June in a Nutshell

The school awards ceremony was actually the very last day of May, but we'll throw it in here anyway.  

Certificates were awarded.  

Applause happened.  

Summer camp at Wolf Mountain.

It's nice to be hitting some of the same places they went last year, because I'm starting to get familiar with the route.  (Matilda still goes straight to the car wash after leaving the gravel roads.)

We started the process for a new leg.  We've actually got the leg now, we just need to go back soon for a different foot that's on order.

My dad & step mom were here for a visit, and we took the kids to the new Museum of Science and Curiousity.

It was a fun place to spend a few hours.  Lots of hands on exhibits.  

It's the kind of place I'd want a membership to if my kids were little.  

It was a nice visit, and I'm glad my girls got to spend a little time with grandparents.  I feel bad for them because the older kids got a lot more grandparent time, when we all lived closer together.  

My dad with Jack and Josiah.

And Bri made a quick trip to our area for a bridal shower weekend.  It was wonderful to see her, and she and I took the girls to a local rock shop.  Bri knows so much about rocks and minerals, and she just lit up explaining things to the girls while we were there.  

I fired up Crikey to make a journal for our trip.  (And then I was terrible about writing in it while we were on vacation.)  

Some bibs I made for the grandbabies.  There's an avocado one that's not finished, but I have to take my serger in for a spa day before I can complete it.  The farmer's market, watermelon, and banana prints came from the March quilt show.  The striped yellow coordinate was in a batch of stuff someone from church gave me.  The green, I picked up at JoAnn's.  The argyle and dots were leftovers from reversible toddler pants I made years ago.  

Our Teacher Appreciation Week

The downside of working mornings only is that I leave before the taco bar happened.  Which is a bummer, because I love tacos.  

But I did get my door decorated, which was a fun surprise.  

I was hanging out with Jack in his room when I noticed Grumman camped out in a pile of his laundry.  Weirdo.  He also loves the smell of warm shoes.  

I read the kindergarten class If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and we painted paper plates to look like chocolate chips.  I wore my Mouse a Cookie dress that day, but didn't get a picture this year.  

City library run.  

Coming to the end of my second year of library, I finally had a light bulb moment and made myself a binder for the leftover coloring pages I had stuffed in my desk drawer.  

My preschoolers get a take home coloring page related to the book we read each week.  But there's often extras due to kids being absent.  

It occurred to me that instead of reinventing the wheel every single week, next year I could make copies of coloring sheets I've already used when I read the same book again to a new class.  I'm looking forward to this saving me some lesson planning time next year.  

So, back in December, Paul ordered a truck.  

It's finally here, and we went and picked it up this week.  

We don't get much wildlife in our suburban neighborhood.  So when I saw this turkey walking down our street, I took a picture.  

Crayon & watercolor with my 3rd graders

I wore my London skirt in honor of Coronation weekend, so it seemed appropriate to pull out the Kings and Queens of England book.  

Not sure why this picture only partially uploaded, but I'm thrilled that my Sam flowers (a type of lily) are coming up again.  He gave them to me as a birthday or Mother's Day gift a couple years ago.  

I think Fiona is influencing Grumman.  He never played in boxes, but Fiona loves boxes.  After she hopped out of this one, he had to get in and see what all the fuss was about.  

 And that's all for this week!  

The End of Catching Up on April

Okay, so yesterday we left off with the cats and the bunny.  Let's see...

Jack showed me a sign he placed.  Being the proud mama, I took a picture.  

The spring Fine Arts Fundraiser occurred.  The sign on the left says ART in the Library.  Other teachers also posted samples of art from their classrooms.  

Oh, there's the crabby ocean scenes I mentioned yesterday!  I read the kids Eric Carle's Home for a Hermit Crab the week that they colored the crabs, then the following week we did the cut, paste, embellish parts.  There was glitter and sequins involved.  I'm pretty sure the janitor sighs a lot when he vacuums the library.  

There were drama, choir, and hand chime performances to go along with the visual arts.  

And dessert was served.  

I mentioned that I haven't been home Friday mornings lately.  I'm getting weekly iron infusions.  Turns out there are things besides motherhood that can cause exhaustion.  Who knew?

Our local adoption support group puts on a respite camp weekend for the kids.  I was so excited to get spots for the girls this year.  This was Hannah playing with sticks (she enjoyed whacking the trees--free therapy!) while we waited for official drop off time.  

And Katie with a branch.

Drop off was Friday afternoon.  

I helped her carry her stuff.  

Pick up was supposed to be Sunday afternoon.  

Saturday, we got a call that Katie was refusing to walk to the dining hall.  That she was being non-compliant.

2 hours later, we got the "she's sick, come get her" call.

I ended up picking them both up because I had no desire to spend 5 hours in the car 3 days in a row.  

Hannah and I went grocery shopping, and since she'd missed out on s'mores night, we got the ingredients to make them at home.  

Hannah got Hershey's bars; I decided to try using Ghiardelli squares instead.

It's not the campfire with friends experience, but 

they were still tasty.

Jack had some, too.

Miss Hannah had a birthday.  

She was full from dinner and asked if we could save "cake" for the next night.

Hence the costume change between presents and turtle pie with flames.

I printed and laminated some button placing pages from Twinkl to use with my K students.  

I tell them we're exercising their Lego muscles when we do things like this (threading beads on a pipe cleaner is another fun one we did recently).  

We're getting so close to the end of the school year that everybody's a little more keyed up than usual.  The weather got nice and good behavior went right out the window.  It's cooler this week, so hopefully we're be able to reign it back in a little bit.