Summer...

Another reason I love summer is we have more time to dress up and have friends over.


And since we don't have a bedtime, we have more time to relax at night.

Don't you just love summer?

Summer

I love summer because we do the Harkins movie program with our friends

Cheap, cool and fun!

And we are always guaranteed to leave with a bellyache from too much popcorn.

Summer

One thing I love about summer...

watching these brothers become friends.


It's a wonderful thing to see.

Graduate

Ben graduated from Kindergarten last week.

We got there early and waited for the show to start. Emily asked to be taken out of class for the ceremony. I'm not sure how much she wanted to see Ben graduate and how much she just wanted to be taken out of class. Either way, it was the last day of school, so who cares?

They had a cute slideshow going of pictures throughout the year. Ben was in quite a few, but I had to take a picture of him with the ladies.

They all filed in and got ready for the performance.

He's waving to us.

Then, they sung a bunch of songs.







You can tell Ben takes his performances very seriously. He did great. He also brought home all Outstandings on his report card. We are so very proud of him.

We finally got to congratulate our graduate.



Here's a lovely family shot.


Then Emily somehow convinced me to take her home after that. Ben was allowed to go, the rest of the school still had class for 2 more hours. Since those 2 hours were really just lunch and recess, we went to her class to gather her things. Oh, they were having cupcakes, so she made sure she did not miss out on those.

She also had an excellent report card. Emily always does well in school. We are very proud of her too.

As we were leaving the school, Ben was running ahead and jumping as he was so excited for summer vacation.

We are going to have a great summer!

First Day of Summer Break

I have to write about Ben's graduation yesterday, but that will be a long post and I don't have the time right now.

I did want to report that our first day of summer break went very well. There was a Toy Story marathon this morning and then the kids played school. Really? On your first day of vacation, you're going to play school? Have I not taught them anything?

Although, it's 4:30 and the kids are still in their pajamas.

I guess I've taught them a thing or two.

Free

I'll admit it. I'm a bit of an addict. I'm addicted to taking pictures. The best part of having my new iPhone is that I have a camera with me all the time. Last night, was the big performance for the kids dance and drama classes. I had taken so many pictures and video of them in their costumes during dress rehearsals, that I decided I would chill out for the night. The fact that I'm getting a profession DVD with the performances in a few weeks helped also. I didn't feel that I had to record every moment. So, I did something I never thought I would...

I actually watched their performances through both my eyes and not through a lens.

Oh I still brought my camera, just in case, but I didn't take it out of the bag the whole night. It was actually refreshing. I laughed and didn't worry about shaking the camera. What a concept!

With that being said, here is some video of their dress rehearsal the night before the performance. It was nice that the kids could watch this and they both learned they needed to look at the audience more. But, that's what dress rehearsals are for.





When I showed Emily those videos and told her to look at the audience, be confidant, you know the dance. She told me she knows that, she's just shy. She's so sweet like that.

I didn't have video of their "Why Should I Worry" song as it was all blurry. But I asked Ben why he seemed so shy in that performance during rehearsal. He told me, "Mom I was just trying to be perfect." To which I told him, "Ben, you don't have to try to be perfect, you just are."

In any case, last night went off so well. The kids did so, so, so, so well. I couldn't be more proud. When I get a full copy of their show, I'll download their dances and post them.

Now we are headed off to Ben's Kindergarten Graduation. Don't worry, I'm bringing my camera.

The Longest Day

This has been one of the longest days ever for me. I'm like the energizer bunny minus the energy.    The Tooth Fairy is obviously just as busy because Emily lost her 8th tooth last night and she forgot to come to our house!  I should fire her and replace her with a more organized, trustworthy tooth fairy, but I'm cutting her some slack...this time!

Emily and Ben had their final rehearsal today. It was a full dress rehearsal at the Elks Opera House where the performance will be tomorrow night. Now, this place is pretty impressive. Those Elks know how do decorate!

The rehearsal today took 4 hours! Well, we sat and watched them set up the stage and do lighting and what not for an hour. Emily was hanging out with girls from her class.

My Mom watched Noah and can I just thank God for that? I can and I will! I was back and fourth between numbers to help the kids change backstage. Emily is in 3 numbers. I think she could handle things on her own, but I don't know that every piece that belonged to her would made it back in our bag. She's got a headband, wristbands, tap shoes, tights and she needs to change and be in her next costume in about 5 minutes or less. It helps to have me around to make things so smoothly.

Plus, Ben is...oh, how shall I say it...in his own world. I completely believe he could be in the dressing room making faces in the mirror and completely miss his performance. He's in two numbers.

Since I didn't have Noah and I could move around the theatre, I took lots of video which I will upload tomorrow. I don't think I'm even going to take video tomorrow. I just want to sit back and enjoy the show. Well, I'll still be running back and forth to the dressing room, but I will get to see all of their performances and I don't want to watch them through a video lens. We get a full DVD of the recital a week or so after, so I will upload the full performance from there. Just for you Gwynne!
Here's Emily on stage as the mouse.

The props were really cute and somebody worked very hard on them.

I don't have any of Ben onstage because I was taking video of him. I'll post it later. I'm out of steam for today and tomorrow is another very long day.

So, that's a rap.

Pools Open!

I'm in a foul mood, but I wanted to post these pictures of the kids since the pool opened for the season yesterday.










No story is needed really, so that's good as I don't feel like writing.
The End.

Field Trip

Emily's class had a field trip to the Highland Center in Prescott yesterday. I volunteered to chaperone per her request. I was worried the field trip wouldn't happen at all with the smoke from the fires burning around us. The winds changed and it has really cleared our air, so we were set to go.

