We celebrated our country's independence today at church with an all-American picnic. Every year, we rent several jumpers for kids, play music and having family games.
Cutest of them all!!
Before After a wave Sand Angels Sand everywhere
Today was "Box Day": the day that our big box o' fun books from Sonlight, for our next school year, arrives! I'm sure the Fed Ex guy doesn't look forward to it!
Joanna will be starting K, so she's got her own Language Arts Binder now! Elijah & Rebekah are starting American History, and they've already starting reading some of the books, the punks. Leslie had to hide them away till she's good & ready to start school again (we've only been out for FOUR DAYS!).
Since school is over, we took the kids to Seaworld for a little fun
This canvas "floor" was fun for Rachel to jump on. It is like a huge bed designed to be jumped.
Les and Rebekah waiting in the one hour line for Shipwreck Rapids
Last family photo in front of a display of Megaladon's teeth.
Competition time! Elijah is racing the pinewood derby car he designed, built and painted. Rebekah didn't make a car this year, but she went along to cheer on her big bro.Everyone loves Elijah, even those registering the cars for the race!Elijah's car is the black one. He lost this race which secured his third place in the division.Proud Elijah getting his bronze metal for third place in 2nd division (3rd to 5th graders).
Today we had a year-end picnic for our homeschool group. It was at a new-to-us park, and the kids had a great time playing!
The kids all got their hair cut for the summer
Joanna's cut was the most dramatic--she got about 4 inches cut off! It'll be nice to have it short for the summer! Rebekah wants to grow out her bangs, so she got the rest cut a bit to allow her bangs to catch up. Rachel got a trim too, and we're still working on her "say cheese!" smile. Elijah got a trim too, but at 9 years old, he's far too cool to come running when Mama gets out the camera to take new haircut pictures!
We had a shared party with 3 other families who have early June birthday kids. The party was at AirTime - a huge play area full of jumpers. Mike didn't waste any time getting involved.
Birthdays are for beating up your friends, right?
Speaking of air time, look at Rebekah! Looks like she has a little bit of style when she flies through the air. Joanna helped with the picture taking.
Mike playing basketball with Jason.Nice thing about AirTime was the extra couches to rest. Sorry for the poor quality picture. Hopefully, we are still capturing the excitement.The whole group.
Close-up of some of the boys.
The birthday dads with some of their girls.
Rachel got a little bit of cupcake on her.See that chocolate "cake"? Mike will posted a little more information about it on his cooking blog. As requested by Elijah, it is a double layer brownie with vanilla frosting. Look at all those candles!
Elijah had a couple of the boys come home to stay the night, and had the dinner of his choice: Carne Asada
Temporary, unfortunately! This was the view from our balcony at the condo in Palm Springs.
Joanna & Rachel get a jump-start on breakfast
As we headed home, we drove out through a very windy pass (the San Gorgonio pass) that has a lot of windmills to produce power.
Then we drove over the Whitewater River. We had toyed with the idea of going down to play in the water, but there were "No Trespassing or Loitering" signs all over the place, so... being the law-abiding citizens that we are, we kept moving!
We stopped in Cabazon to check out "the dinosaurs" which Leslie had driven past thousands of times as a kid, but had never stopped to go inside (she led a very deprived childhood).
T. RexJoanna, on the toe of the ApatosaurusYou can go inside the Apatosaurus, and there's a gift shop in its belly!We also stopped at Hadley's Fruit Orchard, but didn't get any pix of that!
Other than a short break mid-day to have lunch with Leslie's parents (who drove over for a picnic & short visit), we spent the day in the pool. The kids LOVED it!
Mike with Rebekah, Joanna (in pool) and Rachel
Elijah
We got to spend the weekend in Palm Springs, courtesy of Leslie's Gruncle (Great-uncle) Sterling, who let us use his time-share. We had SUCH a nice time!
Mike, the proud breakfast burrito builder.
The mornings were very enjoyable. We ate our breakfast outside since our balcony was nice & shaded.
Our balcony view of the mountains.
Our first pictures from our mini vacation in Palm Springs are of silly Rebekah putting her shorts on backward.
(Yes Mom, we know that she needs a haircut; she wants to grow her bangs out!)