Oops!!!

Fell off the monkey bars at the park today.  Flipped out about the small scrape on her knee (she has a total love affair with bandaids...).  About 30 minutes later, I took a picture of her forehead and when she saw that, the drama continued!  :)  Oh, the joys of having a little girl!  :)  She felt better after she called Daddy and told him all about it.

The Big Kids...and the Little Kids

After a Tuesday that was full of our chores expectations for the summer and half the day spent cleaning (and learned how and what that means by having to do certain things a few times...) we finally made it to Wednesday!  :)  The boys were SO excited - they were leaving for camp!!  This was Jacob's first year and he remembered how much fun Josiah had last year and could not WAIT!!

It's a great way for them to have a little camp experience - without it being super long, expensive, or overwhelming for the kids.  Our church takes the kids up to a conference center/resort area about 1.5 hours away.  It's our kids, our camp counselors, we teach our curriculum, and they use all the fun resort area stuff (lake, hiking, pool, etc).  SO it's not like I'm sending them off to a camp with 500 strange kids they've never met.  David did that as a kid and LOVED it, but I think it would be overwhelming to some.  This is 3 days, 2 nights, and they PACK in the fun (lights out isn't until 10:45 pm!!). 

Nobody was crying at my leg begging to stay home, that's for sure!!! 

 Callie and Caleb and I headed to a little park not far from our house.  We only just discovered it at the end of last summer.  It's in the midst of a residential area sort of hidden away, but is this cute little playground with a spray fountain.  It was overcast and cloudy and the rain had kept us from going to the pool all week.  Figured this would make up for it a little bit.  They LOVED it!

 They kept filling up their bucket with water and then filling it with sand to make some kind of sand castle I suppose.  I loved hearing their conversation, watching them laugh and giggle together.  Such a sweet relationship.

 Enjoyed a little popcorn snack...

...and practiced a little percussion before heading home for lunch and naps.  Fun morning with my little ones!

The Columbia Blowfish!

Our local baseball team (I don't even think they are Triple A - maybe the division below that?) has a reading incentive program for the local schools.  For each student that completes reading 4 books during the last month of school, they can earn 4 tickets to a baseball game, a free hot dog and pepsi from the concession stand, and march in a pregame parade!!  The game was the night of the last day of school, so we decided it would be a fun way to celebrate!  :)

David took the younger ones up to get our seats while I waited with the boys down at the field for their pregame parade. 

 There's my readers!  :)

 We were super excited about the game - the boys had brought a glove and a ball, we were all comfy and ready for the game to start.

 Then they came over the loud speaker and said that because of the large amount of rain the day before, the infield was deemed unsafe to play and the game was being cancelled.  BUMMER!!  The good news was that our tickets (and parking stub!) would be good for any other home game during the season, and that our home team was going to come out and do a Home Run Derby for us.  That helped!  :)  We convinced the kids that it was our lucky day - we would stay and watch lots of home runs and STILL get to come back another day for FREE and watch a baseball game again.  Whew!  During the home run derby, David even caught a fly ball!!  It was our lucky night!

 The players hung out afterwards and gave autographs (Jacob was SO excited about this)

It ended up being quite a fun night - even if it wasn't exactly what we had expected!  :)

Last Day of School 2012

Hooray - it's the last day of school!  This year has gone by quickly, but we are all SO ready for summer vacation!  :)  Josiah woke up and said "I'm so excited about the last day of school - I sure hope I pass 3rd grade!  I died laughing - the kid has gotten 100s all year long...pretty sure it was mathematically impossible for him NOT to pass 3rd grade!!  That's the perfectionist in him I suppose....not wanting to count his chickens before they hatch or something!

 Josiah - Last Day of 3rd Grade

 Jacob - Last Day of 1st Grade

 Today was Jacob's class party so I loved getting to go in and help with that.  He has had a fabulous teacher this year and they put together a little presentation for us to see called "The ABCs of 1st Grade".

 Each child got to come up to the smart board, use the microphone, and present a letter with some information about what they had learned.  Jacob somehow earned the job of being in charge of the microphone and handing it to each student as they came up.  Guess he is a little familiar with microphones :)

 His letter was "c". He showed us how he knew all 7 continents and labeled them with the smartboard.  I mean - technology is so cool! And so much fun!

 The party theme was fish - so lots of fun fish snacks and games :)

 Watch out 2nd grade - here they come! 

 Mrs. Enright and Jacob - we have LOVED her!!  Thank you for loving, challenging, encouraging, and teaching Jacob in such awesome ways this year!!!  He is ready for 2nd grade!!

 After Jacob's party was done, I headed down to Josiah's class to sign him out.  I told Ms. Williams about what he had told me in the morning - she thought that was hilarious!  She gave him his report card and assured him that he had passed with flying colors and was MORE than ready for 4th grade!

Josiah and Ms. Williams - thank you Ms. Williams for an awesome year this year!  Josiah absolutely loves to learn and this year has been no different  Thank you for continuing to challenge him and keep his love of learning alive!!!

And now, let summer vacation begin!!!

National Donut Day and a Special Treat

After school (it was a half day so we were done at 11 am!!), we headed to Krispy Kreme to celebrate National Donut Day where everyone gets a free donut!!  All 4 kids chose a different donut!  :)

 Jacob's pick - Chocolate Frosted Creme Filled

 Caleb's pick - Glazed Chocolate Cake

 Josiah's Pick - Glazed Lemon Cake (their special of the month; I picked the same one - yum!)

 Callie's Pick - Chocolate Iced with Sprinkles!

 After we got home and had lunch, the 3 younger kids went to bed for a nap (even Jacob!) and David decided to redeem one of his birthday coupons!  

They went to go see The Avengers - and they LOVED it!  :)

The County Fair

All of the 3rd grade classes finished up a unit on Charlotte's Web and so in lieu of doing class parties at the end of the year, we did one big "county fair" for them on Friday.  It was so fun.  Each class was in charge of 2 or 3 stations that were county fair type games - pie eating contest, face painting, etc.  Our class room moms were in charge of the apple bobbing station and sack races.  The kids were so excited and it was a lot of fun!  Because it was on Friday, David got to come participate too :)

 We got there early before school to help set up out on the field - Callie and Caleb are such troopers!

 The kids could dress up in western wear (we don't own any of that...) and everyone got a straw hat to wear.  We saw lots of braids and overalls :)  So cute.

 Our neighbor, Abby, is on the right doing her best at the bobbing for apples :)

 Here's Josiah and his friend Miguel.  The kids loved this and it was absolutely hysterical to watch!

 I was in charge of the sack racing station.  I had borrowed some burlap sacks from Northside, but after the first half of kids finished their races, all but one sack had busted through the bottom.  We improvised and used a trash bag for the last set of races - and it held up remarkably well :)  Go figure!

 Many finished like this :)

 Pretty sure that's Caleb and Callie in there! :)

 This girl LOVES having her face painted!!!

We had a great time!!!