One Last Event Today To Mention...

Devon fishing with Daddy. Devon caught three all by himself, even the big one you see laying on the beach.

What We've Been Up To Today...

I made homemade cheese crackers for the first time. Easy and yummy.

Renie got her first haircut.
Before:

After:



In honor of the last day of school, the little kids and I met the 2 girls with these as they came home from school. ( I stole this idea from my friend Heather. It's the perfect kick-off to summer!)

A Country Hoedown

That was the theme for this year's Annual Bloomfield Manor Balloonfest. You may remember me blogging about the event last year. (Click that link and you can read last year's and this year's together on the same page. Scroll down for last year's.) Now that I've gone more than once, I can tell you that the event doesn't change much from year to year. Including what I put on my children, apparently. (Check out the link and check out Devon's shirt.)

Once again, we very much enjoyed ourselves. It's just so much fun to go to a community event and know, or at least recognize, so many of the people there.


We give the kids a fistful of tickets and they run off to use them up on carnival games, ice cream, and pony rides.

Highlights this year were the Cripple Creek Cloggers


Our neighbor, Dave the Police Chief, in the parade,

Cream Puffs


Pony rides,


Helen Kirch- yodeler


The Lone Geriatric Ranger

WWII Vets

big shiny fire engines



and gathering handfuls of candy from the parade.

At the end of the evening our kids are filthy and sticky and running on a sugar high.

Quite possibly the very best part of the night is the walk back to the car at dusk. The moon was high, the prairie grasses waving on the rolling hills.



And last, but certainly not least, the funniest picture of the night:


It's not the pee (I'm not THAT juvenile) as much as Devon's response to it. Cracks me up every time I look at it!

Playing Isn't Always Easy...

This is photographic evidence of a failed attempt at doing a flip on the play equipment rings. I didn't witness it, I was inside and heard crying. I went out to find this sad face covered in blood. He apparently did a full-on face plant. If you look closely, even his forehead is scraped and little bruised. He also jammed his fingers on his left hand. They are stiff, sore, and a little swollen. He blames the whole incident on Renie because apparently, "She told me to do it!"

ELP Day in the Park

Today is Devon's last day of school. Since he goes to afternoon ELP, or 4 year old Kindergarten, and tomorrow is only a 1/2 day, he's done today. For an end of the year celebration, the ELP classes walked to Wilson park on Tuesday and spent the school day there playing on the playground,


throwing frisbees around and playing kickball.


I got to join him there and play around with him for a while. It was lovely to be together just the two of us.

While we were playing frisbee, a kickball game was organized. Devon really wanted to go play kickball but he just couldn't bring himself to join the game after it was already started. He's so funny. All the other kids would just run up and jump in line if they wanted to play. But Devon just wouldn't. I offered to go with him. I offered to tell the teachers that he wanted to play. I sat with him and watched for a while, pointing out exactly how it was done and kids who were joining in the middle of the game. None of it worked. Finally, in exasperation, I said, "Listen. I'm done talking about this. If you want to play, play. If you won't just go out there then you'll miss the game." He chose to miss the game. He said, "I want to play, but I'm too nervous." After a snack break, another kickball game was started. This time he was in on it from the get-go so he happily participated. In fact, he was the first one to kick.

Go Vote

I'm kind of late on this, jumping in at the eleventh hour, but my friend Stephanie's blog has been nominated for the June highlight at Mormon Mommy Blogs. Go ahead and go vote. You can check out her blog from that page, or click on Diapers and Divinity right here, then go vote. I need you to vote because I become more and more famous by association as she becomes more and more famous by actually earning it.

Polls close at midnight tonight, June 4th.