Each summer we make list of fun things to do – a ‘bucket list’ of sorts.  It tends to contain a lot of the same ideas each summer and we rarely get to all of them.  Most of the time we are scrambling at the last minute to get them in before school starts (right Jenn & Shauna!?)  The purpose is to have a document to refer to if we are just sitting around bored and need an idea of something to do (preferably as a family).  I have to laugh at the thought of ‘sitting around bored’ because generally we can’t even keep our heads on straight we are running from place to place.  We’ll see how this plays out this summer as all of these things are in addition to what we already have on the books such as camps, mission trip, VBS, golf lessons, swim team, gymnastics, & vacation.  ha!  If you want to be on the list – let me know!!  I guess it’s more likely that you DON’T want to find yourself mentioned on the list! 😉  See you this Summer!

 

Ok so I may or may not have been running a little bit late today to get to Jake’s baseball game.  So I called in my helpers to make a sack lunch for Jake.  I love it when I ask for help and they actually jump for joy!  These two cuties made this lunch for Jake today and they were very proud of their work.  They should be!!

They even thought to put in an extra ziploc bag for Jake to put his orange peels in.  And look…they put a heart by his name…it’s too adorable!  Thanks Olivia & Reece, you are amazing helpers!

 

Someone came up with the idea to let the mom’s coach the boys’ baseball game last night!!  Hey I’m up for anything that makes my little Drew happy!  Even if that means squeezing into my 9 year old’s jersey!  He has absolutely no confidence in my baseball coaching abilities and told all the other mom’s that we would lose!!  Ok – so he has good reason to have no confidence.  I never played softball unless I was required to in PE class!   His concerns were completely valid.

We lost our game and my talents in baseball coaching basically include snuggling with my son in the dugout.  He almost missed his turn to bat!  Wow – I should definitely be fired from future baseball coaching!

Reece plays on a 1st grade recreational soccer team (Pink Thunder) and her coach got to nominate 3 players to play in an “All Star” soccer game, along with other teams’ all stars.   It didn’t turn out exactly as expected due to rain of course!  The 2 practices were cancelled due to rain and the game was postponed.  Needless to say, Reece was absolutely honored and thrilled to be chosen and last night the weather FINALLY cooperated!  She played her little heart out!

The premise  for these ‘All Stars’ is basically slating these kiddos into a competitive club team track.  While we know Reece could do this without hesitation, we are going to hold off on signing up for that commitment since she is also into competitive gymnastics and trying out swim team this summer.

Way to go Reecie!

Summer break started about 24 hours ago and Reece is already asking what is next on the family schedule.  This is my first red flag that it could be a long summer!!  I’m personally just thrilled to not have any homework, no lunches to pack, water bottles to fill, or remembering healthy ‘refueling’ school snacks.  Although, this sigh of relief will soon be replaced with a brain cramp figuring out logistics and driving kids to and from a million summer activities!  Yikes, come Tuesday morning, I’m going to be thrown to the wolves and realize that I over-scheduled everybody once again.  When will I learn to say no!?

Yesterday was an absolute whirlwind of ‘last day of school’ activities.  This turned out to be a blessing because I was too busy to be sad about my kids growing up and moving on to new schools.

Every day this year I have picked up Morgan on the side of the school in ‘secret’ illegal parking. I’m proud to say, I never officially got caught and I saved this sweet girl from a long bus ride home. For the record, I’m not the only one that avoids the carpool line like the plague and risks the chance of being reprimanded by the school.  Oops-it might be me they are referring to in the school newsletter each week to not park on the side street 😉  I can’t believe I will never see this beautiful girl walk down this middle school lawn ever again!Due to some scheduling overlap today, she was forced to ride the bus home and you can see by her expression that she was thrilled!!

Actually, she really didn’t complain and just happened to get caught with my poor photography skills!  Shortly after this, she spent the afternoon at the park eating pizza and brownies with her friends and a special visit from Ava & Ellie (her good friends that moved to TX over the winter break).

Morgan will say goodbye to bus #54 and Jake will say hello in August!  I’m going to give MoMo some props here because she is very kind to her bus driver and he has mentioned on several occasions that he wishes he had more students on the bus like Morgan.  Thank you for treating the bus driver with respect and kindness!

There was not really an official party to speak of, but the 8th grade class did get an afternoon off school a few weeks ago at PowerPlay.  No surprise that these girls took a picture with their tongues out.  What is it with that trend!?  It’s so weird!

