A Tall Tale: Fanxdine

Here is Olive's "Tall Tale" that she wrote for school. It won an award at the district level.

I believe it's pronounced 'FANKS-dun'.

More Patriotism

Well, I just got another idea:
(Click on the gear symbol and choose 480p for higher quality video and sound)

And if you haven't seen our outfits, scroll down.   -Aspen

Patriotism

Well, it's Memorial Day and Olive is STILL sick, we'll take her to the doctor, so we decided to celebrate a....different way....

 My nails 

 All of us

 Me and Olive

 Olive's toes

 My Hair

 Me

 My nails

 My toes

 Olive

Olive's hair

Happy Memorial Day!

-Aspen

Catching up

Olive has a fever today.  And a cough.  Summer sickness is the pits.  Though, don't remind her she is sick, it will only make her mad.  She is loaded up with Tylenol and feels just fine! (Thank you very much! And why can't I play with friends???)

So the kids are all occupied upstairs.  Linden is even getting in on the action!  He is right where he wants to be.  In the middle of playing with his siblings.  

So that leaves me downstairs.  Ignoring the breakfast dishes.  I have already stalked my favorite blogs and no one has posted anything new.  Facebook holds little interest, the news is bleary and I don't dare get hooked on pinterest.  

That means it's catch up time!  And it has been so long since I've sat down and done much real blogging (ie: not from my phone!) that I just got a fun surprise.  Blogger has made it really easy to upload a lot of photo's at a time.  My program would crash if I did more than three, but I just did every photo you see here and it was done in seconds!  Way to go blogger!  Thanks!

So, Here's the picture tour of our last little bit of school.  All of these pictures were taken on my phone, so quality may sometimes seem like it's from the 80's, but at least there was pictures.  I didn't get pictures of some things and I will never be able to go back and get them.  

(Warning!! This is a very heavily packed mommy bragging post.  If you aren't a grandparent, you might not like it.  I'm pretty biased on how great my kids are, and in this post I lay it on pretty thick.)

Here goes...

First up (These aren't actually in order, but they were all shoved in the last 2 weeks or so of school, so I don't know that it really matters...)

Awards day.  The English kids really cleaned up academically.  Chalk it up to hormones, but I was tearing up as my kids got award after award.  They are really amazing kids.  

The medal around Olive's neck is from winning the county wide writing contest.  She wrote a book in October.  It won the school contest then went on to win the county one.  

It's a "Tall Tale" titled "Me and Fanxdine."  

She also won for having the most AR points in her class.  (You will find this is a trend in our house.  Reading is a strong point here.)  There were several other awards too.  She's a pretty amazing kid!

 

Aspen is headed out of elementary school.  (Oh my!) and they do a lot of awards for the 5th grade.  It was funny, and emotional as she popcorned in and out of her seat.  There were something like 20 awards given (many had multiple students receiving each award.) and she got up 11 times.  Toward the end it was funny as her classmates announced her name with every award before the teachers did.  This is (one of the places) that Aspen shines.  She got one of the top AR point awards, highest percentage in reading, language, social studies and math. She got a funny little advertisement plaque for her speech and a trophy from Scholastic bowl.  And several more I can't remember.  I don't know what middle school will be like for her, but whatever she does, I have no doubt she will succeed!

Cedar brought home a paper saying he was getting an award and that I should come watch.  But he didn't just get one award.  He cleaned up too.  Top AR (an English kid trend.) honor roll, math award, and presidential physical fitness award. (1 of 2 boys in his grade.)  He is naturally good at anything he tries.  What an amazing boy!

 

Aspen's Scholastic bowl team.  She was captain of the math team and on the reading and social studies team.  They came in 4th in the district.  The best part of the whole thing was watching her get herself up early 2x a week to be at school by 7:00am and being so excited to go.  Tuesday's and Thursday's were her favorite days.

This is the only picture I got from Olive's parents day.  At the end we went back to her class and looked through the folder of things she had made during the year.

 

Aspen's 5th grade field trip.  They went bowling.  I came to a little bit of this one because I haven't lost my cool yet.  (I think I'll cry the day one of my kids doesn't want to be seen in public with me...)

Cedar and Olive both also had field trips on the same day as Aspen.  Olive's was an hour to the east, Cedar's was an hour to the west.  They both said they had fun, but they got to spend the time with their class instead of with me...

 

Field day.  In one word...HOT! toward the end there was a breeze and some clouds, but it was hot, hot, hot!  I had misunderstood the way they were working field day this year so when I got there I went right to find Olive and MISSED Aspen's LAST event.  (Not my best mommy moment...) This is Olive doing the tripod race and Cedar the mile relay.

