Summer is Here!

Summer became official for us last Thursday!  Ava celebrated her last day of Kindergarten!

 

 She has grown up so much in 9 months!

We celebrated with a few of her school friends at the pool and had a blast.  She's made some sweet friends this year. 

So glad to have this girl home all summer!

We have a bucket list of things to do this summer.  Here's what we've been up to so far!

LEGOLAND Discovery Center with Abigail and Preston

"Car rides" with neighborhood school friends at the park.

It's so fun to see friends from school at our pools and parks.  I think we've seen a friend every time we've gone!

Trips to the Library.....

I had an idea to reward her with a prize once she read 20 books and logged them on her reading list.  But she read all 11 books that she checked out while I was at the gym one day last week!  I've decided to up the quota.  Ha!  Our sweet neighbor Sara brought Ava all of the books from her classroom to read this summer.  It was like Christmas morning to her. 

Lots of pool time!

My sweet boy

Enjoying Daddy's summer off from school SOOOOO much!

Dinner parties with church friends

Sweet Caroline time!!

Slip n Slide Trampoline Day....Sprinkler+Dish Soap = Fun

I think we are going to pull out shampoo/conditioner to go for more slip next time :-)

Ava's dance recital is this weekend and VBS starts on Monday.

Yay Summer!

May Happenings

We headed to the pool for the first time last weekend.  It was still much too cold for me but the kids have been begging for three weeks and finally wore us down.  They get SO excited about pool season!

I remember not caring about the water temp when I was a kid and these two proved to be the same.  Jeff and I watched them play for hours and Jeff even jumped in for an hour too.  It was a fun first pool day :-)

Unfortunately we were rained out on Memorial Day so we didn't get to go but we still had a very eventful weekend starting with a park day and picnic on Friday......

And Presley's first dance recital on Saturday!  She was SOOOO great :-)

The kids had a sleepover Sunday night.  We pulled out the sofa sleeper and they played flashlights until after 11:00.  LOVE these kiddos!

Ava headed back to school yesterday for her last 8 days!  She had her kinder performance/end of year celebration yesterday morning. 

This school year has just flown by!  Ava has learned so much and I am so thankful that this kindergarten year was fun and exciting for her.  This girl loves to learn.  She loves to read and write and draw and she blows me away every day with new poems and 'songs' that she writes.  She randomly pulls books off the bookshelf and reads them around the house.  She had her nose in a book the entire time we were at the library on Friday, putting it down only long enough to scan it at check out. 

Jeff took a video of Ava reading The Giving Tree the other night.  It's the sweetest sound to me.  The tiny baby I read books to five years ago is now reading to me.   

 

Lately

I always forget just how busy the month of May can be!  This year is no exception with tee ball season, recital costume fittings/meetings, teacher appreciation week, end of school celebrations, etc...

I captured a little of what's been going on the last three weeks with some phone pics.

We celebrated Fine Arts night at Ava's school a couple of weeks ago.  She had a handmade necklace and a pink hot air balloon painting chosen for the show.  This is Ava's happy place for sure.  Nothing makes this girl happier than art. And her art teacher is just amazing.  Ava adores her.  I need to get a picture of them together before school is out. 

Here are a few pics of Keegan at T-ball practice one Wednesday night....

I think he enjoyed his first season :-)

Coach helped the boys put their handprint on their first ball before their last practice. 

It's so cute!

His last game was on Saturday.

And after a year of wearing Ava's soccer medals around the house, he finally got his own :)

Ava's recital costumes are in and we think they may be our favorites so far!

I try to clean/organize Ava's craft table every other week but I've given up for the most part.  She seems to find what she needs to create.  Many, many hours are spent at the this table :-)

Being that Ava's love language is arts/crafts, I received 16 sweet cards, books and pictures from her on mother's day.  And a painted flower pot.  It was a sweet day! 

Love this girl!

On the weekends she sleeps on the top bunk in Keegan's room.  I walked in one Saturday morning and found they had their house shoes lined up like this.

It still makes me smile weeks later.  I love being their Mommy.

Easter Weekend

We had an eventful weekend that began Friday night at the Ballpark in Arlington.  We took the kids to see the Rangers play the White Sox and stayed for fireworks after the game!

The weather was absolutely perfect.  70 and breezy.  Sure beat our June game last year in the triple digit heat!

We bought passes to watch the fireworks show from the field. It was fun to walk around on the field but we decided compared to last year that the view is actually better from our seats.

We pulled in at 11:30 Friday night and headed to Keegan's double header T-ball games Saturday morning.

We had Easter dinner at Grammy & Poppy's Saturday night with of course an egg hunt and some egg decorating.  Presley declared it was the "best Easter party ever!"

No interest in egg coloring for this guy....But if there's a car or plane around he's a happy boy :)

Sweet Kinley

Sweet girl's first Easter :)

After church we headed to Nana & Gramps' for Easter lunch and egg hunts.  We had so much fun celebrating both Easter and Gramps' birthday!

Then we came home and crashed!  It was such an awesome weekend of worship, family and fun. 

Thankful that we serve a Risen Savior!  As my kids love to shout "The tomb was EMPTY!"  Amen.