May madness

I know I'm not alone in being a victim of May madness with the permission slips, field trips, spring concerts, school projects, spring sports, etc, and can only imagine the eventual banquets, proms, graduations that are impending in the next few years. Yoi. 

That said, I do have photos of our big kids becoming black belts and Thing3 becoming a red belt in karate, but I don't have the time right this second for that write up. I'm behind once again. We are supposed to meet Dada for lunch in an hour and Carrie isn't even out of bed yet (today is day 3 of summer vacation, 'nuff said). It may be awhile before we find our rhythm. Damon's been up for long that he's already conked back out in the big chair. And snoring. 

Welcome to summer chaos. 

Yesterday we spent the afternoon with our beloved Richards crew who are back from a two week trip to Hawaii. We hadn't had a play date in a really long time, so we stayed awhile and then had karate and then I dropped the boys off in the evening for Dada to feed them while Carrie got her hair cut and we returned the movie we'd rented (get A Dog's Purpose if you missed it in theaters- it's adorable!) and got back just in time for Dada to head back out to krav. Whew. Whoever said summer is a break from busy obviously had no children. Or a life.

Ack, so gotta wake two of three Thingz to get ready for lunch and hopefully time to run around in the park before returning to laundry and other less fun things, haha. Have a good day!

Last day of school, last day of school, oh boy oh boy, last day of school

I want to apologize right here and now for the chaotic blogging and lack thereof. New laptop + different photo processing tools + me = frustration + procrastination. It'd be different if I could upload the info straight to my brain like in the Matrix movies; instead it is a lesson in aggravation every time as I'm using limited storage and often have to stop the whole blogging process to open other programs to delete other space-hogging items. I'm thinking about scrapping the whole thing and starting over, but in the meantime you'll just have to either be patient with me or suffer alongside. Cheers!

So, this is the lovely porch swing which some of you have shared a bedroom with these past 10 months with as it resided on the floor of our guest room. Pap made it for us and brought it out before the Christmas in July party. Sweet Dada put it up for Mother's Day. The reason it took so ridiculously long is there are no studs in the actual front porch roof so he had to figure out how to install it and make the time to actually do it when there are so many other homeowner issues and karate and krav and school and Stuff which really are more important. But, thanks to Pap for making it and to Dada for the install, it's up it's up it's up! Come sit a spell!

Last day of middle school for this Thing:

Last day of elementary school for Thing2 and last day of first grade for Thing3:

Cheers to summer vacation!

Liam's last day of elementary school

Our dinner conversation went something like this.

Dada: So Liam, tell us about your last day of school.

Liam: Eh, nothing exciting.

Mama: Um, you had an ice cream party.

Liam: Oh yeah.

Mama: And a lip sync.

Liam: Yep. 

Dada: And a pizza party.

Liam: Mmmm hmmm.

Parents: ...

So don't ask us how his day was. We still don't know.

Art show 2017

Last month the boys had their ice cream social/ spring concert/ ice cream social. The school looked fabulous with everyone's art covering just about every available surface:

I took way more pictures than necessary, but everything was fascinating and I'm so impressed at what kids care capable of. Kudos to their art teacher for presenting artists to learn from and emulate:

I forgot to check if these were inspired by a particular artist or not, but I guess you can ask the boys if you're interested:

I took photos of lessons my kids didn't even do:

The first graders had compared and contrasted the life of Abraham Lincoln with their own. Here are their top hat projects:

It still strikes me as odd that the kids are not required to participate in the concert aspect. We had one kid who was super excited to play Star Wars music on the xylophones with his class and one kid who wanted to watch his classmates do their dance but not join in.

Liam is in the striped brown shirt in the middle of the picture. Sadly, he was squatting down low in the other shots so this is the best one. The gym was completely packed and folks were standing out in the hallways trying to hear.

I am glad we went to Liam's last elementary spring shindig. It will be strange next year to only go for one child! 

Clearly we need a geography AND a history intervention...

Carrie, age 13.95: Fort Sumter is a 2.4 acre manmade island off the coast of ... uh... Colorado... (kitchen table erupts with protestations)... no, waitaminute... HAHAHAHAHA!

Yeeeeeegods.Yet the powers that be think it's a good idea to let these hooligans out of school before Memorial Day. #backtoschool, #kidsthesedays