May Day!

For my kids, May is always the grand finale of the school year. This is the month where they do their final field trips, their final programs, their end of school parties, their mother's day tea, field day, projects, etc., etc.. Today was one of those crazy days where each of my children had something special going on with their classes, and each event started at 9:00.

After a crazy morning I got to school just in time to see Brooklyn off on her limousine ride to the Fort Collins Lincoln Center to watch "Slim Jim Goodbody". Some sort of program they put on to encourage youngsters to make healthy choices. They got to go in a limousine because one of the parents in her class owns a limousine company. If she's lucky, she'll be in this kids' class throughout grade school.

As I was seeing her off I watched Bryton's class load on to their school bus (how lame) to head over to the Fort Collins Museum. Almost everyone was dressed in Cowboy/Indian/Pioneer attire. I embarked his bus to take a picture of him and his cuteness but when I saw him he was dressed in what he came to school in. When I asked him why he said, "I'm not really a dress up kind of guy." I decided to punish him by not taking a picture of him. (That will teach him.) Although I regret that decision now because, costume or no costume, he's pretty darn cute. And at least I could have gotten a picture of him on the bus surrounded by "dress up kind of kids".
After seeing them off on their excursions I went inside to Sydney's classroom where they were having a Mother's Day Tea. Sydney very appropriately wore her "mommy's girl" shirt. We moms sat with our kids and had a great brunch that the teacher had secretly organized with the dads. It was actually a pretty impressive spread.
If I'd known how much food would be there I would have forgone my Fiber One Pop-Tart and saved more room in my stomach. After our brunch we took turns going up to the front of the class with our kids and reading the poems they had written for us. Before Sydney and I had our turn one of the boys announced that Sydney's poem was the best. I watched Sydney's face turn red as she quietly shook her head in protest. Cute. She really is quite poetic and detailed for a second grader. Here is her poem:

Oh, did I mention that we got to wear princess crowns as we sat on our throne and read our poems?

Time Efficient Mush

Kids can be so amusing. I just caught Sydney taping tin foil over a cereal bowl. I asked her what she was doing and she proudly told me how she was getting ready for school tomorrow now so that she wouldn't be late. She had poured a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios with milk to have for breakfast in the morning. When I told her what they would look like by morning she just laughed and decided to have them for an afternoon snack instead.

Brooklyn's Candy/Fruit Robot

Brooklyn came home with this great essay last week.

"My invention is a candy cleaning robot. It can clean up my room and I can just say candy and it will come strat out

"of his moth. It is my favrit candy. My favrit candy is choklet egg those are good. I would biy it because it can never run out of batreas and it can give frit too so that is why my Mom and dad would biy it. I wonder if my

"Mom and dad would like it when I get home. I will ask Mom and dad if they would like it. I bet they would love it because it gives out frite and my favritee candy. So ill just ask Mom and

"shell say no to candy and yes to frite It is my favrite cinde of frute so I love that robot. My mom and Dad will toduly love it too, but they could say no to it. But I think she is going to say yes

"so that is so a asome robot. I wonder if my Dad could make one of them. I''ll just ask him if he can. I wonder if he will. I bet he will say yes I can't wait when I tell him I

"was going to tell him but I forgot to tell him all just tell him tomorow and if I forget agin then all put it on a pies of papper and then I can remeber"

John spent all day yesterday building it with Brooklyn just for fun (how could he not!). She woke him up on Saturday morning asking "when are we going to build it? When are we going to build it?"

It really cleans, it really dispenses fruit and candy. John even rigged it so that it didn't require coins to get the goodies. It was as fun as building a pinewood derby car, with the added bonus that we didn't lose in the end.

6th Sense

Today John had a "6th Sense" moment with Whitney. She looked at him and said, "Daddy, dead people can talk." He was worried that her next words were going to be, "I see dead people." "What do you mean?" he asked. Then she proceeded to close her eyes, stick her tongue out sideways and repeat the word "hello, hello, hello".

Denver

One day, on his way to scouts, the person driving Bryton to his Den meeting was in an accident. Fortunately no one was hurt and as they were getting insurance and police reports settled someone else driving to scouts picked up Bryton and brought him the rest of the way which was only about a block. As soon as they drove into the parking lot they were in an accident. Again, no one was hurt. Just a fender bender. When he got home and told me this I kept waiting for a third accident to happen. You know the superstition that deaths always come in sets of three? I apply that to accidents as well. Sure enough there was another accident of someone I knew. It's been a few months so I can't really remember if it happened that same day or the next day. I also can't remember who it happened to. I'm thinking maybe my sister-in-law but I can't say for sure. I just know that it happened. Well, now I can apply trips to Denver to that superstition as well. We can go months without going down to Denver to visit John's family but once we get the ball rolling again our trips down there seem to come in little clusters of 3.
A little over 2 weeks ago we went down there for Stake temple day. We were fortunate to run into some of John's old friends from school and we went out to dinner with them after. They are living in the Springs. Afterwards we exchanged blog addresses, etc.. For some reason I gave out ours but didn't write down theirs. Tamsen, if you are reading this shoot me your blog address because John and I would really like to keep up with you guys.
Then a little over a week ago was our RV trip to the Sand Dunes that I mentioned in a previous blog. Hmmm. Perhaps I should have gone with my gut feeling. It was raining when we picked up the RV and that rain soon turned to snow. We spent the night at Sterling and Lisa's and decided we would head out the next day because the weather was supposed to warm up at the Dunes. We didn't know that it was going to keep snowing, and snowing, and snowing in Denver. As soon as we headed out our RV started sliding on the road and we ran up onto a curb. That's when we realized we weren't going to make it out of Denver. We drove over to John's mom and dad's house and waited out the snow storm. Probably the longest snow storm of the season. I can't complain about it snowing in April because we've had such a mild winter and we could really use the precipitation. Let me just say that April is really taking that saying "April showers bring May flowers" seriously this time around. Out of 5 scheduled flag football games that Bryton was supposed to play in 3 have been cancelled due to weather and the other 2 should have been.

