May Happenings

Here are a few miscellaneous things from our busy, busy month of May:

Miles is doing little league again and he is a slugger, I tell you!  He has gotten 4 Home Runs this season already!  And unfortunately I never seem to catch them on video!  I am so excited to just watch him that I forget.  Then he gets a homer, so I record his next time at-bat and he always just makes it to 1st base.  I guess the video camera jinxes him!   Oh well, even though they are not recorded I still get to the see them and they are awesome. :)

We took our kayaks out for the first time as a family.  We've had them since Bryan's birthday in January and usually every weekend Bryan has wanted to take them out....but, dude, it's too freaking cold!!  Most weekends there was still ice on the river, but even when there wasn't, I was not too keen on paddling (and dripping water on my lap) in my winter coat.  Bryan did take them once before with his dad, but this was my first time.  It was lots of fun!

Oh, Bree.... what a character that girl is!  She asked me one night if she could draw on her face with marker (something she has done many times) and I said no because it was almost bed time.  She said, "just a teeny pumpkin on my nose?"  So I said yes.  She came back out like this!  Aaah!  She went full Jack-o-Lantern on me and it kinda creeped me out!  Thankfully the markers are washable.

Bryan has had to do a lot of traveling for work this Spring.  A few weeks ago he was in New Jersey and they got to spend one evening in Manhattan.  The World Trade Center memorial is beautiful at night!

And then last week he was in Boston so he saw some neat sights there too.  He never has much time to sight-see, but they can usually squeeze in an hour or two to catch highlights.  

We went up to Mantua to de-shrub and spray paint "our" rock (the huge rock that was all covered in bushes and impossible to see, that I hit on the 4-wheeler, which then flipped over onto Tess and me in 2010?  Yeah, that stupid rock.)  We go up each spring to cut away any growth and then we spray paint it bright orange to make it visible for future riders.  After we cleaned our rock, we went "muddin'/diggin'/Jeepin'/wheelin'" through the mud.  What do you call it?  Bryan and I decided the term is regional, depending on where you live.  I think Bryan prefers "diggin'."   But whatever it's called, it's muddy and fun. :)

...And, one last thing... Bree has begun tumbling lessons!  I'm so excited for her.  Here she is with her teacher spotting her in a little back handspring.  She had a blast.

Simpson Springs 2016

We had our first camping trip of the summer. Yay!  We went out to Simpson Springs and had a blast with my sister & brother and their families, my dad, plus some extra friends too.  There were 4 RVs, 3 tents, 6 dogs, 11 kids, about 10 ATVs, some guns, one zip line, lots of snacks & treats, and even a tarantula and lizard!  Sounds like a formula for a wonderful weekend!  (By the way, the lizard came home with us; the tarantula did NOT!)

Here's the tarantula, along with one of Miles's funny photo faces (he's at the age...)

All three of our kiddos loved the dogs!  There were big dogs, little dogs, mellow dogs, and energetic dogs.  (Bryan and I have started toying with the idea of getting a dog again...we aren't for sure yet, but we're looking into it.  Right now the only thing holding us back is what to do with a dog when we go on vacation??  Our cat is completely self-sufficient and it's perfect!)

It's hard to see in this picture, but Bree is running the zip line back up for a ride.  It was a nice long ride this time.  You just never know what path the zip line can take--it all depends on what trees are available.

There is an abandoned silver mine in the mountains up there and we tried to find it.   Unfortunately we got this close to it, but didn't actually get to it!  Dang it!  The trail narrows too much for the Jeep, and we didn't realize how close we were or we would have just walked to it.  But this is probably an old storage shed that they used to use for the mine.

Miles and Bree picked me so many pretty wild flowers during the trip that I made a nice bouquet.  How sweet!

We also spent a lot of time just gabbing and playing games.  So much fun!  Bring on Summer!!

Preschool Graduation

Such a busy and exciting month of May!  Bree had her preschool graduation last night.  She has been learning some cute songs all year and she got to go up to the microphone and recite her memorized nursery rhyme as well.  (She got assigned an unusual nursery rhyme; I didn't know it at all.  It goes:  "Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, to see a fine lady upon a white horse.  With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, she shall have music wherever she goes.")

She had the same wonderful teacher as Miles did, Julie Bird from Wisebird Preschool.  She is fantastic and Bree just adored her!  Bree even got teary eyed as she said goodbye because she will miss Teacher Julie so much.

Now off to Kindergarten!  Yippee!

2nd Grade Program

Our school does such a cute 2nd Grade program.  I loved it when Tess did it and I've been excited to watch Miles.  They do songs and dances through the decades from 1920 until now; each decade has about 2 songs and a dance.  Each class learns a different dance to perform.  Of course the Spanish immersion classes performed the Macarena!  Here's Miles (on the right, in blue) doing the little hip circle at the end.  Ha ha!  He did great!

Also, when they sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame!" they had 2 boys come out as vendors.  Miles did a great job with his "Popcorn! Peanuts! Soda!" line.

First Place!

Tess happened to qualify for the Math & Science Olympiad at her school!  She didn't even tell us that she was trying out, and I don't think she even really practiced anything beforehand.  But she just came home one day and said that she and her partner Kaylynn were going to the district trials!  So of course I went to cheer her on.  She and Kaylynn were both so cute and so nervous!  They were doing the Foil Barge competition where they are given a 12"x12" piece of aluminum foil and they build a little barge to hold pennies.  Whichever barge holds the most pennies before sinking wins!  During their trial at school they won with 21 pennies.  Then they practiced for a few weeks and got up to 29 pennies.  The day of the competition they saw other schools getting in the 50s and 60s!  So they were pretty worried.

Here they are building their barge.  Wide and flat is best.

They are putting in the pennies... (carefully!)

....And they ended up getting 70 pennies!  Woohoo!  Way to go!  First place out of seven schools.  I am so proud of these two cuties!

Fun Run

Oh my, am I glad that this Fun Run is over!  As I've worked on PTA this year, we've planned all year for our year-end fundraiser.  This year we decided to do a Fun Run.  We debated about many different kinds of runs...we originally wanted a Saturday morning 5K for the whole family to run together, but the logistics of that are pretty tricky (blocking off roads, getting permits from the city, police to direct traffic, etc.) plus we weren't sure how many families would come because Saturday mornings are so busy.  We talked about a week night too, but again, families have so many other activities to do and I was just so worried about how much money we would make.  (I never realized that most of my PTA stress this year would have to do with money!  It never even crossed my mind that I would worry about it so much.  We started off the year with a pretty tight budget--less than $10,000--and we always plan to give back about $10,000 to the school for field trips and class parties, not to mention the money it takes to run our activities throughout the year.  So I have been stressed all year.)

Anyway, in January we changed our minds to do this type of fundraiser where ALL kids get to run, during school hours.  The students were encouraged to get pledges and donations for how many laps they could run.  So from January to May, my worrying changed to..."what if the weather is crappy on the day of the run??  What if parents and teachers don't like this?  What if the students only manage to run a few laps and then complain the whole time?"  I lost so much sleep over this thing, because it hadn't ever been done at our school before.  The unknown is stressful!

We had an awesome fundraising committee and everything came together very well.  Unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate fully.  We had to run inside for our first race (out of five), then it looked nice so we moved everything outside for our next three races, and then the weather turned bad again so we had to move back inside.  That was a pain!  The track area inside was much smaller too, so it was nearly impossible to track laps inside.  Our goal was 35 laps and most of the inside kids said they ran 70 or more!  Outside the kids got 35 and some wanted to keep going and got around 50!  It was awesome!

The parents were so patient and supportive as we moved in and out, and overall I think the kids had a blast!  Even the 6th graders who were "too cool" to get excited about the run ended up loving it and running extra laps.

So I plan to do it again next year!  (I am President for just one more year.)  I'm moving it to October so the weather will hopefully be nicer and more predictable, and also so that I won't have to stress about money all year! :)  I think we got our learning curve figured out so next year it should be pretty easy.  (Fingers crossed...)

Tess's grade was first and they ran inside; you can see her back, in the green shirt.

Miles's grade got to run outside; he's in the blue shirt with orange shorts.