The Literacy Carnival...  This is my project with PTO.  It turned out really well, we had tons of volunteers and the kids had a ball, but I was sooooo glad when it was over and everyone went home!

 

Finding Things Out

Do you like surprises?  

Or maybe you're more like me and like to find things out.

This used to drive me nuts about Jonathon.  

Before we were even married I would have bought him a gift.  

For an occasion, or not and the next day (literally) he would go out and get it for himself, 

or at least try to and I would have to tell him why he shouldn't get it.  Super frustrating!  

He always finds things out!

But I shouldn't be too hard on him.  I usually find out too.

Like this year.  I already know what I'm getting for Christmas!  

Though to be fair it's not just for me.  It's for Jonathon too.  And the kids.  

We'll even share with you if you want!  (And maybe even if you don't want.)  

That's just the nice kind of people we are.

So do you want to know what we're getting?

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Keep going!

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Baby English #5

Due 12/25/12

Ho! Ho! Ho!

Merry Christmas!

The icee machine is a big hit again!

Icee syrup recipee:
boil
1 1/2 cups water
and
1 1/2 cups sugar
for 1 min at a rolling boil.
Add 2 packages of cool-aid mix
stir
Let cool

Yummy!

Notice Cedar is absent from the picture. Not to worry, he get plenty of icees. He is at basketball camp this week.
*Sarah*

Sometimes you just gotta play in the rain!
*Sarah*

13 Months-old Soon

Click here for larger version (Then File > Download, if you want).

Catching Stuff

It's Aspen. YES, I  know it is kinda an odd title but it will all make sense in a minute. 


                   THIS WE'VE BEEN CATCHING LATELY:
                    Our breath(phew!)
                    Sleep
                    Fireflies
                    Sleep
                    Assorted bouncy balls
                    Did I mention sleep?
                    And.... Lizards!

                    

                I was going to put some videos on but NO the computer wouldn't let me. Oh, well. I was looking at the thing and it had little holes in its head! I looked it up later- and the holes are ears! I didn't know that. One more thing to add to my list, I guess.

Catching facts.

Summer!

Have you noticed that there has been a big gap in the blog lately? That usually means that either nothing is going on that is blog worthy OR there is sooo much going on that nothing gets done. Lately, it has been the latter. The last three weeks of school are so busy! I think they do it on purpose so that the parents are just as excited for school to be out as the kids are. In the past 2 weeks Linden and I have been at the school for something every single day. Sometimes we are there for an hour or two, sometimes we are there all day. Linden has become something of a mascot. Everyone smiles and waves at him when they see us coming in the stroller. I will try to catch up. there has been so much....

Literacy carnival
awards day (3 of them! The English family really cleaned up!)
Scholastic bowl
Talent show
Piano recital
5th grade party
Field trips
Volunteer breakfast
Field day
Ice cream party
And we won't even get into all the afterschool stuff!
Needless to say, I am so glad it's summer

Box # 1 of my garden! It has rained hard for the past 2 mornings. That with temps in the mid to upper 70's (maybe even 80's) the garden has about doubled in the past few days. The squash has at least trippled! Can you see the tomato plants in this picture? they are left over from last years garden. I picked probably 100 little plants. These are the ones I didn't notice. I am wondering if I should let them grow or not??? The lettuce probably will start to bolt soon. It has been so hot I don't know how long it can last. It sure has been good though!
*Sarah*

Box #2. The butter lettuce is looking so pretty! It's forming a cute little head! We keep picking the outter leaves but more just keeps on coming! *Do you see the pumpkin plant smack dab in the middle of everything? That is another surprise from last years garden!
*Sarah*

Box #3. Onions, corn and cucumbers. I am trying companion planting with the cucumbers and corn. Not sure how it will work, but as with every year, our garden is one big experiment!
*Sarah*

Box # 4. I took a chance planting the tomatoes early. I had to cover them several nights when it got cold, but they are doing great! The pepper plant that lived in the empty corner, it didn't make it. I will try again. The squash plants look oh so yummy! I'm dreaming of zuccini bread!
*Sarah*

Today's harvest. Anyone want some lettuce?
*Sarah*

It rained and rained this morning. I must admit I was so excited! It ment our game was canceled. With all of the craziness of the last 2 weeks of school (YES, I did say last 2 weeks!!) I was ready for a do nothing of importance day. The game was the only thing standing in my way and when I woke up to the sound of heavy pitter patter outside I did a little happy dance right there in my pj's!

The rain also makes sidewalk chalk nice and soft. Guess who likes to smell it?
*Sarah*

Look what we found on the house this morning!
*Sarah*

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