Katie Cat

May 2016 

Ok, so the thing is early in the year I went on a field trip to the local SPCA with A.J. and her PreK class.  And they had cats.  

And I did not have a cat anymore.

And I like cats.

Sure they shed and sometimes scratch or even bite and their litter boxes are annoying but they're soft and squishy and fuzzy and cute.

K.C. and Chase had been gone for several years and I'd been bugging Matt for a new cat for sometime.  He always firmly said no.

But then the last week of school he went on a trip to SERBIA of all places for work and left me to fend for myself with all three kids.  

Hahahahahah.

Now before you go thinking I am all sorts of evil, I will tell you all straight away that Matt and I facetimed multiple times a day during his trip and I told him I was going to get a cat.  And he asked maybe that I don't but he also knew he couldn't stop me so he just asked me to get a nice one and maybe not spend a gazillion dollars.

DONE.

So the kids and I headed out and after carefully considering ever. single. feline animal in the place we came home with the very best of the bunch.  

She's kind of a mottled tiger cat stripe of orange and yellows and brown.  She's sweet and playful and also a very wild little animal.  After some debate, the kids and I named her Katie.  Katie Cat. Hahahah.  

The dogs are coming to terms with her existence.

The kids are enamored.  They like to read her stories.  Lucy had to take a nap with her the first day.  

Kid's Fun Run

May 2016 

Our memorial day without daddy also included a little Fun Run for the kids.  I heard about it on Facebook and entry for Peter and AJ was free so I figured it was another nice opportunity to get them out of the house.  

Lucy was too little to run but was happy that they gave bubbles out.  

A.J. isn't much for running and I was happy that she finished the distance, only walking a little bit.

Peter is Peter and always has been and always will be.  He wanted to win and set out to do just that, even though I'm not sure anybody else in his age group was even trying to run fast, let alone beat him.  In any case, he completed his laps first and was pleased with himself.

That boy of mine can make a contest out of anything so I wouldn't have expected anything less of him.

Memorial Day Weekend (with Daddy on travel) Bowling Trip

May 2016

As it turned out, Matt had a week long trip for work over the long Memorial Day weekend and the last week of school for the kids.  It's amazing how since he's been on shore duty I am completely incapable of handling his absences cooly like I used to.  

In this particular case, I was in full on survival mode.  

Even still, I found myself wanting to make the most of our weekend.  Even without Daddy, it was the first weekend we'd had in a long, long time with no activities planned and I wanted to make the most of it.  So, I decided to take the kids bowling Saturday morning.

Okay, so maybe that's not the "MOST" of anything, but it is better than sitting around doing nothing.

The kids had fun.  And the bowling alley (that our friend's family owns has amazing pizza so we covered lunch too!)

Also, the first game I messed around and let the kids have a chance.  The fact that AJ won, bumpers or no, is hilarious though.  In the second game I actually tried and while I did actually win, I don't think my score would impress anybody.  Hhahaha.  

Dance Pictures 2016

I'm posting thing a little out of order in some of these cases as it is so far after the fact.  

But in this case it's confusing because  these pictures were taken at the end of April, but they were for the recital which was about 2 weeks ago, and then again they only came to me a couple of days ago.  They are so good and I want to post them right away, but I haven't even thought about posting about the actual recital or anything that happened that last week of school or beyond that....

whatever.

At this point as I post masses of post only a few times a year, it isn't like I have any actual readers at his point anyway so I honestly don't know why I even worry about such things.

So here are the girls dance pictures for the year.  A.J.'s 3rd recital and Lucy's 1st.

A.J. in Ballet 1

A.J. in jazz 1

A.J. In Beginning Tumbling

A.J. and Mini Company

Lucy in Tot Creative Ballet

Ballerina Sisters

A.J. in her Stupid Cupid Tap Solo Costume

With one of her friends looking cute. 

One more....

First Grade Assembly

May 2016

One of the things that I fell in love with when Matt and I toured the kid's school was their assembly space.  It's a big, beautiful bright room that they keep decorated with wonderful art projects made by the students.  I remember walking into that space last year and just being awe struck by the beauty of it.  

They use the space to hold an assembly each week with the lower school or the middle school.  They call out the kids celebrating birthdays.  They discuss current fundraising projects or service projects.  They discuss areas of character development.  They pray, say the pledge of allegiance, the school creed and always end the assembly singing some songs, including Let There Be Peace on Earth.  Additionally, all the different grade levels take turns performing.

On the very last Friday of school, at the very last assembly of the year, it was FINALLY the first graders' turn.

Boy was I happy to have a little bit of time in my day and be able to sneak away for a few minutes to attend.  

They had recently updated the art in the room so that students work from THIS school year was displayed.  Peter's art would finally be included.  Out in the hall near the library their was a nice display of their ceramic bird project.

He tells me it is a "Golden Finch" which I suppose is his way of saying goldfinch and show that perhaps there is a little too much Harry Potter floating around this house.  Ha.

Regardless, I have no idea about birds one way or the other so if that's what he says than I suppose it must be.  I wonder if they were given a bunch of bird types to choose from or how that worked.  It seems like there must have been quite a bi of research put into the project, or in the very least some sort of lectures as he is frequently spotting random local birds out the car window when I drive and telling me what kind they are.  

That's one of the trouble with 1st graders actually.  You never really know what it is they are doing at school even when you ask them directly because they can never remember.  But then later all this random knowledge comes spilling out of them and you wonder if it's accurate and in what context they learned about that anyway?

 I just googled a goldfinch by the way and this is what I got.

Not too far off....

Anyway, the First Graders also had snow people pictures on display.  Well, pictures of people in the snow, that is, NOT like, people made of snow or whatever.  There were People sledding and Painting and throwing snowballs and things.

Here is Peter's.

So that was nice.

It was also nice when the first graders did their little performance.  They sang and did kind of a little presentation on gratitude.  

Here they are.  Peter is in the front row on the far right in the red shirt.

Pretty sure he was waving at A.J. in this one.  

Here's a short video.