I arrived at school and went to Em's class. I knew she was super excited. She not embarrassed by me yet which is nice. She even wanted to sit with me on the school bus instead of her friends.

The Highland Center is made up of all volunteers and it's a great spot to learn about our native plants and animals. We had never been before, so I was looking forward to learning somethings.

They started off with a puppet show about habitats.

I also found out that we live in a Highland Forest. Phoenix is a dessert. Flagstaff is a forest and we are in between, a Highland Forest. It's a special place where you can find a huge ponderosa pine and at the base of that pine is a cactus.

Then our guide, which I called Ms. Helen all day and found out later it was Ms. Ellen, took us on a hike where we learned about trees, galls, scat, burrows and lots of other things.

Ms. Helen/Ellen was full of all sorts of interesting facts. She was great with the kids too.

Here they are learning about pine needles. Did you know if you peel back the bark around the pine needles, you'll find a light colored stick that the squirrels love to eat? I had no clue.

We wrote a poem about all the things we saw, smelled and felt.

That tree behind Ms. Helen/Ellen is an Alligator Juniper because it's bark looks like an alligator. I was learning all sorts of things.

We saw lots of bird nests. I was teamed up with another parent, who just happens to be one of my good friends, so that made it even more fun!

We went on a scavenger hunt where we were the predators and had to find prey. Super fun.

We ate lunch and Ms. Dolores took over. I got her name right. She showed us all sorts of things. We even saw a snake skeleton. Did you know they have a rib cage? Seriously, google it. Fascinating.

Ms. Dolores took us on a final hike where we got to look out over the trees. Unfortunately, the smoke wasn't so pretty, but it's a good lesson for the kids.

They even got to try a pine nut straight from a pinon pine tree. Which actually tasted pretty gross. It's much better with some basil and oil in the form of pesto.

When we got back to the school, all the kids were exhausted. It was pretty warm out. Emily asked to go home an hour early with me, so we did. Well, after I pulled Ben out of his class too. It was such a wonderful day with my girl.

Rehearsal

Yesterday was the rehearsal for the play. Today was the rehearsal for Emily's tap number and the Why Should I Worry song.


Emily does great and has her dance memorized. I'm proud of her.

They look really cute for their song perfromance, but I didn't take any pictures of that.

Tomorrow is an all day field trip with Emily's class. Did I mention it's outdoors? Did I mention there is a wildfire burning down a town about 40 miles away. Our air quality is not so great right now.

But I can't really complain about air when people are losing their homes. Puts things in perspective. More pictures to come tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Around Our House

I've been neglecting my blog lately. We've been busy and I got the second book from The Hunger Games from the library, so if I have spare time, I'm reading.

Here's a recap of the last few days.

Our friends live in a cul-de-sac. We've been having impromptu block parties on Friday nights after dinner. We all come over and bring bikes, chairs, drinks and snacks and everyone has a great time. We hang out until long after the sun has gone to sleep. Emily was doing great on our friends electric scooter.

Until she biffed it going up a curb and scrapped both knees and palms of her hands raw. She's a trooper though and only cried a tiny bit once we were alone washing her wounds. By the way, there is still a home under construction in the cul-de-sac, hence the porta potty.

Noah seems to biff it every time just walking. Here he is with another band aid on his knee.

Our friend cut off the lock that has been stuck on David's bike for years. We bought it that way on craigslist and the bike shop broke their bolt cutters trying to get it off. We needed Jim and his welder to do the trick. David was happy.

Speaking of bikes, David got me a new one for Mother's Day. We went for a bike ride.

We also had a yard sale this weekend. That was taking up most of my time last week, the setting up for a yard sale takes a few days. Noah has never wanted to play with "baby toys", so if it was for 3 and under, it was in our yard sale. Noah was being a pill that morning, so we thought we'd try to sell him.

Not surprisingly, we didn't have any takers. He came inside and painted his face with lotion since he was unsupervised.

When I decided we'd have a yard sale about 6 weeks ago, I started listing the bigger ticket items on Craigslist. You always get more money there than you ever would at a yard sale. I sold $350 worth of stuff there in the past month. Then, we made about $265 at the yard sale which was great since most everything was $5 or under. I was happy with all that. And the second best part is my garages are spotless. I got out all the junk and while everything was out, I swept them. I want to make lunch and sit in my garage since it's so pretty. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating, but they do look nice.

Mother's Day was entirely lovely. The kids made me cards. Ben did one at school that had him fill in things about me. He said my favorite food was "rice krispy treats" and he's pretty close as I made them a few weeks ago and couldn't stop eating them. He also told his teacher my favorite TV show was "The Walking Dead". Which it is, so he got that right. David made me chocolate chip waffles for breakfast and bacon. For dinner, he made me fillet mignon. I relaxed and read my book and went for a bike ride. A wonderful day for sure.

Totally random, but Noah is by far our darkest skinned child. You wouldn't think that, but this kid tans. With one Grandpa from Italy and the other from Mexico, he definitely got there skin genes.

This morning I went to Mom's coffee. Yum.

My friend got these great tea cups from her mother in law from all over the world. Love them.

I want to break in her house and steal them, but I have a key so I wouldn't even need to break in. Maybe every time I go over, I'll put one in my purse. In a few months, she won't have any left. Wahahahahhaha. That's my evil laugh.

The kids have 7 days of school left. They are filled with drama/dance rehearsals and end of the year parties and field day. The pool at the clubhouse is opening this weekend since it's so hot and the kids are dying to go. Lots of fun stuff going on. Hopefully, I'll find time to post about all of it. I plan to collapse come Friday the 25th.