Viva Fiesta!

The First Grade class performed a Fiesta dance this past week to celebrate Fiesta!  I specifically bought Eli's Mexican shirt and Evie's Mexican dress while we were on vacation in Mexico last summer just for this occasion.  Every year I have nothing Fiesta-related so I wanted to be prepared this time around.  And they both looks adorable in their outfits.  I loved it!

Besides the dance, the First Graders and Kindergarteners had a Fiesta parade around the school. (Eli was the official confetti tosser.)  

The First Grade theme was Hats off to Reading.  Each child had to make a hat celebrating his/her favorite book.  Eli chose The Day the Crayons Quit so we hot glued crayons onto a visor and it looked great!  

Eli's was so cute during his dance.  He had been practicing it at home so much that Evie and Eulee got really into it, too.  

Then on the Saturday after the dance, Eli's school was in one of the real Fiesta parades--the King William Parade.  This parade is very funky and family-friendly.  People dress up their dogs to walk in the parade too.  It's lots of fun, but we haven't attended since Eli was a baby.  

We got to downtown early on Saturday morning...that's the downside to being in a parade....you have to get there super early.  The First Graders were playing their djembe drums on the flatbed and doing drum circle for the parade.  Two kids were missing, so the First Grade teacher (our close friend) asked Elina to join the drum circle since she did it when she was in First Grade as well.  She was thrilled to be an honorary member that day!

Evie sat in the back of the flatbed.  I tried to get her to wave to people, but after 10 minutes she was done with the flatbed.  I was afraid she wouldn't last for the 1.5 mile parade walk, but she did just fine!  I was impressed!   Eli and Elina played drums for the entire 90 minute walk and all the drummers' hands were red and sore.  How funny!  Eulee could only ride in the stroller while B pushed her...and after an hour into it, she fell asleep.  Not too much excitement for her!

After the parade, we walked through the fair until 1pm.  We got some food and checked out arts and crafts vendors.  It was great, but by the time we got home, we were just toast.  We all took a shower, got into PJs at 2pm, and B and I took naps on the sofa  while the kids watched TV.  We told them they could do whatever they wanted to do because we had our physical activity for the day.  Ha!

The parade really was a lot of fun and it was a memorable experience!  Viva Fiesta!!

B is 35!

Last week my parents and J came into town to celebrate J and B's birthdays.  We all had a great time!  Lots of yummy food to eat...and lots of delicious cakes as well!

We went out to eat a lot...as usual.  And I made a lemon curd icebox cake (our new favorite cake for summer) for B and a tiramisu cake for J.  They were both amazing!  

B's actual birthday was on a weekday, so it definitely wasn't as fun as it could be.  After school, we skipped dance and karate so that the kids could set up an elaborate scavenger hunt for B.  We had his favorite candies setup at different parts of the hunt, too.  He got Toblerone, Sour Patch Kids, Swedish Fish...and he also got some new shirts.  Elina came up with most of the clues and some of them were mind-boggling for B.  The clues were kind of evasive and mysterious.  It was hilarious!  So we got to the point where the kids had to just play Hot/Cold with B so that he could find the next clue.  Ha!  (I really love watching all the ducklings follow their dad around!)

I also had the kids make this really cute picture as a gift.  I cut out letters to spell out "We love you" and I took pictures of the kids holding different letters.  The picture in the end came out nicely, right?

That night we had a nice dinner with a movie.  (We watched "Paddington"...although it wasn't TRULY B's choice, it was excellent!)  Then we ended with a powdered donut cake!  The kids--and B--were all in heaven!  What a great ending!

We are all so thankful for B!  He's a great husband, a loving dad...what more could we ask for?  He always goes along with my "fun" (aka tiring) plans and never complains...he always tries his best to skip work to attend field trips...he loves to take the kids swimming and biking when I'm too tired for it...he always goes to Eulee in the middle of the night if she cries...he's pretty amazing!

Happy Birthday!!

Poetry Night 2015

Poetry Night is one of the biggest nights for first graders at Eli's school.  For weeks, the first graders have been learning about poems and writing their own poems.  The culmination of this unit is Poetry Night...a night where all the first grade families come together and listen to poetry readings while sipping on coffee (or chocolate milk) and eating some desserts in a candlelit room.  The children are even taught to applaud with snaps!  Not only do the first graders recite poems, but parents and family members do as well.

