Last Day of School

The last day of school this is how the girls looked when they walked through the door! Exhausted and ready for summer vacation. 

1st Day vs. Last Day

Dallin started the summer out by learning to ride his bike with no training wheels! He was such a fast learner and very proud of himself.

Carmen with her friends Lucy and Klarissa at Dairy Queen. The Beehives met there for treats and card games. Turns out these were the only 3 that showed up, which I think they were happy about. 

The very next day we hit up the pool to soak in the sun.  Happy Summer to us!!

May Mayhem Part 2

The crazy month of May continued on with school concerts, including a very patriotic one from the 2nd graders. 

Aliza's class had to make State floats and then paraded them through the halls at school. She chose California and even built the Golden Gate Bridge on her float!

They also did a book review, she chose Percy Jackson. 

Field day was awesome this year. After so many years of volunteering for field day, I've learned the best station to help with...  the fire truck! You basically do nothing but stand and chat with the teachers, while the kids get sprayed with the fire hose. I call this parental experience a win! 

And since Dallin was with me, he got to play for 3 hours straight in the spray of the water hose. Another win!

It helped that his friend Tobiah was with us. 

Carmen and her friends got together to make secret sister goodies for camp. It's so fun to ease drop on their conversations.  She really has some great friends.  I hope it always stays this way. 

May Mayhem

May is always such a busy month, a sort of hazing for parents....not only is it the end of the school year hoopla, but I am also the Stake Young Women's Camp Director, so I organize a week long summer camp for over 100 girls from all over the region. From January through June, when camp will be held, I've spent just about every day planning for this event. Not only did I have lots of meeting with my assistant, but we also had a lot of outdoor exploring and training our YCL's. This year I was tasked with finding a new location, which added to the stress of planning everything. My assistant, Missy, and I made a lot of trips up to the new camp to make sure it was going to work. It may look like a lot of fun, but it was seriously hard work. ;) 

After much pre-camp planning, we finally had our Bonfire Kickoff to welcome all the girls to our upcoming camp and help them prepare. Below our first year girls perform such a cute little song to introduce themselves. 

In May, we also had a piano recital for both Carmen and Aliza. I was so proud of Aliza for performing in it because she had only started lessons 3 week before! She was amazing though. And Carmen of course sounded lovely as always. I love to hear them play music. 

In other exciting news - Dallin got registered for Kindergarten!! I'm not sure who was more excited, him or me? 

We celebrated Mother's Day. I feel so blessed to be surrounded by these great kids everyday. They really make me smile. 

And we made a trip to the new Crozet Creamery with Oma and Poppy. I think my mom looks so beautiful in this picture! 

Carmen got to go to the temple for the first time. It was so neat to be able to take her ourselves and she even brought her own family names to do. What a sweet experience!

AND....Koda Bear turned ONE! We just love him.

Preschool Graduation

Dallin finished out the year of preschool with a lot of fun things. He had bike day and spent so much time measuring things, releasing butterflies and playing with his friends. 

His graduation was super sweet. We just loved his teacher, Ms. Travis.  The families all had a nice dinner together and then the kids sang and read stories they had written to us. 

In addition to his diploma certificate, he also received the "Sweetest Friend" award. That made my mama heart melt! 

Spring Break at Legoland

 It is a pretty funny story how we ended up at Legoland for Spring break this year. It all started when Dallin refused to wear a tie to church. I tried every form of bribery I could think of, even offering the kid $100 and he still refused! Until one day.... I offered to take him to LegoLand if he wore his tie every Sunday for  5 months. That was the ticket! And he did it! Both him and myself were most looking forward to going to Ninjago City.

First stop was the Ninjago ride!!!!

 The excitement was palpable.

While I didn't get a picture of us actually on the ride, it was seriously one of the biggest thrills of parenthood so far for me. Reading countless Ninjago books at bedtime and throwing a lego birthday party and every conversation involving something about ninjas, it was so exciting for me to see Dallins dreams come to reality as we rode that ride over and over again! 

He had to take a picture with every Ninja character...

 The kids we patiently waiting on the steps for the submarine ride. They were good sports in the longest line of the day.

My treasures!

Waiting for the show to start

Everyone's souvenir was getting to create three of their own one-of-a-kind  Lego people.

 I should also add that the park also has a wonderful water park section that we enjoyed as well, but I didn't carry my camera around that part! 

The next day I really wanted to enjoy something off the beaten path. Something the locals enjoy doing. I didn't a little internet searching and found this Botanical Garden not too far away. I was super excited to go, but everyone else was less than enthusiastic about it. All skepticism aside, we went. David's foot was really hurting so he walked only a little ways with us and then decided to wait on a bench. There wasn't much in the way of directions, so we picked the path with a large pond and started walking.  

Everyone was enjoying this hike. Ladybugs were aplenty!

However, the deeper into the garden we got, the more these little guys started to appear. There were 100's of them, which in turn freaked out Dallin and he refused to walk anymore. 

So big sister Carmen ended up carrying him most of the way.

 We never did find the pond and actually got to the paths end and Carmen was tired from carrying Dallin, so we turned around.

In the end, we really enjoyed it and I was so glad we did something out of the norm for us!