Manchester Park did an awesome job providing a party to send off the 5th graders to their new school.  There’s about 125 5th graders, so they split into groups and rotated to stations outside.  Lately it’s been feeling like we live in Seattle with cold temps and rain almost every day but we got lucky and had beautiful weather for this early morning party.

They had a photo booth…

Human Hungry Hungry Hippos!!  You remember this game right?  

SO FUN!!They had a DJ and Limbo!Then Mr. Rebel decided to jump over the limbo stick which is strongly discouraged by the school staff.  Strangely enough, it was his teacher that caught this on camera!  This could’ve really ended badly, Jakers…Next they rotated to a tag game…At the next station, all the kids got their own shaved ice.  The Kona Ice truck pulled right up on the playground for them!

Next they had some free time to dance to the DJ (the girls really got into this part!), sign a banner to the incoming 5th graders (thank you Stacey!), sign t-shirts, and hit up up the popcorn & candy station.  WOW – what an awesome way to spend your last day of 5th grade!

About an hour later, all the parents were invited into the school gym for a “clap out.”  I have never really heard that term before but it basically is an opportunity for the 5th graders to parade through the school and all of us clapped for them as they walk through the doors of Manchester Park for the last time.

Many of the girls were sobbing and even some big tough boys!  Which caused all the little kids in the school to start crying!  UGH – this seems like a bad idea!!  Seeing the teachers crying is what gets me.  Even if you have no feelings at all, it’s hard not to well up when you see your child’s teacher crying that they will never get to see these kids in the hallways again.  Jake of course couldn’t muster up a tear if he tried!

and I caught these cute 3rd and 1st graders on the way out…no tears here!!

Here are some flashback photos when Morgan was a 5th grader–they didn’t get a party or any kind of recognition on the last day of school because we had a very strict principal at the time.  Sorry Morgan, but your 5th grade class really got shafted!!  Thankfully, a mom organized a little donut breakfast before school that day and they marched across the street with a banner.

Flipping back to current – Drew made plans to go to lunch with his buddies at Freddy’s and some time at the park after school.

And I took Reece to a “school’s out for summer” party in the neighborhood, complete with lunch, an ice cream truck, and about a hundred people!

Jake made his own plans and rode his bike with friends to Subway for lunch, to Jarvey’s the local shaved ice place, and to Price Chopper for cookies.

See what I’m saying – the last day of school is a total WHIRLWIND!!  And an excuse to eat and drink like crazies and exhaust your parents beyond the point of no return.  I’ve barely had a moment to be sad that my kids are moving on to new chapters!

Love you guys and thank you for letting me be a part of your last day of school activities!

Happy Summer!

 

 

 

I’ve wanted to do a garden party for years now but can’t get anyone on board with it! Reece came to my rescue and liked the idea so we’ve been storing 10 fairy garden pots in my craft room for months and we finally got them out!  Nine of Reece’s cute friends, and our family joined us on a beautiful day to celebrate turning 7.  Someone was looking out for us because it’s literally been raining everyday for weeks and on this day, it was sunny!  Hallelujah!

I made these invitations and hand-delivered all of them since mailing them was clearly not going to be an option!!Morgan gave up much of her snap-chatting and netflix time to graciously help me prepare, along with my mom who continually puts up with my hair-brained ideas and helps me facilitate the vision.  She always does it with a smile but I know she secretly wants to strangle me or slip me a sleeping pill.

These cake pops were super labor-intensive.  I think my back still hurts from standing in my kitchen making these!  Don’t look for these in a future party.  Who’s dumb idea was that!?

Morgan and Reece helped me hand stamp these food tags ONE letter at a time!!  This might be considered a breach of child labor laws…

But look how CUTE they turned out!!  It’s totally worth it…right girls!?and putting on floral duck tape on water bottles on a Saturday night is super fun entertainment for a 13 year old isn’t it!?  She’s learning how to do some really cool things – that’s how I’m going to look at it!  Thank you Morgan for being awesome!

Morgan and her bestie, Emma, helped these sweet girls get their Fairy Gardens put together complete with cute little Trolls and WOW, don’t they look great!!?

They sprinkled ‘Fairy Dust’ (glitter) on their gardens which proved to be their favorite part.  The more glitter the better!  I could’ve bought out the entire glitter aisle at the craft store and it still wouldn’t have been enough!

Aunt Jenn cut 40 sandwiches in the shape of flowers for me – she’s another one that probably wants to strangle me or slip me a sleeping pill!  Plus she made these little cookie flower pots – darling!

And in the midst of this party and cute little fairy garden girls, I decided to redecorate and refurnish our family room.  What on earth was I thinking!?!  That will be a separate post at some point.