Anyway, we waited out the snowstorm at John's parents' house. Because his parents were out of town and the only ones there were the Garner family we stayed inside the nice warm house and just let the RV sit at the curb for 2 days. The kids had a ball sledding down the ravine that his parents' house backs up to. Since we didn't anticipate snow April came up with the ingenious idea of wrapping the kids up in grocery sacks so that they could go sledding.




They had a ball sledding and spending time with their cousins. I think they would really rather be hanging out with their cousins than just about anything.
On Sunday the snow had let up so we headed over to the Ivory's house to go to church with them. We took all the kids to church in the RV. It was fun having an RV stocked with snacks that we could retreat to after sacrament meeting. It's probably not a good idea to bring a big RV to church every week because I think Sunday School attendance would go way down. After church we spent the rest of the day with the Ivory's and played a fun game which I did not win.

The last day of our vacation (Monday) we thought we would take the kids somewhere exciting in Denver like a museum or aquarium. However when we woke up in our RV that morning Whitney was complaining of being car sick even though we weren't moving. Not a good sign. (She's so used to getting car sick that when she's feeling nauseous in the house she calls it "house sick". This time we happened to be in a vehicle so the term "car sick" still applied.) That put a halt to proceeding with any play time in Denver so we returned the RV and went home. Since the rental was free, I still feel like we got our money's worth. And then some. :)
Now for the highlight of our Denver trips. Just 2 days ago we returned once more to Denver for Kelsey's wedding which turned out so nice and was just so much fun. Kelsey's lucky that she was the first grand child. By the time my kids get married the novelty will have worn off and everyone will be like "Oh brother. ANOTHER wedding??" (They will have over 30 cousins to compete with.) Anyway, as I mentioned in my last post we just got a new camera and John had so much fun walking around behind the actual photographer and pretending to be THE photographer. He took over 400 pictures. If I could I would post at least a quarter of them on this blog. (They are so photogenic that it's hard to get a bad shot of them.) But, since I can't do that I'll just post a few favorites and then if anyone wants to see more we'll send you a CD or something.

Yay! We Got A New Camera

This one was taken right before the tree branch broke and he fell on his rump.

Recess

Have you ever asked a child what their favorite subject in school is? If so, did you ever get an answer that didn't include recess? I haven't. It doesn't matter what kind of child it is. Introvert, extravert, brainy, athletic, artistic and every other kind of child out there will list their preferences which vary greatly except in one aspect. Recess. They may all like to play different things. For some it's boy chase girl. For other's sports. And still for others it's swinging, sandbox, jungle gym, tag, going to the library or staying inside and helping teacher. Everyone has different ideas of fun but the love of recess in general is something that is universally agreed upon by school children everywhere. And just because a person graduates from elementary school doesn't mean that this love comes to an end. I haven't been in elementary school for a good 25 years but recess is still my favorite subject. My ideas of what's fun to do during recess have changed but my love for it has not. My recesses are not as frequent as they once were but every time I see an opportunity to go out to recess, I pounce on it. Usually I go out to recess with my family, but sometimes I still get the opportunity to play with my childhood friends at recess.


In this case It's more accurate to say "friends of my youth" than "childhood" friends. And even though they don't really have recesses in high school some of us took the liberty of creating our own together during Algebra or P.E.. I had so much fun going out to "recess" again with these guys over Christmas break. In the top picture is Amy and me at the beach. (Please do not compare smiles or you will think that I am frowning.) I had not seen her since the cruise that we went on together in 2004. It was great hanging out with her and Brian and being reminded of why John and I like them so much.
The bottom picture is of us at Jennifer's house. Jennifer and Shane are as up to par as Brian and Amy on their hosting prowess. Besides the great lunch Jennifer made, one of the highlights of the visit was becoming acquainted with her many dogs and chickens. Since my kids are all animal lovers they automatically felt right at home and it was fun watching them get acquainted with the (many) other kids that were there.

Another highlight of our Christmas "recess" was going to Disneyland. My kids are still in the stage where they want me to come to their school and go to recess with them. I have no doubt that they will eventually outgrow this but if I am lucky, after they're done with school and married they will start asking me to go to "recess" with them again. I know I was thrilled to have MY parents come along with us to Disneyland. I had never been there during Christmas or taken part in the whole business of using Fast Passes. Not having to wait in lines and seeing how they had decorated it for Christmas made it my favorite trip to Disneyland EVER!

One of my favorite memories of the day was running into the D's who live about a mile from us. We had no idea that they were planning a trip to Disneyland so that was a fun surprise. The park was filled to capacity and yet we still managed to cross paths and have dinner together.

The recesses that I take as an adult are quite a bit longer than the ones I had as a kid. (Not to mention way more expensive.) I guess that makes up for the infrequency of them. I can't wait to take my next one. If you read the entry: RV 101 you know that we're in for an adventure. We're using the free rental that we won and heading down to Sand Dunes National Park. Even though everything in my gut is telling me not to go anywhere near another RV, I ask you, how can I pass up an opportunity to go out to recess for FREE?!?!?