Days With the Duerksens

The end of the year came with Delaney's 5th grade promotion!  That's it, our last grade school function after 12 years of class parties, field trips, Christmas programs, spring music programs, family reading nights, book fairs, and other special events. Wow! Delaney will join the rest of us at the Jr./Sr. High School next year as a 6th grader, and I'm not sure that has sunk in yet! She had THE BEST YEAR, thanks to her teacher, Ms. Gibson.In fact, they loved her so much they spent half the year making a secret book for her filled with positive messages and puns about her.  They presented it to her at their promotion, and I do think she was quite surprised!  Delaney looked forward to every school day, and she really blossomed into quite a little leader this year, along with her friends:  Quinli, Elaina, and Claire.   She's grown just a little bit!  

Much to Caiden's delight (ha ha), the junior English class always has a poetry coffeehouse, where they showcase some of their best poems.  They also have to come up with a display that describes them and shows off their poetry.  They wrote a total of 21 poems during the unit, but they shared just a few of their favorites, which included reading 2 of them in front of an audience!  It was awesome to finally see and hear some of Caiden's writing, and I was so impressed by his creative display!  

Beginning on Easter Sunday, we had a kitten explosion!  First, a litter of 6 kittens born under our air conditioner.  Then, a week later, one litter of 4 was born in the barn, followed by a litter of 5 on our porch!  About a month later, 2 more cats had litters of 4 and 5, respectively.  Luckily, we have found homes for all of them - even 2 of the mama cats found new homes with their kittens.  Thank goodness!  Boy are they fun to have around for a little while, though! We couldn't resist keeping these two!  

PROM 2021 - Caiden being a junior meant his class was in charge of planning prom this year.  They decided to have it at the Emma Creek Barn, and unlike most of the rest of spring, the evening was beautiful, picture-perfect!  Caiden had asked Christina Wappler, a foreign exchange student from Germany this year, to go with him to prom.  They also ate supper with Emily and Timothy and arrived all together in Caiden's car (which the girls had enjoyed cleaning out).  I do believe they had a great time, and it was fun to see the kids all fancied up for an evening! photo credit:  Alica Cox Thanks to Mrs. Cox, we have proof that Caiden danced! Luke, Caleb, Caiden, Skyler, Eddie, Timothy, Kale  

The spring semester of school felt close to normal with the return of live, in-person concerts and recitals!  Delaney and her 5th grade class had their first and only concert of the year in April, and at the beginning of May, Delaney had her last (probably) piano recital.  The older 2 also had the annual spring concert and BBQ.  This felt amazing!