Last week of school!

tug of war "boys vs. girls"
Will's soccer medal

Jack's 3-legged race

Will getting his diploma

Hannah at Will's graduation

Grandpa and Will at graduation

Dad and Will

Last day of school picture with Avery

Last day of school for the boys

I now have a 2nd grader and a pre-kindergartner. Jack and Will both finished school today after a fun week of outdoor fun days, plays, walks to the park, picnics, movies, ice cream and popsicles!

Jack was not jumping out of bed excited today, I think he will miss his friends. I packed him a special lunch for his last day and they ate doughnuts for breakfast. He delivered his teachers gifts (actually Will did since Jack did not want to) and they received their year books.

I am so proud of how much Jack has accomplished this year. He finds school difficult and has worked very hard every night since the beginning of September. Not only has he had tutoring 2 nights a week every week, he also comes home and does spelling words with dad and reading with mom. It was tough seeing him struggle so much but it was also great to see him succeed and smile when things started to click for him. We are very grateful to all of the people at his school that gave him so much confidence by spending one-on-one time with him. We are hopeful that next year will be an easy transition.

Will had his preschool graduation today. He will be in "High 5" next year. He also was not jumping up and down this morning. He was more concerned with the cardinal that had found its way into our garage and was flying around deliriously trying to find its way out. He is really going to miss the boys in his class that he became such good friends with. All of them are going onto kindergarten and none of them live in Gretna.

Will also finished up soccer and celebrated with a pizza party after their last game. He loved the medal that he received and wrote the number of goals he scored on the back of it.

The kids keep asking if it is summer yet. They want to swim, go camping, stay up as late as possible, and have friends over every day. I will see how busy I can keep them so I don't have to hear how bored they are! It will feel great to be off a schedule for a while.

Carnival & Wolves

Jack had his end of year carnival last week and I took all the kids. Jack met up with a couple of friends and one of the dads took them around for the evening. I had Will & Hannah which worked out well since Jack did not want to do the same things that Will and Hannah wanted to do. It was at the fairgrounds this year with so much more room. All 3 elementary schools have it together so it is well attended, All Will talked about was getting his face painted and eating cotton candy so I knew if nothing else we needed to accomplish those things. By the time we made out way back to face painting, there was a 45 minute wait. Will decided on "batman" and Hannah refused to get anything. We then went in search of cotton candy and there was a 30 minute wait for that. We never saw another line the rest of the night so those 2 things must have been popular! Jack loved the huge jumpers and some of the bigger kid games. He also was able to throw a pie in his teachers face which he enjoyed! I didn't get any pictures of Jack since I barely saw him but we did manage to get one of batman before the shower rinsed it away.

Darren was once again out of town this weekend so I need to keep the kids busy. We headed off to the "drive-thru safari" out by Mahoney with Grandma Lana on Saturday. Darren and I had taken Jack a couple of years ago but we didn't get to see everything. This time we were able to get out and hike up to the bear and the wolves. Jack was so excited because one of the many animals that he loves are wolves. Since it is a large reserve area and not similar to a zoo setting, the animals are not easy to spot. We were lucky that it was feeding time for the wolves and Jack was able to see 4 out of the 5 very close up and watch them eat fish and raw meat. He couldn't take his eyes off of them. I had never seen a wolf close up like that either so it was really neat. That evening we bought Chinese and rented Hotel for Dogs. Friday night Laurie and I took the kids minus Claire to the Rose Theatre to see the Charlotte's Web play. Hannah was terrified of the guy dressed as a pig and Will and Jack get antsy the last 15 minutes but it was pretty good. The last one of the season is High School Musical so they are looking forward to that one.

Will had a Mother's Day tea at school for me a couple of weeks ago. They sang songs and gave us the nice plate they made for us. He was so excited about the plate but said that it is for him and I have never eaten off of it as of yet!

This is the last week of school for everyone so we have a lot of little activities to remember each day and gifts to bring. They do not seem that excited for it to end. I know that Jack will miss seeing his friends but it will be a nice break from getting up and rushing around every morning.

Jack is into his last full week of school and is really excited to have some time off. They go until the 22nd but they have a lot of fun things planned for next week so not much learning will take place! He is getting excited for his birthday and we are trying to decide what to do for his friend party. He is BEGGING to have a slumber party with 7 boys but that just sounds like a lot of chaos right now. We will have to get the invitations out in the next few days so we will see what happens.

Will's last day is also the 22nd and they have a graduation for his class. It is a graduation from preschool. Even though he is going to "High 5" not Kindergarten, they still count it as graduating. I think he has one next year also. Grandpa Jim will be in town for it so that will be nice that he can be a part of it.

Hannah only has tomorrow and next Wednesday left and she of course is excited. Of all the kids, she is the one that needs to go over the summer! That little nugget is really hooked to her mom!

Will had a fever over the weekend and I decided to take him to the Dr's last night. He ended up having strep throat and is already feeling better today. He is not a complainer and he was crying his throat hurt so bad so I should have taken him sooner.

Will and Hannah helped me plant and water all of our new flowers. They each have their own watering can and they tend to drown the poor things if I do not monitor the situation. We have lost quite a bit of soil from overflows but they are excited to help me so it is nice to have some help.

Jack did not want to be a part of doing anything with flowers. Instead all he wants to do is mow the lawn. He tells me daily that all of his friends mow their yards and dad won't let him mow ours. Since Jack is allergic to grass, this makes these decisions difficult because Darren would love to let him mow but the consequences are usually a lot of coughing and a couple of days on the nebulizer. Darren let him mow for a little while the other night and when he came inside he was just beaming! He talked about it until he fell asleep.

He is so much like Darren it is sometimes unbelievable. His love of cars and knowledge of them amazes me. The only thing that Jack and Will want to do when they grow up is work with dad. Jack said if he couldn't do that he would be a vet and Will said that he would then be a photographer! Hannah....I am not sure. She tore pictures of clothes out of a magazine last night and taped them on her door! That's my girl!

Happy May Day!

May Day Baskets the kids received
Will's Porsche ride

See me in the bakc seat?

Will at soccer

The kids had a good time with May day this year. Jack explained to Will and Hannah "how it works" and they really got into it. We made about 20 baskets and delivered them throughout the day. Hannah ate all of her May Day baskets for dinner in one sitting. I can't believe how much that child likes junk food. I told her she could only have yogurt, cheese or fruit for her bedtime snack and she didn't think that sounded good so off to bed she went. The picture of the duck baskets above was brought over by the girl up the street that babysits for us one in a while. The kids were really excited!

Will is in his 3rd week of soccer and loves it. He will tell you how many goals he has scored and really understands how the game works. Darren and I get a kick out of watching him. Sometimes after he scores he does a little dance back at center field. I need to bring the video camera one of these weeks. There must be a Frosted Flakes cereal commercial that focuses on soccer because he told me yesterday that I need to buy him that cereal so he can eat it before his games. He said that you can only eat in right before a soccer game and you will score a lot of goals! I wonder who their Marketing plans focuses on?

The boys definately take after Darren in many ways but especially their love of cars. Jack definately more than Will at this point but Will is starting to show more interest as he gets older. He asked Darren the other day if he could sometime have a "test drive" (yes, his words). Darren came home a little early from work tonight and took Will for a ride in the Porsche and then went and picked up Jack from school. Hannah wanted to go to but Darren told her that mommy needed company so she should stay with me. If he only knew!