When Elina went through First Grade, we all went on stage and performed Laurie Berkner's "Song in My Tummy."  (Songs are allowed at Poetry Night because songs are a type of poetry, too.)  For weeks, I kept thinking, "NOW what are we supposed to perform?"  Luckily, I found another Laurie Berkner song just for the occasion--"Blow a Kiss."  I thought it was appropriate since the end of the year is upon us and we all hate saying goodbye to First Grade at Discovery School.  We practiced it the whole week up until Poetry Night...we all had our verses to sing, Evie had hers memorized, Elina wrote an extra verse about Discovery School, B was playing guitar, even Eulee knew when to do the "blow a kiss" motion during the song.  It turned out pretty cute...even though Eulee didn't really do the motions we had practiced.  We even managed to make a few people cry!  (In the video, the focus goes in and out just because it was so dark in the room, so hopefully you can see everything ok.)
All of Eli's poems were really cute.  He did a wonderful job!  I was especially impressed with his poem about his good friend, K.

B and Eli went up to read a poem together, too.  It was all so memorable!

We love love love Poetry Night!

(We didn't get lots of great pictures that night though...it's difficult because it's so dark in there and Eulee was a handful that night.  Plus, Elina was having some tummy troubles, so she wasn't in a picture-taking mood either.  Too bad!)

Week of the Young Child

Eli and Evie's school celebrated the Week of the Young Child and it was lots of fun!  Every day had a different theme that the kids have to follow.

Monday--SILLY HAT DAY

This year Eli wanted to wear the bat hat I made for his Halloween costume a few years ago.

Tuesday--GOOFY GLASSES DAY

Eli wanted to wear some cool shades and Evie picked out some cute frames to wear. 

Wednesday--CRAZY HAIR DAY

We spiked and colored Eli's hair to look like grass.  Then I hot glued some bugs onto hairclips and put them all over his hair.  It turned out pretty cool and he loved it!

Evie wanted me to give her crazy curls, so I curled her hair that morning.  Well, the curls ended up looking cute on her.  Everyone said it was Elegant Hair Day for Evie!  (Although I didn't get a good picture of her hair that day!)

Thursday--SILLY SOX DAY

I actually had to run out and buy my kids silly socks.  We just don't have any!  Elina has never been one to participate in Silly Sox Day, so I don't have any at the house.  Evie's were easy to find though and they were SO EVIE...plus they were on clearance for 99 cents.  Score!  

Boy crazy socks were harder to find.  I went to all the kids' stores and got nothin'.  Then one of the salesladies said that she goes to Hot Topic for some kids' stuff.  Hot Topic???  So I went to Hot Topic and discovered that they have lots of kid-themed items...even Miyazaki stuff!  There was Totoro, Kiki's Special Delivery Service...it was awesome!  Of course, everything came in adult sizes (strange??), but I just went ahead and bought the Totoro socks for Eli to wear.  They were a little big, but he didn't mind one bit...and they looked great!!

Friday--WEAR THE RAINBOW DAY

Every grade had to wear a different color and Eli had to wear green.

It was a silly week!  This was the first year I participated this much and it was super fun!

Strawberry Picking Adventures

I took Elina and Eli out of school early one day just to go pick strawberries!  Last year I only took Evie and Eulee and the older kids were pretty miffed about it.  Since then, they have been continuously asking me, "Are we going to be able to go pick strawberries with you this year?"  They wanted to make sure I didn't leave them in the dust again.

Eulee was nice enough to take a nap during the 40 minute drive out to the orchard.  But once we arrived, she promptly peed in her pants.  Boooo!  So I used up my only extra set of underwear and pants within 5 minutes.

After that we headed out to the strawberry plants.  Eli and Elina are pros now.  I gave them a basket and they filled it all up on their own in record time.  They did an awesome job!

I had Evie and Eulee with me...so I wasn't quite as successful.  I think by next year Evie will be an awesome strawberry picker.  But this year, she kept accidentally squeezing the strawberries too hard as she tried to pick them off the plant!  Not good.  So I had to demote her...she could only point out ripe strawberries to me and then I would pick them.  She still managed to have fun though.

As you probably guessed, Eulee was absolutely no help at all.  But at least she wasn't stomping on plants or squishing strawberries.  She was just bored and wandering up and down all the rows.  I was trying to finish my row at a faster pace, so I just let her wander off.

Then I noticed that she had taken one of her shoes off.  So I yelled over to her, "Put your shoe on!"  She proceeded to yell something back to me, but I couldn't hear her.  Then I sent Elina over to her to ask her to put her shoe on.  Once Elina checked out the situation, she announced, "Mommy!  Eulee peed in her pants!"

WHAT??  She had JUST peed in her pants when we first arrived!!  What happened?  Of course, the 2 older grandmas standing close to me were cracking up at Elina's comment!

At this point, I didn't even care about Eulee's situation anymore.  I just wanted to fill my basket by finishing my row of strawberries as quickly as possible because we had to get back by a certain time.  So I told Elina, "It's fine!  Just leave her!  I'm going to finish up real quick!"  Then I filled up my basket, took some pictures of the kids together, and went to pay for the berries.

