Dance Festival and the Last Day of School

The last week of school is always full of fun activities for the kids.  Both Hunter and Chase participated in the dance festival at their school.  Chase's grade made up a dance to a classical song while Hunter's class danced in pairs to Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.  The little girls and I had a lot of fun watching all of the dances.

Hunter with his friends Jett and Jonah.

Chase waiting for his turn to dance.

 I love picking up the kids on the last day of school.  I like to get a picture of them with their teachers.  It's fun to look back at them through the years and remember what wonderful teachers they have had.

Mrs. Hardy and Chase

Mrs. Siebach and Hunter

That afternoon I took out the kids for a special lunch.  We ended up going to Malawi's.  (Yup, we like the pizza there!)

 I always love hanging out with the kids and I enjoy their company so much.  Hopefully they will always enjoy being together as a family.

Memorial Day in Mt. Pleasant

We took a nice little trip down to Mt. Pleasant on Sunday for dinner with Mike's family.  It was fun to visit Grandma's house, but it was a little weird not having her there anymore.  Mike's parents want to buy the house and move down there.  It seems like they will be a long ways away, but maybe it will be more fun to stay there for a little while so we can have a longer visit.  We played card games and the cousins had fun outside in the backyard.

Weston, Chase, and Gage

Hunter in his tree fort.

Aria shooting pretend arrows.

The kids were all excited to play with the rotary phone.

 We stayed over night and helped them with a few things around the house Monday morning.  After that we headed over to the cemetery so we could visit the graves of a few Lowry and Staker relatives.

 It was fun to see the flags lining the roads and all of the beautiful flowers left on the graves.

 Grandma and Grandpa Staker's headstone is the cutest.  On the back it lists all of the names of their kids and it says, "We had the best!"

We said our goodbyes and with a quick trip to Subway we were back on the way home.  It was a fast trip but we had a lot of fun hanging out with the family.

You Say it's My Birthday

I celebrated my 38th birthday the other day.  Yeah, I know, I look much younger than that.  :)  Michela picked out a Dora birthday card that sang Happy Birthday to me.  I got some garden gloves and a trowel so I went over to the Nursery on Friday and picked up some plants for my garden.  Aria and I planted the seeds and plants and now we are just waiting to see if the garden will survive the heat and Miss Laina.  It was all of about 5 seconds before Laina was stepping on and digging up everything we had just planted.  Oh well, hopefully something will survive.
On Friday night we went out to dinner at the Olive Garden ( my kids love that place!) and came home for ice cream and some goodies.  On Saturday Mike and I went out with some friends and family.  We first went to see The Avengers movie (Loved it!) and then went to eat dinner at Malawi's Pizza.  My favorite pizza is the Capri with all of those yummy tomatoes on it.  And of course we had to order a couple of the dessert pizzas.  Who can resist the chocolate peanut butter one!

It was a fun few days of birthday activities, but I'm kind of glad it is all over.  Now I just have to figure out how to get myself back into shape so I can feel fabulous when I hit 40 in a couple of years!

Boots

Laina is getting to be such a big girl!  She totally cracks me up with all of her talking and silly antics.  She is obsessed with boots right now and is often seen wearing one of Aria's pair of boots.  Personally I think she looks like a little swashbuckling baby pirate.  Here she was proudly showing off her boots to me.

She is talking up a storm lately.  It's like there are new words coming out of her mouth every day!  My favorite is when she sings all the names in our family.  She goes around singing, "Daddy, Mommy, Lala, Hundo, Dace, Aria."  It is the cutest thing to hear.  She also loves to point out people in pictures.  The funniest is when she is in the picture.  I'll ask her, "Who's that?"  She'll point at herself and say, "You!"  Makes me laugh every time.  She even learned Uncle Cuckoo's name.  Uncle Cuckoo is my brother Craig.  I would point him out on our calendar and she soon was saying Cuckoo every time she went past it.  Craig was so happy when we were out in California a couple of weeks ago and she would say it every time she was around him.
She is getting good at telling me what she wants.  "I wan Juice."  "I wan Molk (Milk)."  "I wan Pantate (Pancake)."  "I wan cookie."  "I wan Grake (grape)."  "I wan Moothie (smoothie)."

