradition.