The Graduate!

Last night was Meredith's 6th Grade Graduation Ceremony.  She was so excited for the night.
Her eyes are glowing in this picture but she glowed with energy and excitement all night long.

She stood on stage while teacher read all of her accomplishments, and then she received a certificate and a medallion.

When it was all over, she flitted around hugging all of her friends and taking pictures with them.  It was pretty cute to see her so bubbly and happy.

I can't believe she'll be going to Middle school next year. 

 She really has grown into a beautiful, lovely young lady.

She loves her friends, and had a great year at school.

When I picked her up from her last day of school today she was crying.  Not just tearing up, actually sobbing with sadness that the year was over and that there were some friends who wouldn't be attending the same school as her next year. She said almost the whole sixth grade was crying by the end of the day. Even most of the boys!  

Surprisingly, the teachers say that this happens every year.

  

Mer informed me late Saturday night that she needed a pretty new dress to wear to the event.  We searched and searched with no luck, so I ended up making her one. I didn't show it to her and surprised her with it when she came home Thursday afternoon.   Thankfully it turned out to be "perfect". 

We sure love this girl! She adds a lot of fun to this family. 

Dad brought her flowers and it made her night just that much better.

A thank you kiss.

With another blink of an eye she'll be graduating from high school. 

I'm aiming to enjoy these next few years. I'm sure it will be a wild ride.

 I love you, my big, beautiful girl!

Count Down to Summer

 It's the last week of school here and everyone is buzzing with excitement for summer.  There have been parties, fun days, field days, treats on a daily basis.  Here are some pictures from last week's notable events.

Jack and Mer attended award ceremonies.

Here's Jack with his Kindergarten teacher.  He received the award for Outstanding achievement in reading.  We are very proud of our little reader.

Here are some of Jack's friends.  These kids are so cute. 

Meredith is officially cleared to play soccer now.  She played in a tournament on Saturday. Notice the blue hair....all the girls showed their spirit and ended up taking 1st place.  It was the first time Mer had played soccer in 2 months and she was a bit winded but very excited to play

Monday for FHE we had a show and tell night. Max and Jack read stories they had written this month.


And everyone displayed art from their school art portfolio.

We really have a great art teacher at our school.

We have been swimming every moment we get.  Here's a picture from today.  Mer was in the middle of a fight with her brothers and wasn't feeling the photographic moment. I had pulled them all out of the pool for a little friendship lecture, and I couldn't resist snapping a shot  We will be so sad to lose this pool.

Tonight was Meredith's 6th grade graduation.  She was positively glowing.  I'll post the pictures soon.  Good night!

Soccer, Mother's Day, and a Lost tooth too

Hi there!! Are you ready for this post?? Time to get caught up.  So much has happened over the last couple of weeks, I'd hate not to write it down.  First of all Soccer ended. Jack and Max played their last games a couple of weekends ago.  I will miss seeing them play.  They both had such great seasons.

Jack was the youngest on the team, though you would never know it.  He has great ball handling skills.

He had wonderful coaches and lots of friends on his team, which makes soccer even more fun.

Max really shined this year.  I think they won their last game 7 to 0.  I love this picture of him.  You can just see him reading the situation before he goes for it.

He really enjoyed having Doug coach his team.  Doug has become such a great coach.  He really did a great job this season.

This is how Super Luke spends his time at the fields.  I think I may let him play next season.  We'll see.

We also celebrated Mother's day.  At this house that means breakfast in bed.  This year was strawberry crepes with a presentation by Meredith.

Somehow the evening turned into backyard mischief.

My one request for the day was that I get a picture of me with my kids.  I didn't even make Luke change his soaking wet clothes. This is how I'd like to remember us.  Just a snapshot from a moment of a life full of busy little bodies.


Doug also caught these two in rare form.  I'm hoping they can stay best friends for more than a couple of hours in the future, but we take what we can get. Maybe putting this picture on the wall would help to remind them.


Another big event happened on Mother's day.  Jack had been wiggling a loose tooth for weeks.

It finally wiggled out on Mother's Day.  We helped it a bit.  It was barely hanging on. The other tooth had already started to come in behind it so I tied a piece of floss around it and had Doug yank it out, with's Jack's permission of course.

He lost his First tooth.  The tooth fairy was nice and brought him $2.  Everyday he comes home talking about how someone in his class just lost a tooth.  He was very excited that now it was his turn.

I have a few more things to share but it is past my bed time so they will have to wait. Good night!

Legoland

We are HUGE Lego fans at our house.  So, needless to say, we had a great time at Legoland.  Here are some pictures to prove it. I posted a lot so you could get a glimpse of what it's like, in case you are curious.

Luke made sure to wear his Lego shirt.



One of the kid's favorite part was the minifigure trading. You can bring your own lego guy and trade it with the employees for ones that you like better.  We even scored an olympic swimming gold medalist.

I loved the mini land.  Tons of replicas of real places all in Lego. 

Vegas!

Mike and Sher, is this where you got married??

San Fran

The rides were fun. 

Test track was the favorite rollercoaster of the day.  I think we rode it 5 times.

There were a lot of rides that were just Luke's size.  Here he is in Driving School.

Jack learned to drive at the bigger kids driving school

I loved all the big Lego sculptures too.

On Safari.

We saw a pirate water ski show with Captain Brickbeard.

The boys loved this next part.  There was a big room full of lego to build your own car and test it out.  I think we were in this room for an hour.

Max was in heaven

Thankfully Doug rode all the spinning rides with the kids, I just can't take those.

This one was crazy, it just kept spinning faster and faster.  Oy!

Boating school.  

Doug and Luke were behind everyone and some how passed us all and came in first.

Mer was nice to ride all the little "Duplo" Rides with Luke.

That was a fun day!!