Kindergarten comes to an end

Claire has one more week of school as a kindergartener. Her class did an end-of-year program for all of the parents, which we loved! The students worked very hard in music class to have almost 30 songs memorized and choreographed. Here is Claire doing her part in one of the songs.

Here is the whole kindergarten class singing the finale. Claire is in the front row on the left. Sorry about the poor quality -- it's a long video so I had to make adjustments.

 

 

Brian and I played the "New York, New York" (sung by Frank Sinatra) for Claire, and she was shocked. She doesn't believe us that those lyrics are the original ones. We have some more educating to do...

 

The only thing left to say is: 1st grade here we come! 

A Change of Pace

For those of you who wonder if anything else goes on in our lives besides our kids, the truth is we periodically do things that aren't directly related to them.  So for a change of pace, you all now have the priviledge of seeing our brand new bathroom which more or less finished today.  Its function now, there just are some small touchup items to call it complete.

Here are some pictures:



Before (well, after a very small amount of demolition):

After:

 

 

Camping at Cape Henlopen

Okay folks, you know how I operate. I love love love posting photos a month late.

 

That is a lie, of course. I am simply the worst blogger ever. Here's my post about our camping trip a few weeks ago! We limit our camping to only once a year because, well, we really like to sleep in beds and that is hard to give up. It's so worth the poor sleep though when we see how much fun the kids are having.

 

 

 The ocean was quite cold but that didn't stop Claire and Tyler. They put on their swim suits and played in the surf. I was wearing long pants and a fleece jacket.

 

We couldn't resist driving down to Rehoboth beach for one afternoon. Very pretty!

 

There are old army towers in the park, and they are great for sunset viewing.

Claire brought a few friends on our camping trip.

 

Here's Tyler after winning a slap jack game -- happy boy!

 

And now it will be a year before my next camping post.

Cherry blossoms

We dared to do what no local probably ever does: we went to see the cherry blossoms at the national mall, on the peak weekend. I knew it was going to be madness, but we didn't have another choice seeing as how those blossoms did not cooperate and bloom during spring break last week. I'm glad we went at least this once. The blossoms are gorgeous! We met up with friends there and did a good bit of walking in the sunshine. As you can see from the photos, the kids did more than just walk. We may have tuckered them out a bit!

 

 

The kids earned their junior ranger badges for the cherry blossom festival. They took an oath to protect the trees, after which Claire promptly returned to her task of jumping and grabbing branches.

The kids loved running under the canopy of fluffy blossoms.

No trip to the national mall is complete without a spin around the old carousel.

Girls did as they were told. "Pose for a picture, ladies."

At least they were semi-upright. Things went downhill from there:

I would love to do it again sometime, but next time we'll pick a day when Brian can come too. (He's in California.) We miss you, Love!

Four!

Tyler is an amazing kid, and I wish I had all the amazing photos that he deserves! The poor kid really doesn't get enough camera time. We threw a fun party for him at a local nature center, with a frogs and toads theme. It was a dual birthday party with his best friend Marcus from preschool. Here is the very little that I captured in photos:

Here are the birthday boys (in green shirts) decorating froggy bags.

Then we played a fly-catching game with blow outs.

An educator brought in a frog for the kids to meet, then they hunted for bugs in the nature center exhibit.

There was some silliness. Ok, lots of silliness. It may have had something to do with all of the gummy frogs that were consumed.

Then cake time!



 

Two happy boys.

 

Tyler is our big 4 year old now. He likes to keep reminding his sister that he is NOT a baby. But he will always be my baby.  : )