Memorial Day Projects

Inspired by the sweet smells of spring, Eva and her friend Maddie picked mint leaves and snowball blossoms and various other nice smelling flora and decided to make perfume. They have jars and jars of perfume now, so if anyone wants to smell like springtime, come on over.

While the girls made perfume, the boys dug a 4-foot hole in the back yard. I know it was 4 feet because they kept coming inside to report how deep it was. Two feet three and half inches! Two feet six inches! Etc.

The reason for the hole takes us back in time about 16 years to when I was on folk dance tour in Drummondville, Canada, and I bought a hammock from some nice gentlemen from El Salvadaor. The Salvadorian hammock has been sitting in linen closets for 15 years, and Spencer decided it was high time we got it out and used it.

So he used his iron will to make sure that hammock got properly strung. And it did.

See?

Pas de Quatre

Underwater Scene from Pinocchio

Boulder Creek Festival

 Danse Etoile did a beautiful job at the Boulder Creek Festival despite the technical difficulties with their music. It's always fun to see the fruits of the kids' labor, and it was a good warm-up for their Pinocchio show, which is next weekend.

 Eva showed off a few dance moves by the creek as well.

 This talented fellow drew quite a crowd by wading out into the fast-moving creek and balancing stones on top of each other. I'm not sure what I'm more impressed by: the unusual idea (it would never have crossed my mind to do such a thing) or his ability to withstand the cold (snow runoff! And it was chilly outside).

Eva got a crocheting lesson from grandma in the van on the way home. They're yarn buddies.

Miscellaneous

School's out! At least that's the word on the street. I just got a couple of textbooks in the mail this week (evil cackle). The weather has led us all to believe that it's not quite summer vacation yet, but we're hopeful. We're going to the Boulder Creek Festival this afternoon where Bec will be performing, so I'll post those later.

Spencer started taking piano lessons last week, and he's zipping along in his book because he gets 15 minutes of computer time every time he passes off a song (2 times through with no mistakes). Well, he got ambitious and started teaching his friend Killian to play, too.

Eva and Ava got their pictures taken in the photo booth at the mall last Saturday. They also went to the Disney Store and the indoor playground.

Spencer and Eva like eating outside.

The dollhouse got rearranged.

But the sad news of the week is that we had to have a memorial service for William the Hermit Crab. Besides the grave in the backyard, Eva also made a little memorial to put in the hermit crab cage so the other hermit crabs won't forget William either.

Rebecca's Piano Piece

Eva's Piano Piece

Piano

 It's just not enough to have a swim meet, a campout, a soccer game, ballet rehearsal, and an Elder's Quorum activity this weekend. We needed a piano recital, too. How many more weeks are there in May?

Camping

 Ben and Spencer went to the stake father & son campout last night. I wasn't there, and they're not around to tell me about the pictures. So I'll have to use my imagination on the captions. In the above picture, most of the boys are gaping in awed reverence at the sight of a beautiful doe leaping through the forest, but all little Johnny (in front) can think of is about how his mom forgot to pack his dinner.

 I thought it was a paint ball gun!

Spencer and Cade decided to put their Minecraft skills to use and build a REAL building. Not bad for a morning's work. See, video games can be useful.

Yummy Mummy's Day

Happy Mother's Day, Mom, Nanee, Grandma Ashe, Grandma Bowen, Reiko, and all the other mothers I love! At our house, Mother's Day is all about the food. We had waffles, bacon, fruit bread, and apples for breakfast, lots of good food at church, fish sandwiches for dinner, and then Ben and Eva had a donut fry at the end of the day. All the neighbor kids could smell them, so we didn't have a single leftover donut hole by the end. It was a delicious and relaxing day. Thanks, My Love!

Out and About in Boulder

 For our weekly field trip today we went to Boulder Ice Cream and took a tour. It's a small operation with just 9 employees, but they have free samples. You may be beginning to see a motivation behind our field trips (free candy, free ice cream). Boulder Ice Cream is in an industrial area, and next door is a shop that welds metal stuff. They made this cool snowboard bench.

 But even cooler than the snowboard bench and much more exciting to us is this picnic bench on wheels! We usually walk to church on Sundays. It takes us 30-35 minutes to get there. So when we had 9:00 church we often discussed our plans to make a motorized picnic table that would allow us to eat our cereal on the way to church. I just can't believe somebody else had the same idea and actually executed it. Of course, this one doesn't have a motor; it has bicycle pedals. But bicycle pedals are good, too. Only one person would have to eat breakfast before leaving, and it should be a big breakfast because it would be hard to pedal 5 people and a picnic table up Kohl St., especially since everyone would have their scriptures and various other church things to carry.

 And then we went to Pearl St. to see all the pretty flowers and the Art Deco court building and to listen to the dreadlock guitarists, who were actually quite good.

Do you like Rebecca's superhero hair?

School is Winding Down

Here's what lunch looks like when Rebecca gets creative:

 Yesterday I finished up marking off all the kids' lessons on the Online School. When I clicked on the last "Submit," I squealed with delight. One of the kids heard the sound I made and asked, "Did Rocco fall down the stairs?" I can't tell you how exciting this is. I calculated that I've spent over 90 hours marking off kids' lessons this school year alone (that doesn't include any teaching time--it's purely administrative). Boy, do I have plans for the time I won't be spending marking off lessons.

 Today is Rocco's birthday, so the girls are making special dog treats just for him. They found a dog cookie recipe that contains meaty baby food. I think this is one cookie I'll be able to resist.

Tenaglias' Baptism

 Aw, look at 'em.

Happy, happy, happy! Julie and Olivia were baptized yesterday. Never one to give people a break, I asked Julie if she'd help me teach in Relief Society today. She did such a wonderful job, I think I'll ask her to speak every time it's my turn to teach. She was a natural.