She got so many fun gifts from friends and family.  Thank you for being so kind and generous!!  What fun it is to turn 7!!

Happy Birthday Reece!  I’m so happy you enjoyed your party…we love you!!

There really isn’t anything much cuter than First Grade.  Except Kindergarten.  But since our Kindergarten days are over now, First Grade is the cutest….and so on.  Soon it will be Second Grade.  😉  I’ve had the opportunity to help in Reece’s classroom several times and it’s so funny to watch these little people interact.  Look how cute they are in their crazy hats!!

And this is a must watch video!!  It is an iMovie that she created with her classmate Beau…it’s precious!!  You can’t help but smile thinking about two little 1st graders creating this on an iPad!

 

Here are a couple more 1st grade gems for the scrapbook…way to go Reece for being an awesome first grader!!

Reece, we can’t wait to see all the cool things you learn in 2nd grade!!

It seems like the soccer season never ends.  Actually, it sort of doesn’t.  It’s pretty much year round playing with the exception of about a month in the summer.   I never played soccer and If I did, I certainly don’t remember it!  I’m a fan now of course, because I spend half my life driving to and from practice and games for 4 soccer-loving kids. Therefore, you learn to love it.  We are concluding our season with the exception of Jake’s state cup tourney, Reece’s all-star game, and tryouts.  We are going to hang up the cleats for a bit.

I absolutely love that the smiles on Pink Thunder contain very few teeth.  It’s 1st grade — everybody loses a ton of teeth!  It’s so cute!

Morgan will be venturing into the world of high school sports tryouts next year, but for now, we are happy to watch her being a dedicated defender for her U13 Fusion team.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the hi-light of the kids’ school day is lunch.  And if you are lucky enough to score lunch brought in from Mom, you are living right!  Yesterday I brought Freddy’s in to Jake for the very last time at Elementary school.  He ate every bit of his double cheeseburger and large fries.  Nope, he didn’t share one morsel!  Hey, I’m just happy he is not embarrassed to sit with me at school.  In fact, I think he was actually glad I was there.  Don’t worry Jake you don’t have to admit it to anyone, just keep it on the down-low.

If you know Jake at all, you have come to realize that sometimes things just come out of his mouth the wrong way.  Like a few weeks ago when he said…”I like it when I get lunch brought to school…I mean I really just love the food.”  So the translation is – bring me food but don’t stay because I’m over my parents already.  And how about last week when I asked if it would be ok if I came to KU for his field trip and he very bluntly said…”sure, but I probably won’t talk to you very much.”  Ok well you can’t say that he’s not honest!  I am happy to report that he did talk to me that day and in fact, he talked to me a whole bunch!  So maybe I am cooler than I might seem!?

I also brought Morgan and her friends lunch yesterday for the last time in Middle School. Boo hoo 😦  I love you MoMo & your lunch friends 😉

P.S. I like to write embarrassing notes on the containers.  It hasn’t deterred them from asking for lunch…

XOXO, Mom

 

Ok so I hesitate even bringing up the subject of another baseball tournament because I don’t want to bore everyone to tears just yet.  The Hawaiian Hitfest is a giant baseball tournament that takes over the KC metro area and if you’re a baseball player, chances are you played in it.  We’ve been fighting wet weather for weeks it seems so our Friday night games were cancelled which pushed everything into Saturday.  This also meant my 11 year old Bulldogs were playing baseball at 12:45am with frustrated umpires walking off the job.  WHAT!?  That is total nonsense. Especially when you have to be back at the field at 7:30a.m.  If it wasn’t colder than Alaska at that point, we could’ve just curled up in the dugout for the night.

Saturday also includes a dugout decorating contest.  Decorating stuff generally is one of my most favorite things, but I’m going to admit, at this point of May Madness, I’m just needing a break!

We are proud to report, our boys made it through to the 2nd game of bracket play but couldn’t pull out a win after that.  A great team from Sedalia, MO, The Bombers, won out.

I absolutely love watching these 11 year olds play baseball!!  Jake was awarded the MVP medal for the first game.  His baseball IQ, focus, and enthusiasm for the game is remarkable…way to go Jake!  Well deserved, buddy.

Things didn’t turn out super well for these little 9 year old Bulldogs (they didn’t advance into bracket play), but they sure looked the ‘Hawaiian’ part!

Next year we are hoping for one of those super cool surfboard trophies!  Go Bulldogs!

And I cannot end this post without this flashback photo of Jake in his early baseball days…I’m sure everyone scattered when they saw this stroller rolling into the ball fields! ha!