Celebrating the Future Mr. & Mrs. Deterding!

On Sunday afternoon, we had a great time celebrating John and Becky and meeting all of Becky's family!

Becky's parents made it all the way from Waldo, KS; one of her brothers and his family came from Plainville; and his other brother and family live much closer in Gardner.

We all enjoyed our Sunday dinner, with the future bride/groom and their parents sitting together around the table.

After dinner, John and Becky surprised us by handing out gifts.

These gifts served as an extra-special way of asking us to be a part of their special day.  Violet and Evelyn (as well as Kyla and Becky's niece Callie) were asked to be flower girls!  Their bags had flowers for their hair, bubbles, tattoos and a ring pop.

Calvin and Oliver were asked to be ushers!  Their bags included a KU basketball and a ring pop, as well as a clever basketball-themed card created by Uncle John (timely as the Final 4 was played this weekend).

Here's the wedding crew!

Joy and I were excited to be asked to be bridesmaids!  And we were excited to finally meet Becky's mom, who John says is pretty much exactly like our mom :)

We're so happy for you, John & Becky!  And can't wait for the big day coming up in October!!

BotsKC

This is the first year that Wellsville has had a Robotics team and both of my boys were fortunate enough to be on it!  They will tell you that the high schoolers did the lion's share of work on "Unobot", their first-ever robot, but it was still cool that they were included on the team.  The big BotsKC competition was Friday and Saturday, and this is when their robot gets in the ring with bots from other schools from all over the Midwest, including some colleges.

There was quite the bracket for Saturday's competition, with our first match being against Basehor-Linwood.

Evelyn went along to watch and we all had to wear safety glasses in the arena.

Time for the first match! Wellsville is in the blue shirts and they wheeled Unobot to the ring for battle.

Unfortunately, this match didn't last long. One of Unobot's battery's got disconnected and so our robot was lifeless within the first minute, and we had to concede.

We had a break after that match and decided to go on a tour they were offering of the LMV automotive systems warehouse.  This is the largest manufacturer of automotive parts in North America.  They began the tour by showing us the parts of the Ford Transit and Chevy Malibu that they make.

They had 468 robots working to weld the parts together.  The place was quite impressive!

When we made it back from our tour, we discovered that Unobot had already had its second battle. . . and this one did not end well for us, unfortunately.  I guess there were parts flying all over the ring!  Pretty exciting, except when it's your robot leaving all of the carnage.  Oh well, I know it was a great experience for all of the students involved, and this WAS only our first year.  I hope my boys continue to stay involved on the Robotics team in the future!

Track Season is Here

In the Dwyer household, we've done lots of sports over the years, like baseball, soccer, football, and of course, basketball.  We added a new sport to the mix this week as Calvin started his track season!  He had two meets in his first week, and I was impressed with how well he did.  He is competing in one field event, High Jump.

 He's following in his momma's footsteps with his next event, Hurdles!  He won the hurdles in the first meet and got second in the second -- way to go, Calvin! 

This one's fun because Calvin gets to compete with his buddies, Ethan and Willie.

His third event is the 800 meter.  This is a race that Russ did all the way through high school, but I was never man enough for this crazy race.  Calvin seems to like it okay so far.

 His final event is the final event of every track meet, the mile relay, or as my track coach used to call it, the "Animal Relay."  This was another event I competed in throughout my track career, and it really is the best and the worst all at the same time.

 His team won this relay and were appropriately exhausted when it was over.

I had so much fun in track throughout my school years, and I love that Calvin now gets to make memories around the track as well.  Looking forward to several more meets before the season is done!

Library Tea

Once again, we had a great afternoon supporting our library and having fun with our friends at the annual Library Spring Tea!  And once again, Evie was excited that Kyla could come along.

The theme was "Reach for the Stars" and they had a celebrity red carpet for us and everything!

Cousins and BFFs, pretty cute! And they were excited to find Grandma Cheryl, there, too!

Violet was happy when she found Emily.

I was also happy to spend the afternoon with a couple of my besties.

We did some bidding on the silent auction items and then sat down to enjoy our lunch and tea.  Evie and Kyla also had fun making some crafts at the craft table.

Then it was time for the live auction.  My girls were really good at bidding! (I had to keep a close eye on them. . .)

 At one point, Violet actually took my paddle and ran up right in front of the auctioneer to make sure he saw her!  He said he should take Violet along on all of his gigs!  She was having so much fun.

As much fun as the bidding and the food and the drinks are, the best part of the library tea each year is spending time with so many wonderful friends.  It was a fantastic afternoon!