LAST day of School

Tried to take a picture in front of the house, but the sun was too bright.

So we moved to the side of the house.

And took a few funny pictures.

But it was still too bright. So we moved to the other side of the house and finally got the sun off the kids faces. It's been a great school year and I'm hoping for another one come August. 

Carter finished his year of preschool the same day. He wouldn't go stand with his class at first.

Until he saw that everyone was getting a medal. Then he was all for it.

 Carter with his sweet preschool teachers, Grandma B and Grandma K. We sure love these two ladies and all the hard work they put into making preschool a great experience for the little ones. Carter has had a great 6 months and is looking forward to going back for another year.

They even made him his own special lunch of just plain white bread. I don't know how this kid continues to grow. 

After school I met up with Becky at Foster's Freeze for our traditional end of the school year ice cream!  Here's to a great summer with (hopefully) minimal fighting. We'll see…...

Lunch with Leah (and Carter too)

 I felt bad that I missed Leah's field trip the day before. She was really sad I wasn't coming. So I tried to make it up to her by taking her out of school for lunch. I figured since it's the second to last day of school, she wouldn't be missing much.

She chose Chili's which was great for me because one, I love that restaurant and two, I had a gift card there. She got pizza and french fries and then requested cheesecake for dessert. She's one lucky girl I tell ya.

Carter got his own personal lunch there too. A side of tortillas. LOL…Hey, I'm just glad he'll eat something these days. 

After I dropped Leah back off at school, I got to finish the school day in Brandon's class with his outdoor end of the year party. Carter got to come and make his own visor with the big kids. They had parachute games, bean bag tosses, jump rope, obstacle courses, and bubbles. They ended with popsicles and juice boxes. Carter felt like one of the kindergartener's and even joined in on the races. It was super cute, but I was so busy supervising, that I didn't get any other pictures.

End of the year school fun

Brandon spent a good chunk of the second part of the school year learning about oceans and ocean animals. So they had an Ocean program today. It was super cute and I was so glad I could make it. They each had a part they said and then sang songs all together. 

Brandon's one of the tallest kids in his class, so he's in the back row. Which is why you can't see him because I picked a seat that was positioned just so that he was blocked. I moved after I took this picture, but unfortunately, only took video after this. But he's in there somewhere. Next to the girl with yellow pants. Or maybe they're white. I can't tell. Whatever! He's in the back. 

Afterwards, they had juice and cookies outside. This is Brandon and one of his best school buddies, Jay.

Later that day Leah had a walking field trip to McDonald's. I didn't get to go to this one since I needed to pick Carter up from preschool right in the middle of the field trip and they didn't allow siblings to come. But Gracie's mom sent me some photos so I didn't totally miss out. 

A Saturday full of FREE

Grateful for the rare free day of fun, because honestly….it's expensive to entertain when you have four kids. But this past Saturday we hit the jackpot on fun and free. 

Morning started out with a screening of "How to Train your Dragon 2". The screening came with soda, popcorn, candy and a plush toothless doll for each kid. Great great great movie! I totally LOVED it more than I thought I would, and I walked in expecting it to be great. 

We got home and had a couple of hours of down time and then headed to the kids school for a free carnival. The church down the street from the school has decided to "adopt" us as a service project.  They raised around $11,000 from their congregration and then put on this entire carnival full with bouncers, rock wall, face painting, clay pottery, popcorn, italian ices, hamburgers, hotdogs, animal show, live DJ…... The list goes on. It was such a fun afternoon and we didn't have to spend a dime. We were in parent heaven and the kids were having a blast. It's nice to see such a great community outreach. I was really touched that one church was able to put on such a fun day for a school of 600 kids.

My Super Readers

So incredibly proud of my three kiddo's for getting 150% or higher all three trimesters this year. The girls were totally excited to get their trophies and Brandon is determined to get to start the real AR program at the beginning of first grade so he can have a chance to get a trophy by the end of the year too. (He's just in pre AR since he's in Kindergarten and earned his medal by passing off a certain number of sight words). 

Here's the funny difference between my girls.

Ashlyn is my book LOVER. Reads all the time for fun and has probably read more books than I have (ok not really but you get the point). But once she got to 150%, she quit taking tests because she didn't want to mess up her 100% average. Even though she only needed an 85% average to get the trophy. She didn't care. She liked to see the 100%.

Leah, on the other hand, doesn't really love to read. She hasn't caught the bug yet. But she will. She did, however, want that trophy. So she read and read and read. And took test after test after test. She ended up with over 350% of her AR goal. She averaged about 90% on her tests, but she was happy with that. She didn't want to risk not getting her prize, so if she did bad on one test, she would read more books to make up for them and bring her average back up.

Patty sent me this "selfie" of her with our girls. They were both so excited to get a trophy together.

And Brandon got his award without even trying much. I'm hoping that means real reading will come easier for him. I'm gonna have to work hard over the summer to get his whole sight word list learned (220 words I think) and he's not always the most willing participant.

Playdate's with friends

We had to squeeze in a few more playdates before our friends moved away. The girls had a late over with "the other" Ashlynn. They had dinner (McDonald's) outside on the trampoline, played dress up and beauty salon, and then finished the night with treats and a movie. We're super sad to see them leave, but glad they won't be TOO TOO far away. We'll be stopping to see them on our trips to Utah. So thank goodness for that. 

 

Carter probably asked me on a daily basis to PLEASE let him have Elijah over to play (without Brandon home) before they moved away. Carter kind of thinks Elijah is his best friend when really him and Brandon are buds. So I'm not too sure Elijah was thrilled to come play with just Carter, but he sure made Carter happy. And I got to play with Emberlynn while the boys rough housed. This girl is cute. And super girly! She was totally in to all the polly pockets and my little ponies we have around the house. She wasted no time getting the doll house set up to her liking.

Playing "Chutes and Ladders". I'm not sure much playing of the actual game happened, but they were at least good at getting it all out, pretending to play and then moving on to the next game.

Callie's High School Graduation

Yay! She did it. And she was SO excited. Seriously love seeing Callie happy. She's had a rough year and if you know much about her, you would be all the more amazed at the fact that despite her year she did amazing in school. I mean, seriously, there were not many more "decorated" graduates that she was. Not only in the top of her class, but recieved a 4.0 or higher every semester of High School. I'm so so so glad we were able to be there to help celebrate with her. 

Hard to see, but she's in the front row. First person on the far side of the aisle. We had perfect seats!

Her good friend (and our old neighbor) Maylnn came for her graduation.

Her parents of course were there (and saved us the said "perfect" seats).

And her friend (and my future Laurel) Kaitlyn was there playing in the band.

Not a great photo, but better than nothing. We love this girl!

I think the kids were just as excited as we were to give her a congratulations hug. 

She moved home that night to spend the summer with her family and to work with her dad. So we will miss her. The house seems emptier without her. We're grateful for the 8 months she spent with us. She's a great example to our kids and she'll always be a part of our family too!