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Kai woke up a little later this morning after his party the previous night.

One thing he wanted to do before his swimming lesson was to do one experiment from the science box he got from our neighbor.

Here it is...

 It was off to swimming - we had a bit of struggle to get in the pool, unsure why. Once he got in, he was fine per usual.

After swimming, we went home for a quick lunch and the on to Waunakee for our haircuts. Kai always likes styling this mannequin's hair. He could spend hours here.

While I was getting my hair cut, he was outside busy chalking. I told Ms. Alissa to pose with her feet - if she bothered to paint her toenails, they may as well be in the blog.

from left to right, a comb, scissors, water spray, brush, hair dryer, product and two people getting their hair cut 

My in cart sorter at Woodman's...

...and my self service checkout lane scanner.

At night, we played with the neighbor - there was a "gold" bar that had some fossils that we needed to discover.

Then we played on the basketball court. There was a big bouncy ball that was fun to kick around.

This was the night they discovered how fun fireflies can be. It is darker out than what the picture shows.

Not sure if they smushed this one on purpose, but every kid has to have a story about the luminescence of a firefly.

Hunting for fireflies into the night.

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Today is Kai's birthday party. I know he is nervous about this as he got up at 6:30 - he never does this.

At school, they head out to Cross Plains. The forecast is rainy, so I'm happy they are going there since the space is bigger.

I picked him up a little early so we could get to Verona to set up. The good news it had stopped raining. One thing we kind of planned for, but didn't think it would be a big factor was the wind.

Here we are setting up around 4:30, we have an hour.

we put down rocks on the table, but it was Kai's idea to tape down the rocks that was a winning idea. I am nailing up his "HAPPY BIRTHDAY"  sign. If we didn't do nail things down, it would just waft around uncontrollably in the wind.

this also works

Here's a look at what the day looked like.

all set up

The good news is the pizza came, but it was 15 minutes early, it beat all the guests to the party. I put it in the car - it would stay warmer there.

Claire was the first one to arrive. She is our neighbor. Then Evie showed up, then everyone else.

Max, Claire and Annabelle

Even though it was cloudy and probably 72 degrees, many of the kids enjoyed the splash pad. Around 6PM we ate pizza.

left to right around table - Greg, Annabelle, Max, Conner, Dax, Kai, Emma, Evie, Rahul, Ardro

Kai, Evie, Emma, Claire

These three are the "Werewolves" from Little Red Preschool. They all went to different schools as kindergarteners, so they were happy to be back together.

Kai, Evie, Emma

It was so windy up on the hill that we went down to the lower shelter (you can't reserve it), but since there was no one there, it was our only chance to get candles burning - we went for it.

Claire, Kai, Emma

Annabelle's Dad (Greg) helped shield the wind so we could get the candles lit briefly, and then blown out.

After we got home, we had an extra pizza - we gave it to our neighbor. Their son Ardro got Kai a card and a science kit.

Inside the science kit was a bar of gold. Kai wanted his picture with the bar. He then took to editing his photo. We think he looks like the Monopoly man (Milburn Pennybags is the formal name).

That's all today - a late night, everyone is tired, and it is raining very hard again at 10PM. However, we lucked out with our two hour window for the party. It was windy, but it wasn't rainy and the kids had fun.

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Today was a garden day. It seems like every day that is a garden day, that they get a lot of rain the previous evening, cancelling all plans.

It did not rain last night, so therefore, here is the garden.

weeding corn has to be the worst - but to a kid it might be fun

After the garden, they immediately went to the high school pool. That is why he is wearing swim trunks. We didn't get any picture of the pool today, but he did go in.

After school, I picked him up. He wanted a few pictures of his LEGO creation. Here is one of those photos.

I had to drop off a library book, but he wanted to go regardless. We knew a few people there. Kai is always very friendly with who is around him.

Before we left, he wanted to take a video of what he was playing.

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Just a few pictures today. At school, they went to the library and the Dino Park, but the only pictures we seemed to get were at the school.

I think one reason they may have stuck around this school is that their new play equipment got fully assembled. I know they got to play on it today.

When I picked him up, they were playing "Sorry." I think that is why he wanted to play "Battleship" tonight. He did a good job of playing, but I think he cheated since he put his destroyer diagonally, which I'm not sure is part of the rules. Regardless, he did a good job of mapping his hits and misses on the grid.

Tonight we started assembling the birthday party items. It looks like it might rain on Friday, so I get depressed when I see the rain chance climb and then happy when I see it fall. Right now, the Apple Weather forecast has a 45% chance of rain, but Weather Bug and others have 70% chance of rain.
 

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Posting a little early today as I wait for the oil change to be done.

This morning was a trip to the dentist. Outside the dental office were some turkeys - seems you can find turkeys anywhere these days. I even saw one in our neighborhood a few weeks ago.

just like the NBC logo

 Our dental hygienist is Jodie. We like her very much. Kai was watching Trolls (I believe). Next week we have an allergy appointment, we'll need to find a good movie for that as well.

After this, we had to meet the rest of his class at Marshall Park. They are all dressed in swimwear - I wonder if they will set up a sprinkler, because I don't think going in Lake Mendota is part of this.

Here is a photo of them at the beach. They had more fun there than I thought (I honestly didn't think you could spend a whole day there). They were allowed to go into the water up to knee length.

playing at the beach

building a new playground at the preschool

Normally every pick up involves a video or photo of what he was doing prior to me arriving. Here is today's message.

Kids are curious, and sometimes I need to do something interesting to get them away from something I don't want to do, like getting bitten by mosquitoes.

This is possibly the turtle we helped across the road. This likely happened on Sunday morning after the big rain. I got him off the road with a shovel so we didn't have to look at it forever.

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Back to summer school on Monday. It was a warm day, but they did walk to Tiedeman Pond - they have a playground there with one of these things.

you can never quite get a good dig at the dirt with one of these things

I picked him up at school - he made a 2-minute video of what he was doing. I warned him it was too long for the blog, so you only get this...

Since we did not go to gymnastics on Saturday, we went this evening at 5PM.

In the evening, we got to put a sticker on Isle Royale - it is always a small ceremony.

And we put up two pictures and the Junior Ranger Badge.

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Today we went down to Illinois to celebrate Auntie Dawn's birthday (a week later than originally planned).

We had made a couple of crafts for Dawn, but this is the one we were most excited about - it barely fit in the envelope

It was a giant sized ducky birthday card. I think it was actually really neat, who needs a small handheld card when you can get one this big.

After the meal, we played a game - I'm not sure if it had a name, but I think it could safely be called, "Put the tape on the candle."

Heidi didn't need a blindfold as she closed her eyes.

Kai took this picture of us in front of the flowering purple wreath.

As a prize for playing the birthday games, Kai got this big squirt gun. I think I was the only victim of it today.

A selfie

And some birthday cake - we also had Key Lime Pie as well.

And that's it for the weekend!