Harbor Island

Chicken Friends

On Tuesday, we headed over to our good friends' house to play with water balloons and chickens!

 Sweet buddies!

 Caleb got smoke, but no flames with his magnifying glass trick.

 It's the last day of school!!!

You are Simply the Best

I found these cute little cards at Wal-mart.

 Jennifer found a cute idea on Pinterest, for something smallish to give all our kids' regular teachers and extra teachers, like librarians, music and art teachers, etc.

(Josiah, Caleb, and Lydia had a lot of teachers between them!)

 Jenno whipped up the tags on her Cricut machine.

Simply cute, eh?

Last Day of School!

 Here was Elenora back in August.

 And here she is this morning on her last day of school!  

Thanks to her Daddy for the cute pictures!

She came in for her kindergarten screening today.

She happened to be doing it at the same time as a little girl named Eleanor.

(So much for trying to pick an original name - ha!)

They both did great!

Happy last day of school to us!

I am a Fine Musician!

Josiah's school band had a lovely Spring Concert this month.

He excels on the trumpet, if we do say so ourselves.

 Caleb performed in a Spring Recital.

He played 'Go Tell Aunt Rhody' with a piano accompaniment.

We loved seeing him on the stage.

 An entire semester of violin lessons and he learned 'Twinkle, Twinkle' and 'Go Tell Aunt Rhody.'

If you just pause to think about the fact that he practiced 5 times a week for 15 minutes a day, with the majority of that time spent on these two short little ditties, well the mind reels to think of how many times we heard each tune!

(Each note was a pleasure to hear, Caleb!)

And, last but not least, here are the cousins again.

Only one day left in the Little Bee Hive for Eleonora, and then she is off to kindergarten!

Happy Tuesday!

End of the Year

We were very busy last week with all sorts of end-of-the-year activities.

 Caleb had his last soccer practice.  Eleonora found her best buddy from school to play with while we were there.

 Josiah and his team won the 4-H Clover Bowl for our entire county, so he got to head to Knoxville to compete against 5th graders from all of east Tennessee.  We got to spend lots of time together studying his 976 questions and answers.  The topics of questions ranged from history to government to agriculture.

 Smart cookies!

 His whole team.

 They enjoyed a happy victory in the second round.

 Unfortunately, that was where the good times ended.

We had a smashing time, nonetheless.

 Eleonora has loved her Grandma picking her up early on Fridays to play, 

often with Anna Kate along for the fun.

 One of their traditions is baking pumpkin pies, and they got new aprons at the Strawberry Festival so they can bake in style.

 Caleb played in his last soccer game of the season, with lots of family there to cheer him on.

He played hard!

My favorite part of the season was watching his very restrained victory celebrations on the field after he scored goals.

 Yesterday the kids and I wrote thank you notes to teachers.

Eleonora also drew herself with each of her teachers.

Happy Monday!