She's also a little copycat and mimics everything that Aria is doing.  My favorite is when she tries to copy Aria's dancing moves.  She's like a little shadow.
Love this sweet little girl and how much joy she brings to her family.  What would we have ever done without her?!

Solar Eclipse

On Sunday we were excited to watch the solar eclipse.  Hunter had gotten a pair of these special glasses at school that we could watch the big event with.  We ran to the window at 6:30 to see it beginning.  Mike also brought out his welding mask which worked great.  It made the sun look green though, which gave it a radioactive creepy look.  The kids all took turns trading off between the glasses and the mask.

 I took a couple of pictures through the glasses and it worked pretty well.  Here is one at about 6:30.

Chase, Aria, and I were playing a board game, so about every 15 or 20 minutes we would jump up and look again.  Here is a picture from around 7:00.

At 7:30 we were anxious to see the full eclipse but instead we were greeted by a cloudy sky.  We couldn't see anything!

A cool view over the roof of our neighbor's house.

What a major bummer.  The kids all went off a bit disappointed.  About 15 minutes later Mike came inside and told us the clouds had cleared.  We ran out with our gear and saw this.

 Not the full eclipse put at least we got to see the progression of it.  This ended up saving the day for us.

Such a fun experience and I bet it will be one they will be remembering for the rest of their lives.  I can just see them now telling their kids and grandkids, "When I was a kid I got to see a solar eclipse!"

The Graduate

Aria had her graduation ceremony at Preschool today.  I can't believe how fast the year has gone by!  She looked so darling up there in her red cap and gown.  They put on a little program, singing songs and playing a slide show.  I always love the songs and the little boy next to Aria was cracking me up the whole time.  He always sings with the loudest voice and gets all into the actions.  This picture makes me giggle every time I see it.

Here she is with some of her classmates.

She loves her teacher Miss Valerie.

Proud Momma with her sweet little smarty pants.

I totally started crying when I saw her standing there with her little diploma.  It is unbelievable to me that she will be starting Kindergarten next year.  Then it will just be me and Laina at home.  She has worked so hard this year and is starting to read so well.  She has loved going to school and has had such a great experience.  She is growing up way too fast for me, will somebody please tell her to slow down!  I love her so much and I am so glad I get to be her Mom.  I am so proud of you Aria!

Operation Egg Drop

Chase had an Egg drop project for school.  He thought about the best way to do it.  One thought was to stick in a jar of peanut butter, he saw it on Shake It Up, but I thought that could get way too messy.  The next idea was a parachute.  Parachute number one didn't fair too well.  We tried using a plastic garbage bag tied to a gift bag, but the bag didn't catch enough air and the gift bag was too heavy.  Next we cut out a big circle from a trash bag.  We put the egg inside of a plastic easter egg lined with cotton balls, and put the egg into a paper lunch sack lined with light weight cloth diapers.  We tied it all together and it was ready for launch.
Chase was so excited when the janitor called his name and threw his parachute into the air.
 

It floated gently down and landed with a soft thud.  Chase was so happy it had worked so well.

After opening the bag and tearing the tape off of the plastic egg he found that his egg was still intact.  The project was a success!

After we said goodbye to Chase I took Laina and Aria over to the park for a little play time.  Laina charged right up the stairs and climbed all the way to the top of the tallest slide.  I yelled at Aria to go with her, but Laina didn't even balk about the height and just launched herself down the slide.

 Of course I panicked a bit seeing her up there so high all by herself, but when I saw the pure joy on her face when she came down I quickly got over it.  They had fun climbing up and sliding down every slide the park had to offer.

By the end their hair was standing on end from all of the static electricity generated by those plastic slides.  It was a beautiful sunny day and the girls had a perfectly beautiful time together.  I can't wait for more days like these.