Road trip!

This past spring Kevin and I started talking about the possibility of making a road trip out to the Midwest. I told him since the furthest we had driven with our kiddos was Monterey, we may want to try somewhere a little closer. So we decided to finally head up to the Pacific Northwest and visit our good friends John and Brenda. They had been down here several times since moving north but we had not made the trek up to see them yet. We found some dates that worked and hit the road soon after school got out. Here are some snapshots of our adventure!

Everyone was super excited and chill on the two days there. The two days home..... May have been another story.

First lunch stop, Lake Mt Shasta. We loved driving with this big mountain in our view for a while.

We spent our first night in Bend Oregon where we walked to dinner downtown and actually had a fun night in the hotel with our kids swimming in the pool and watching cooking shows. Everyone is growing up!!!

The girls were most excited about holding Sierra. She was a trooper, and put up with a lot of kids holding her. She however slept most of our time there! What a blessing to have such a good sleeper.

John and Brenda took us into Cour de lane Idaho one day for a nice hike by the lake. The kids had a great time racing each other to the next number. Our oldest and John and Brenda's oldest may or may not be just as competitive as each other.

Ethan was most excited about James' dirt bike. We were glad to have that there for him as well it kept him very occupied!

Touring downtown Spokane. We have added a few since our adventures 14 years ago in SJ!

we were very blessed by John and Brenda's hospitality. We had lots of good food, fun games, good conversation, and way too much good laughter. We love having friends like them that we can just pick up with like we've never left. Until next time!

On the way home we decided to head west and go through Portland. We drove along the Columbia River. It was probably one of my most favorite drives. So beautiful! We stopped at the Maltanomah  Falls for a little hike up to the bridge you can see over the kids heads. It was very cold as a rain storm blew through right as we arrived. We could see the blue sky coming though so we waited out the worst of it in the van and then headed out to stretch our legs. 

I don't have any pictures but we were able to stay with my Aunt Jan for a night in McMinville. That was a super fun and quick 12 hours. We will have to spend some more time there soon!

Graduation!

The end of May brought us to Kindergarten graduation. Just like most "events" in kindergarten it is one of my favorite mornings. The teachers do an amazing job of preparing the kids for their program. Each child has a speaking part and they sing some great songs with lyrics rewritten to popular songs. I knew I was going to cry like a baby, but I literally had to breath through an ugly sob that almost escaped. It was a feeling of knowing these are my babies moving on to First Grade and just so grateful for an amazing year they had. Their teacher does such a great job of making them all a part of a big family that they truly do love each classmate by the end of the year. I am so thankful for a fabulous year for these two and so sad to never do kindergarten again.

All year the Kinders are paired up with a fifth grade buddy. They go to chapel together and do various activities together throughout the year. Brooklyn was paired up with a girl I have tutored for the last two years. They love each other and Brooklyn really looks up to her.

Hudson got paired up with our family friend and they had so much fun together too. When it was chapel days Hudson liked to spike his hair like Cade, but it never quite looked the same:)

Morgan wanted to skip school for the celebration but Ethan opted to stay.

So thankful for this lady who loves all her students and makes learning easy and super fun!

Buddies for life... I hope:)

On to first grade!

Spring time!

Here we are in April, less than two months away from summer! Totally cliché, but where does the time go? I can hardly believe my kindergartners are almost done with their first year of school. I love kindergarten! It's so sad we won't be able to do it again. Here are some pictures of our spring so far. We've had a lot of fun, we've made a lot of memories, we've broken up a lot of fights, we've had lot of timeouts, we've had a few tears, lots of love, some dancing and lots of laughter.

The hundredth day of school! This is a big deal in elementary school now. The kindergartners got to decorate their own capes with 100 of anything. This mom chose foam stickers, it doesn't get any easier than sticking a sticker on some plastic!

OK, can I just say that having to do kindergartner readers times two has been as challenging as I expected it to be! We will definitely not get any awards for most books read. But Hudson and Brooklyn are learning a lot and we all try to take turns listening to them read. Unfortunately they almost always want mom to listen!

Once again we all ran the Almond blossom run. All the kiddos did the mile and did great. Ethan was surprised to get third place in his age bracket since he had to move up. Morgan got first for hers! It is just a fun experience to watch them run and to see their little faces light up when everybody cheers and cheers for them as they cross the finish line. I love this tradition with Kara and her kids and I hope it lasts a long time!

Ethan's fourth grade class had a classroom city where each of them had to pick a business to operate for four days. They had to sell things or rent out things or do a service for somebody and then they earned play money which they could spend at each other's stores. I was glad when Ethan and I were able to decide on a Kendama rental store, because then I didn't have to run out to every day and buy more Gatorade's for him to sell to his friends!

Sister love and the first popcycles of the season!

We had our yearly open house for K-5 and spring program for the K-3 kids. This was the first year Ethan was too old to be in the program. It is a super fun night of seeing the kids show off all of their work and their classrooms and then listening to them sing their hearts out for all of the parents. It is a special night we look forward to every year.

In January I took the girls to see Disney's Frozen on ice. It was a fun afternoon trip with some friends. So the boys got to go to their first NHL game. The Oilers were playing in San Jose so Kevin took them there to check it out. They had a great night! And even got two pucks for free!

We are enjoying our nice green and colorful backyard for a few months! Come August everything will be on its way to totally dried out!

Happy Easter!

For spring break we were able to use a cabin for four nights. It was on a little private lake so the kids and Kevin did a lot of fishing! No fish were caught, but they were persistent! There was also a canoe there that we could take out on the water. I had to earn Ethan's trust, as he didn't think I would be able to row him safely in  that canoe! Ethan also brought his BB gun up so he and Hudson and Kevin did some shooting. The boys loved the independent time to just go out and be boys! The girls loved exploring out side and riding their scooters down the steep driveway. I loved not doing my hair or make up for four days! That is a true vacation!

Kevin spent a lot of time untangling knots and getting hooks out of trees!

On Tuesday we decided to head up the mountain to Yosemite. All fourth-grade students this year get free admission to all national parks, so we figured we would take advantage of that. We have never spent much time up there with our kids, so I was really excited to take them up on a hike and show them some of the waterfalls. The falls are really flowing which is so nice after the years of drought we have had. It just so happened that the three days we were up there it was so cold! We bundled up in our winter jackets, and had to avoid some black ice on the way up to some waterfalls. But it is just such a beautiful place that we enjoyed it anyways.

First view of halfdome!

Bridalveil Falls was very cold! As we got closer to the Falls there was black ice and the trees around the waterfall were covered in ice as if it were a winter storm!

We all made it halfway up Vernal Falls to the bridge. I had forgotten what a hike that was! Our kids and their little legs did awesome. Kevin and the older two wanted to head up all the way to the top. They had to turn around when they were almost there though because of black ice and falling ice chunks. They did awesome hiking up all those steps! Hudson and Brooklyn and I just hung out and climbed on the rocks by the bridge.

These two! Full of personality and totally different personalities!

Canoeing with my boys! I love being on the lake in the morning! So peaceful and relaxing.

We did a lot of relaxing, laying around, playing games, and watching movies. It was the perfect spring break!

Then for my birthday, I convince Kevin to head out for another day of hiking and some dinner out. It was a great night!

And finally a picture of Ethan with some of his classmates who were chosen to participate in the math Olympiad. The top math students from his class were asked to go and compete against other fourth fifth and sixth graders. They had extremely hard math problems! Most of them I had no idea how to solve. I think Ethan had fun in a math kind of way. He even got the high score for his team. We were proud of him