Grandpa brought with him a recipe book from Laura Ingalls Wilder that he and Abbie read through and looked at in preparation for her author report for school. They made a lemonade recipe from it and almost some cookies, but we didn’t quite have the time. Another fun thing to add to our summer list. Rachel also spent the day and brought her juicer and made us apple juice. Mark was her trusty sidekick.
Here’s a cute baby picture.
We all went to listen to Abbie and Mark’s chime choir concert. Abbie had her back to us, but Mark was right in the middle towering over all the other kids playing. They both played three songs and it was a nice evening. Even Jessie had fun listening…I think.
We went to the park with Quinn for one of our Friday morning play days and he brought with him a treat for Neil. His name in letter cookies. Neil ate the “n” before he realized that there were all the right letters to spell his name. So I turned the “z” sideways for him thinking he wouldn’t notice. Then he asks me, “is this a z?” “Yep,” I say, “but we’re pretending it’s a “n.” He was thrilled, can you tell?
We got to join Rachel for lunch at her wok again. This time Ken got to come too. Isaac and Neil came too, but they were busy running around.
Grandpa was dying not being able to fix things at our house. He talked a neighbor into borrowing a ladder to one-handedly cut down a dead limb out of our tree and then had the kids help him cut off our peach tree stick. Oh, he is not good at listening to his daughters when they say get down off the ladder. Rachel and I were afraid he was going to end up with a brace sticking out of his other arm too.
But grandpa was really great at reading and Neil LOVED that.
The night before Ken’s annual meeting we made a 5 gallon bucket of pancake mix. Isaac was very interested in the process.
After the annual meeting the kids and Grandpa and I went to the Provo Library for their kids reading festival. They had a lot of fun things. Each of the kids got to pick a book. I was really excited about Abbie’s book because I had already put it in my amazon cart, but lucky us we got it for free. It’s called “A single shard” by Linda Sue Park. It’s a quick read, but so good!! And nice because it’s appropriate for the whole family. No scary bad guys, just good people doing their best even when they had to make hard decisions. Highly recommend. We recently started reading another of her books “Kite Fighters” together as our bedtime book. (Although her book , See Saw Girl, I wouldn’t recommend. The book was good until the end…..then it just didn’t have an end it just stopped and that was dumb.)
At the library we made crowns and wands, had some face paintings, looked at some live owls, did a may pole, listened to live music and watched some jugglers. The jugglers were everyone’s favorite. Abbie even got to stand up while they juggled around her.
That afternoon we went and got raspberry plants from Uncle Frank. Mark and Jessie went with Grandpa and me and we had a really nice visit with them too.
Rachel invited us to lunch at her place after church on Sunday. Man, we are good at funny faces. After lunch we headed up to Brent’s house to crash their family party – thank you!! and drop grandpa off for a day or two with his mom.
Ken had a conference in St. George. While he was there he got to go on a hike and see a rattle snake, and go to the temple.
We went to cheer Abbie on for her city race. It was exciting to be there and cheer for all the runners. Abbie didn’t beat her time, but she did her best; and the kids cheered for her the whole way. After her run, she got a taste of what all runners who give it their all feel like and she and I walked around for quite a while until she could breathe again.
Next is Abbie giving her report. The kids had to memorize their speech. They could either be the author or a character from their book. And there is a story behind the bonnet, but we’ll condense it and just say: second try, 2 am. project. Some of my other favorites the kids did were Garfield telling about his stories as he kept falling asleep, and the kid who knelt down on the ground with his shoes under his knees so he could be a “little kid.”
One other new to us thing that Sage Creek does is a dance festival at the end of the year. Each grade learns a simple dance and then preforms it for the parents and other grades. One good way to fill in that extra time at the end of the year instead of having the kids watch movies (that is a big pet peeve of mine.) Abbie and Spencer enjoyed their dances, but poor Mark, the sixth grade choose the Harlem shake and that was not his favorite, he put on his best good attitude and sometimes that’s enough. One other fun end of school thing they do is that the sixth graders break into groups and learn a bunch of plays to perform for the other grades. The kids are still quoting some of the lines from one of them.
Jessie didn’t go to Lagoon Day so she stayed home and played with us. During our game of Settlers Neil picked up one of Rachel’s road pieces and put it to his head, “I’m a unicorn.” It’s an inside joke from Mark from school, but whenever you do something that’s “cool” it’s cause “I’m a unicorn!'”
Photography class assignment: shadows
A moth the kids found on the front step that everyone wanted to take a picture of.
