First day of school 2011!!

Our house has been relatively quiet these last three days! We have two in school full time!!! I've found errands to be much quicker and not so stressful. The youngest two, however have really missed their older siblings; particularly I-guy.  He asks over and over where they are.  I think he is most excited when he sees S returning from school!   So glad they love each other!

First day of First grade

First grade class 2011

 

First day of Fourth grade 2011

Fourth grade class 2011

B will start preschool on September 7th and asks daily how many days she has until summer is over!  I think she's just a little bit excited to join the big kids in school.    Poor I though. I'm afraid I'll have to keep him thoroughly entertained until the older three get home.  Any ideas?

Happy Birthday I-Guy!!! Two years old

We had a great time chasing villains, shooting off bottle water rockets, eating cake and candy and being Super Heroes!

Here are what all the capes and power bracelets looked like:

 

Everyone had their first initial on the cape (S,P, B,T,I,Z,D and the little bib/capes: M AND G)

The power bracelets had white squares we let each child design and color their own power amulets in with fabric markers.

 Inside the goodie-bag we had lots of candy!  Superhero masks were also included.

 

 These were my favorite favors, I think.  I found the idea here.

Some needed a little help figuring the whole Hero thing out at first

 There were lots of creative superhero poses throughout the day.  These are just a few I caught on film.

Super P

Super T

Super Z

The littlest crime fighters.

Attacking the White-haired Villain

  

Then the real fun began!  My parents had created this water bottle launcher for their scout troop and volunteered to let us use it.  I think the kids enjoyed this more than anything else.

Even when it launched the bottles onto the roof!

What a cool sky to fight crime under!!!

Once we'd played and got thoroughly wet, we came inside to discover a terrible villain had kidnapped all the superhero suckers and stuck them in the lava! T was particularly disturbed by this.

He kept asking what the villain looked like and how I knew it was a villain.  Of course I made up gave him the best description of the villain I could, but that wasn't enough.  T decided this is what the villain must have looked like:

We then sang to the birthday boy and ate plenty of Tres Leches cake disguised as a Spiderman cake!

What a great way to end such a fun-filled day!

This was the sunset on I-guy's second birthday!

Happy Birthday I ! We're glad you're with us!

Summer Fun 2011

Get ready for a download of photos~
This year Z has been in a "summer club" which didn't allow for much "fun" time.  When she finished up we made the best of it. We took swimming lessons as a family (I don't have pics of those.... too risky bringing the camera poolside with a multitude of littles running around) and then took a family camping trip.    It was a first for S, B and I-guy.

While A and I set up camp, the kids took turn blowing bubbles and chasing after them. No helping hands in the tent!!!

We ate dinner and got ready for bed that night with the promise of it being "Indian Day" the next day. This was something my family had done on a multi-cousin campout and thought my children might enjoy it too. Although we didn't do as much as the original Indian Day, I still think the kids had  fun being on the war path with painted faces and their own painted headbands and let's not forget painting the rocks!  I think we made the the camp caretaker nervous when the kids told him we were going to be painting rocks.  They failed to mention we'd be using watercolors......
We woke up the next morning and washed our hair in the camp spigot for the true camping experience. (The camp had heated showers..... I know, we were roughin' it pretty hard!)  And then put indian braids in the girls' hair.

Now we could officially start Indian Day!

"HOW!"

Time for a POW-WOW

Tribal Dance

While we camped we explored and went for walks.

We found lots of rocks and even a smooshed snake!

There was lots of time to play and relax together.

We had plenty of s'mors and popcorn. (Although A didn't trust my ability to pop corn over an open flame and insisted we bring microwave popcorn too, "Just in case.")

We took turns taking the kids to the showers on our last day and packed up the site. We were crammed in the car pretty tightly. I think the comment was even made that we packed more for this trip than the one we took to Mexico three summers ago.  You know, the one where we spent three weeks in Mexico?

Testing subway art

          title="Wordle: What LOVE is">
          src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/3921919/What_LOVE_is"
          alt="Wordle: What LOVE is"
          style="padding:4px;border:1px solid #ddd">

First OFFICIAL Summer Day!

Our family has been busy running to summer clubs and doing other activities which haven't allowed us much "summertime fun."  So today, as we go to our first day of swim lessons..... THIS IS THE FIRST OFFICIAL DAY OF SUMMER!!!!
B has asked for about two weeks how many more sleeps we have until we get to go to the swim lessons and the day has finally arrived! She has her new back pack packed with the essentials for swim class and then some dry clothes as we will be visiting a local museum after lessons. (We try to pack as much fun in one day as possible!)
They will have a new exhibit called "Into Africa" with live animal exhibits every so often along with new murals and things for the little ones to do. WE CAN'T WAIT!!


A few weeks ago I drove by a local antique shop and saw they had an old Fire Truck.  I brought the kids with me a few days later only to discover that they asked photographers to pay a fee and schedule the shoot ahead of time.
I figured because they were closed and I wasn't technically a photog, we'd be safe. Though that didn't stop me from looking over my shoulder at every car that slowed! Was it honest of me? Probably not, but I'm not selling my photographs and we didn't enter any gated areas.  So I'm trying to justify myself! I'm safe, right?

On my sidebar you'll see a few of the individual shots I got of the kids. I thought you might like to see just one more (Just because every post needs at least ONE photo, right?).  Enjoy!