Eulee was a hot mess!  I mean, look at the picture above...she is missing a shoe!  At least in the picture you can't tell that her pants are soaking wet.  Plus, I didn't have any more extra clothes so she had to ride with her bare bum on the way home.  Not that she minded one bit.

I just find it comical that this was so much hard work for me and I CHOSE the activity!!  Having fun is hard work with little ones.  But I know these memories will be burned into all our minds and we've all been laughing about it when we tell the story.

Makin' memories, right?  Makin' memories!

Way To Go, Elina!

Elina has gotten two pretty cool awards over the past few weeks.

1. PTA Reflections 

Children submitted works of art (dance, film, literature, visual arts, photography, and musical composition) that followed a specific theme.  This year's theme was "The World Would be a Better Place If..."  Elina drew a picture of a tree made up of all living things that survive on trees.  She said that it would be a better place if we stopped cutting down trees that provide homes and food to so many living things.  (I didn't get to take a picture of it before we submitted it and we still haven't gotten the picture back yet so I can't post it.)  We submitted it a long time ago and forgot about it...but it turned out she won an Award of Excellence for the district!  The different awards were Overall Award of Excellence (which advances to the next level), Award of Excellence, Award of Merit, and Honorable Mention.  We were just so proud that Elina's artwork was recognized and she was thrilled!

2. 4H Entomology Contest

Once a month, Elina has been meeting a 4H entomology group to study for a big statewide Entomology contest.  This is her first year participating.  Kids must identify insects by common name and order.  Then there is a written portion of the test for general knowledge of insects.  She was hesitant to do it last year, but I knew her amazing memory would serve her well...and it totally did because she got a perfect score on the test!!  She and another boy both tied for 1st place, so they had to have a bug-off.  Yes, a BUG-OFF!!  They had to go into a room and identify 5 more insects....common name and order.  Well, they both got all of them right, BUT spelling counts and Elina only misspelled one insect order and the other boy misspelled TWO!  Seriously?!?  Who knew entomology could be this exciting???  

So Elina won 1st place for the Junior division and she was in heaven!  

We're so proud of our artsy entomologist!

Easter 2015

This year I was one of the parents in charge of Evie's class Easter party.  We had a book, a craft, games, lots of cute, yummy food, an egg hunt, and cascarones.  It was a fun party!

CRAFT
We made simple, but cute yarn egg.  The kids loved the soft yarn that I had bought.  They all turned out great!

GAMES
1. The kids put a balloon in between their legs and hopped like bunnies to a line and back.  This was funny because I had the kids use bunny hands and most of them actually did it!

2. Then the kids did a simple spoon egg race.  Evie was actually pretty good at this one.  She and the classmate she raced with were so focused and intense!

3. We ended with the Minute to Win It game, Nose Dive.  But instead I called it Bunny Noses because the cotton balls on their noses made them look like bunnies.

FOOD

1. Easter-shaped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
2. Carrot sticks in little pots of hummus
3. Clementine chicks
4. Peep rice krispy treats (I used colorful Peeps for the marshmallow part of the recipe!)

5. Jello eggs (our Easter tradition)

EGG HUNT & CASCARONES
The kids had so much fun looking for eggs.  And who doesn't love confetti in their hair??

Eli's class party was on the same day, so B had to go instead of me.  He said the party was pretty good...just lots of playground time, 2 quick games, and an egg hunt.

EASTER SUNDAY
On Easter Sunday, the kids looked for their baskets in the morning.  It is definitely getting more and more difficult to write scavenger hunt clues for 4 kids now.  And I imagine that as the years go by, I will also run out of hiding places, too!

The kids also found the golden bunny pretty quickly this year.  After last year's mishap (Eulee finding the golden bunny and sneaking off to eat it on her own), we learned to hide the bunny higher up.  Elina was the first to see it on a high shelf in the kitchen.  She was nice enough not to say anything so the other kids could have a chance to see it.  Eli found it later in the afternoon, but Evie needed lots of help.

Then we painted eggs.  This year I got metallic paint and the eggs came out really well.  Eli tried to make stripes on his egg with rubber bands and it kind of worked.  He worked so hard on that ONE single egg!  Evie and Elina also used Sharpies to decorate their eggs.  Elina made hers look like Pokemons and they came out so well!  Evie really tried to copy Elina's Jigglypuff (Pokemon character) and I thought it was pretty good!

Later, we had AJ and her 4 kids over for Easter dinner.

The kids played, had a karaoke party, ate dinner, had an egg hunt, and ended with cascarones.

  

We hid 2 big eggs with $1 bill in each one and at the end the kids still couldn't find the last big egg.  B had to try to guide the kids to the right location.  It was comical watching them walk right by it over and over again! (It was hidden under the dump truck!)

Such a wonderful Easter with family and friends...

especially these silly friends!!