Thomas' First Grade Swim

The school year is coming to a end, and in my opinion is busier than ever. Friday Thomas' grade got to go to the High School pool and swim. Since it was 100 degrees outside I wish I was with him in the pool, but I was just glad I was able to watch him splash around with his friends. Thomas is a very cautious swimmer he sticks to the shallow end and only sticks his head under water if he is holding on the side.

The kids has such a great time, the only complaint was they wanted to swim all day!

Batter's Up!!

Well it is baseball season and this year Thomas and Matthew are playing. This is Thomas' 3rd year playing and Matthew's first. (Taylor never played it) Thomas has games on Monday, Wednesday and every other Saturday. Matthew plays Tuesday, Thursday and every other Saturday. Yes that's right folks, we have games Monday through Thursday and every Saturday for 6 weeks. Call us crazy! The boys are having so much fun and I really enjoy watching at this age, they do the funniest things, like running from first to third base completely missing second base. It is a great way to spend on evening, or for us 5 evenings. Good Luck boys!!! Thomas plays on the Angels.

Thomas plays in the "Rookies" so they keep score, the kids do the pitching, and so Thomas who has played 2 years of T-ball has to get used to only swinging at pitches he could hit.

Thomas plays right field, he is very good at stoping the ball.

Matthew is on the Colorado Rockies!! (Not to thrilled about the purple shirt)

In T-ball the coach throws 4 pitches if you can not hit the ball off the pitch you use the "T", Matthew hit the ball every time! Once the ball hit him in the mouth, it hurt, and he started to cry then the coach said "anyone who gets hit by a ball gets a candy", so Matthew quickly wiped his tears and hit the next ball.

Matthew was so hot but he really tried to keep his eye on the ball.

Kindergarten Olympics

At the end of the year the Kindergarten classes hold their version of the Olympics. Their is no winners or losers, just kids having fun. Matthew did bowling, soccer, Frisbee, the 50 and 100 yard dash, shoe throwing (my personal favorite), potato sack races, obstacle course, and played with sidewalk chalk. The school year has gone by so fast and frankly the last week of school is going by so fast we barley have time to catch our breath! This was Matthew doing the potato sack race. He did great, I even jumped into one of those bags and raced Matthew, thankfully their is not a picture of that, and Matthew beat me!

Matthew running the 100 yard dash.

Of course the best part is eating the Popsicle, that was well deserved.........YUMMY!

Cub Scout Graduation

Every May the Cub Scouts Graduate. Thomas will be a Wolf and Taylor will be a second year Webelo. In February Taylor will bridge to Boy scouts!! Matthew is now officially a Tiger but to be honest he has already done everything but he is just excited to get a uniform. Below is Taylor receiving more awards that he has earned.I am in yellow .....Its amazing what you will do for your kids!This is Thomas getting his award for winning second prize for the cup cake contest. He and Taylor made a snake. Taylor was not listening when his name was called so Thomas got the prize all alone, as you can see he was real upset that he did not have to share!

A side Note..................

Last week sometime (I can not remember the day, it is so busy!) The cub scouts were invited to perform the flag salute at the Kingsburg school district retirement party. Their were so many people their we could only have 4 boys go, so of course Taylor and Thomas were my first choice. They did a great job that day, and their picture appeared in the newspaper today. They are the two kids in the middle not holding the flags. Taylor called everyone to order and Thomas just stood their looking cute!

BBQ at Mamaw's and Papaws

We are so happy Mamaw and Papaw are home from their trip. They had a great time. They invited us over for a BBQ on Sunday. My family, my sister Nicole and her two kids went to Mamaw's for dinner. Oran was happy he got to watch the Indy Race on Jim's HUGE t.v.! Papaw had to buy a new grill, they put it together and then I cooked, in my family I do the cooking. We had bratwurst, hot dogs, potato salad, homemade mac 'n' cheese (from the Paula Deen cookbook my mom got me on her trip), chips, and grilled tomatoes.

The kids making a big fun mess.

My boys were tired of watching the race on T.V so they went to watch cartoons on Mamaw's bed. (that's special they have cable!)

The kids had a great time playing a game with Papaw and Mamaw

Of course no BBQ would be complete without dessert, so we had ice cream. We even found rice milk ice cream for Thomas. We had fresh strawberries, blueberries, chocolate sauce, marshmallows, and cool whip. YUMMY!

Emily and Jason

On Friday my sister Nicole had to go into work for a few hours and asked if I could watch her kids. I was happy to watch my niece Emily and my nephew Jason. I do not get to see them as much as I like and was happy to spend time with them. Since my mom and Jim got home from their trip recently they came over to "play" too! I can not believe that Emily is 4 and will be starting kindergarten in the fall and Jason is 3, time sure does fly by. Mamaw with Emily, Mikayla and Jason

Emily and Mikayla. Mikayla loves Emily I think she is just happy to see a girl.............No offence to her big brothers.

They can play all over the house but instead they like the side of the couch.

