May extras

May was a very full month.  Here are a few extra things we did.

Harrison helping clean out the neighborhood pool.

Grace's post-COVID gymnastics coach retired after 30 years.

We have a trampoline sprinkler.  This was the first day we used it.

Harrison's centipedes

May had lots of nice days so we had many trips to many parks.

Part of teacher appreciation week was tell your teacher a joke.  Harrison gave his teacher a brown letter E (brownies).  Leo's teacher loves Star Wars.  He gave her chocolate chip cookies with the joke:  "What do you call Chewbacca when he has chocolate in his hair?   A chocolate chip wookie."

Not sure why Harrison made these hats and why they were so funny.

May June be as fun as May.

Memorial Day weekend

This year we were able to continue our tradition of going to Raleigh to visit my friend, Donna and her daughter Haydon, for Memorial Day.  Oh happy day!!  It was an extra fun trip, maybe because it had been two years since our last visit.  We hadn't been there long when the kids received gifts from Donna.  The boys were all over their new Lego sets.

Grace inherited Haydon's princess dresses.  She was so excited that she wore this Cinderella dress the rest of the day.

a frog at the fish pond

The finished projects and happy boys.

The next day, Donna rented a bounce house for the kids to play on all day - which they did - ALL day long.

Later in the day it warmed up enough to add water to the slides.

Grace wasn't interested once the water was added, but the boys were living their best life.

At the end of the day we made s'mores.

The kids had so much fun with Haydon and with their dogs.

saying goodbye to the neighbor dog

and goodbye to Donna

It was wonderful to be with my friend again.  Harrison asked me how Donna was related to us.  He was surprised when I told him that she wasn't.  I can only hope that the kids have friendships that feel like family.

Finally, on this Memorial Day, my heart is full of gratitude that Jeff made it home from his deployments and gratitude for those who didn't.  Freedom isn't free.

art and STEAM

Grace has been taking preschool art classes which finished up this week.  Every week was a different nursery rhyme.

Hey diddle diddle...the cow jumped over the moon, the dish ran away with the spoon

Mary had a little lamb

three little kittens lost their mittens

hickory dickory dock

sing a song of sixpence (four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie)

She also made an Elmo face and a flower picture.

She had a lot of fun at the art studio but did not like getting her hands dirty.

For four weeks, right after art we went to the library for a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) class for preschoolers.  They had different themes every week like balance, sound, nests and bugs.  Grace loves the library!

We're loving all these resources coming back to life in our community.