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Field Day Fun

Today was field day at school. Here's a few pictures from the fun.

Clay's 11th Birthday Party

We celebrated Clay's upcoming birthday early again this year since his actual birthday is after school is out. I wanted to pare the partying cost down and Clay wanted a slumber party. Perfect combination once I limited the number of friends he could invite to three.

Clay wanted a homemade cake instead of a store bought one, so I made him the chocolate cake with cream cheese icing that he likes so much. And instead of buying a bunch of junk food and trinkets to send home in treat bags, I had Bruce buy and cut a bunch of PVC pipes and organize kits for the kids to make their own marshmallow shooter guns.

The boys played for hours outside with those guns after being briefly distracted by this monster crawdad they found in the creek that runs alongside our yard.





Bruce doesn't know how not to be a kid and join in the fun. But that's part of why I married him!







Clay disappeared inside for a few minutes and then came outside with this taped holster device.



Allison got tired of the shooting and just decided to snack on the ammo.

Walkathon

The kids' school does a fundraising walkathon once a year. Sometimes I make it up there and join in; other times I don't.

This year I planned to go, but I had a dual mission. To walk, of course. But also to snap some pictures to be used in a DVD presentation during the school's fifth grade graduation ceremony a few weeks later. So I walked with all three kids but then had lunch with Clay and the fifth graders to get more pictures. Because, really, isn't the best time for pictures when kids are laughing with their mouths full?

Here's Spencer and Eli, who is Allison's "boyfriend". Two little red heads!



Spencer and his buddy Kevin.



Spencer and "that man teacher" that he was hoping to have as his teacher all last summer. Spencer couldn't remember his name then, but I'm sure he'll never forget it now after the great year he's had in Mr. Holly's class.



Allison walking near Mrs. Counts, who was Clay's third grade teacher... and his favorite teacher ever so far. Both Spencer and Allison had high hopes of having Mrs. Counts as their third grade teacher but she will be moving to teach second grade next year. When I told Spencer that there was no way he'd have Mrs. Counts as his third grade teacher, he said, "Ohhh, but she's my favorite teacher!" I had to remind him that she had never actually been his teacher. Crazy boy!



Here's Allison with her teacher Mrs. Smith. She was Clay's second grade teacher as well and we love her!





The entire fifth grade class. Great bunch of kids.



Clay and his best bud, Joseph.

Time Off for Bruce; Game On for Allison

I'm going to try to catch up on the blog. Which means posting a lot of pictures. Here goes.

Clay's fifth grade program was today. Bruce took off work since this is Clay's last year in elementary school. Here's my fella looking ever so cool.



After the program, Bruce and Clay took off for some father/son time. Clay played model to Bruce's photographer.



Allison loves volleyball evidently. I like it because it's a sport with a short season. Only six weeks of disrupted family dinners... YAY!





Showing some sass. Yep. That's my girl.





Ouch! Ball must not have gone over the net.



Success comes later though...

Washington D.C. Spring Break

Because life is busy near the end of the school year and I'm already feeling that time crunch, I'll be allowing my boys to give the low down on our Spring Break trip to Washington D.C. It was a last minute trip because the weather locally wasn't looking too good for camping. Well, the weather wasn't much better in D.C., but there you go. You do what you've got to do to have family time.

Here's Clay's take on the break.

My trip to WASHINGTON D.C.
March 31, 2011
Today was my first day in Washington D.C. First we imediatly went to the air and space museum in Chantilly, VA.

It was one of the Smithsonions. The last flown S-R 71 Blackbird was there. It was so cool!

We also went to the Arlington National Cemetary. We watched the "Changing of the guards. A time were soldiers change guarding the "Tomb of the Uknown."



Nobody can talk. Two boys were called down because they were talking. The soldiers kind of scared me. They has a very deep voice.

Today was so cool. The Air and Space Museum was awesome and the cemetary made me feel glad that I live in a country that treats those who died fighting for our freedom with great respect.







John F. Kennedy is also burried there. This trip so far is making me feel even prouder about living in the great USA.

April 1, 2011
Day 2 in the District of Colombia. We went to the National Mall today. We went to the National Museum of Natural History, another Smithsonion.



Allison posing with some crochet coral.



Spencer with the real thing.



We also went to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. We watched them make paper money.

Then we went to a Holocaust museum. Very sad.

We also went to the Newseam. Its a museam about news.





Mom's favorite quote from her journalism classes in college.



Clay in front of a section of the Berlin Wall.



I relized today that I will never understand public art. Here's some examples:

(He drew some cubes and other geometric shapes.)

See it's just crazy no offense to sculptors but I don't see what it symbolizes.

April 2, 2011
This is my 3rd and last full day in D.C. Today was good. We finished the Newseum...



The bathroom walls included tiles of newspaper corrections or other headline errors like the one above.



Mom's prerogative to include the quote above, too, because it's just too true. Even though at the time I complained about the low pay and long hours, newspaper journalism was my favorite job - next to being a mom.

The pictures below were taken while the kids recorded segments of themselves pretending to be television news anchors. They loved that part!







... and did the National Gallary of Art. There are lots of nude sculptures. Oh and tip for future if your looking for "Mona Lisa" by Leonardo Da Vinci, it's in France... Paris to be exact. Not in ANY Smithsonian.

We also did lots of monuments and memorials, but before we could it started raining then it turned to hail. Then right on que... thumder and lightning.

Once it stopped we went to the Washington Monument. This is the goofiest saying in the world but "I touched it! I touched the Washington Monument.





Then the next thing was the WWII Memorial. It was big and pretty.





there was a wall with stars and each star represented 100 dead US soldiers IN ACTTION. There were 4048 stars. So that means 4048 X 100 = 404,800. But really dead, POWs, and MIAs totaled 405,399.





We would have seen the reflection pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial but they were doing work on it. So next was the Vietnam Memorial. It's a huge wall with names of MIAs, POWs and dead.



Next was the Lincoln Memorial. Abe was huge! He was about 5 X my height!



But last but not least was the Korean War Memorial. It was statues of soldiers from that era. they were kind of in a battle field.







April 3, 2011
Today we left but before we got out of D.C. we went to the Iwo Jima Memorial. It was big!



I loved the trip to Washington D.C. I mean my brother and sister may have complained there socks off because "I'm bored its just some museams" "I'm tired" you know. But I was and I quote "the best behaved of all." But hey the trip was AWESOME. As one of the signs said in Union Station: "I luv D.C."

Well, this is Clay from Washington D.C. signing off.

And here's what Spencer wrote. (By the way, I didn't ask the boys to do a journal. They just did.)

Washington
by Spencer

I got there after 6 hours of driveing non stop it was like 700 miles eventuly I notest that we had been driveing for like four hours so I told mom why did we have to go on this dumb trip

when i got to washington I was exited the next day we had walked like 10 miles so I told mom I hate this trip.

We went to the musem (the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) I swer it should have been vilont there was blod There was starved pepole. It was scary.

A few days later we went to a newsem. It was about a meusem about news It was fun I cep on waiting to go to the neseums 4D movie it had wind it was awsome I loved it we got to see a movie about the twin towers colison I cep on asking if we could go to the Washington monyoument

the day befor we went to a place that had relly good food. (Panera Bread.)


Here are a few more pictures that I liked.

This first one could have been taken anywhere, but just happened to be taken at our hotel one night after the kids were worn out! It's not every day anymore that my younger two will hold hands.



The cherry blossom festival was going strong while we were there and the blooms were at peak. Terrible for allergy sufferers, but beautiful just the same. The Jefferson Monument is barely visible in the background of this last picture.