"Tanti Cole" as Mikayla calls her with Emily...........(that's my sis Nicole)

In this picture Jason is mad, Mikayla will not share the Elmo toy, we have "millions" of toys and they have to fight over one.

Jason with one of my boys snakes!

When Matthew got home from school I made him take a picture with Emily. Don't they look like twins? Even though they are a year apart, they look so much alike.

By the way, this is Mikayla's new bathing suit she wanted to show Mamaw and decided she wanted to wear it for the rest of the day!

Taylor's Open House

On Thursday night, went to Taylor's 4th grade Open House. As I am typing this I can not believe that in exactly 2 weeks, the school year will be over. Once they get in school the kids seem to grow up so fast. I am very proud of Taylor he works so hard. I do not remember doing what they do in school. I mean pre-algebra, hours of homework, projects, writing and reading. The only good thing is Taylor loves all these things and excels at them. For reading they have to get tested on what reading level they are, they can only read books at that level and when they finish the book they do a test on the computer. Each semester their goal is to reach 100%. They can read as many books they need to to reach that goal. Tayor is now at 220% and reads at 7th-9th grade reading level. Keep up the great work Taylor!!! Taylor with his teacher Mrs. Stahlman............he loves her and so do I she is great!

This is picture of Taylor at the first of the year. He is with a pirate, that is the theme for his room, his teacher loves pirates! He has really gotten taller!

They also studied geology. Some these rocks Taylor brought from home. He got them on his trip to Calico.

In Math they had to make a graph showing a word problem they wrote. His was on animals, of course.

This is just one of the "hundreds" of stories they wrote, I took a picture of this one because of what he wrote in the first sentence. The story is titled "This is what I look like" My son wrote...."I look so fabulous!" Ha ha ha, I love his confidence

In the 4th grade they learn about California history. They went on a field trip to Sacramento in March. I got to go, it was a fun day.

This is Taylor showing his brothers how they learned about electricity.

This is what Taylor wrote about his dad......I am not sure about the "wild" part.

Summer fun is just around the corner!

Muffin's with Mom

Last Friday, May 15th, Thomas' school had a fundraiser called Muffin's with Mom. At 7am I took all the kids to eat a muffin (from Costco my favorite), and take this picture that they put on a button. I did have to bring Thomas a banana and toast since he was not able to eat the goodies. After we ate the kids played on the play ground until it was time for school to start. Mikayla was still sucking her thumb because she was still tired I had to wake her up, but she was happy to see they had chocolate milk!

Last Tiger meeting

On Saturday evening we had our last Tiger den meeting. I was very lucky to be their den leader and wanted to do something really fun with the boys. The boys are to young to go on a real camp out so I decided to have a outdoor cookout. I was going to have it at my house but one of the boys parents said we could do it at her house. The Flood family has a almond ranch out in the country. I was perfect, we had the shade of the almond trees and the boys had a huge area to play. The kids gathering wood for the fire.

Thomas and the other boys getting the fire started. The fire was great, they did a good job. The only problem was, it was way to hot (100 degrees) so the Flood's got their BBQ and we cooked our hot dogs on it. The boys did not care they got to start a fire!

since it was soooo hot, they put a water mister under the almond trees to keep the boys cool. Well it also made mud, which Mikayla found and enjoyed. By the time she was done she was covered in mud. She was laughing so hard I did not have the heart to make her stop.

So after we "roasted" hot dogs, The Flood's suggested we go to the back of their property and explore the river. The water is not that deep yet because they have not opened up the dams, so it was perfect to go exploring. Since we were not expecting water fun the kids got to enjoy the water in their clothes. The kids found tad poles (Thomas name his Mr. Toddy) and shells.

Matthew

Mikayla loved the water and washed all the mud off to!

Thomas

I told Taylor to swim with his mouth closed or he might swallow a tadpole! Yuck

We finished the evening making s'mores. It was a great time. We are now looking forward to cub scout graduation, Webloree in June, day camp in July and in September I will be Matthew's Tiger cub leader. Thomas' Wolf leader (I have another mom helping) and helping Taylor earn his arrow of light which is the last step before he bridges to Boy Scouts.

Swedish Festival

The Swedish Festival is a annual event in Kingsburg to honor the founders, who were Swedish. It is held on our main street called Draper. What is so neat about our town is all the buildings have to have a Swedish theme (even the Mc Donalds) so as they say in Kingsburg "if you live here you are part Swedish!" I love this small town (11,000 people strong) everyone knows who you are and we are all a community who cares about each other. This is a fun weekend with parades, the police department has its annual dress inspection, (my step brother Marcos is a cop in town), their is smorgasbord, Swedish pancakes and the raising of the may pole. I only wish they did not do it when it is 105 degrees outside!

Here are the kids waiting for the parade to start. It is the my kids with their step cousins. This year none of the kids were in the parade so it was kind of nice to be able to sit and watch it as a family.

The boys have only one real favorite thing they love to do at the festival and that is to look for used books the library sells every year. Taylor could spend hours their looking, to him its like finding a buried treasure. This year they found some great books on science experiments, how to make paper airplanes, dogs and whales.