End of school craziness!

The first day of summer vacation seems like the perfect day to pay tribute to the crazy month of May and it's end of school extravaganzas. With four kids in school now our schedule was crazy but we had fun honoring our kids and celebrating their accomplishments. 

First off was Laine, she was honored at awards night! We were super happy for her and though we have no pictures I do have a picture of her "award- winning" pancakes, turns out the hours we have spent watching the Food Network as a family has taught her a few things.

I was lucky enough to get to attend Matt's first field trip! We took a visit to Wheeler Farm where Matt and his friends enjoyed the morning running around feeding ducks, checking out the animals and taking a hay ride! 

Eve participated in a school play where she stole the show as the funniest girl on stage. She just blossomed and came out of her shell, even the kids in James' class thought she was the best part. S

Matt decided that he was ready to graduate from preschool, I'm not sure if I was ready for that one though. He had a part where he spoke about the pledge then got to hold the flag while they said the pledge- he was super excited about that. 

James had an afternoon of singing patriotic songs....

...he was not happy that he had to sing or that grandmas and mom were there to support him. 

One highlight of our last week is that I won free meals at our favorite burger joint for a week.  

Everyone got a good burger and time with mom we had a lot of fun celebrating their accomplishments and planning what we were going to do with our summer vacation!

We have a teenager!!!

It has been over a week but I have been putting off posting this, maybe because I am still in denial that I have a teenager in my house. 

What can I say about Laine...Laine is one of the kindest, compassionate, helpful people I know. I don't know of a better bigger sister, she takes time with the smallest of her siblings to help with whatever they want. Abby loves her and gets more excited when Laine comes home than whenever anyone else does. She is becoming a master chef, and has been cooking one meal a week for almost a year now. We love listening to her play the piano, it is fun to watch her master complicated pieces. She also is witty and her dry sense of humor cracks us up. We are just grateful that this girl is part of our family. 

Abby 10 months

Time flies and this little one is closer to her first birthday now than I am comfortable with. I can tell that she is getting older as there was a lack of photos of her this month...I guess we are finally getting used to her being around with us, she brightens our days and sleeps through the nights. 

Abby has gotten vocal this month and expresses both her pleasure and displeasure about what is going on around her. The indignant cries when something she wants is removed from her vision, grasp, or simply has been eaten. She also squeals with joy when she sees each of her kids on their return from school. She loves to go exploring and takes many adventures. She has an odd hybrid of crawling and army crawling that gets her where she needs to go, she also finds great enjoyment in sitting down and spinning around. 

Abby loves food- as evident by the stains on her clothing...thank heavens for oxy clean and a good washer. Her favorites are ground beef, strawberries, and yogurt. She is a good sport and will eat whatever is in front of her, of course more ends on her and around her than in her right now. 

Because of Abby's adventures in eating she and the dog have developed a special relationship. He has always been protective of Abby and has endured her pulling his tail and exploring his paws and face. Now that relationship has changed as she likes to share her food and Cerberus is very happy to be the recipient. He camps out and doesn't eat off her tray, he eats what he drops and what she feeds him. They are quite the pair and I hope this new development leads to him not eating her toys anymore. 

Abby is just happy, even though she has been a bit grumpy with getting her teeth this last month. She has two that are through and two that are coming. So she is a bit more drooly than usual. But happy all the same.