5th Grade Camp

I love that our district has a 2 night camp for all 5th graders in the district.  Kyla went last year, of course, and when it was Piper’s turn to go this year, she asked if I could go along, too.  

So Wesley went to Daddy Camp and I got on the bus with Piper and 60 other kids and chaperones the morning after Easter.  A friend and I chaperoned 8 girls, and to distinguish our girls from all the others running around (we were one of three schools attending together), we donned our Rosie the Riveter headbands.


We had a ton of fun learning archery, climbing the rockwall, catching a frog (when we were supposed to be carrying a log), and eating s’mores. 

It was not the most restful half-week I’ve ever had, but I’ll sign up again when Wesley is a 5th grader!

Eggsellent

I love these kids!
We did our annual egg hunt and Easter dinner–smaller and earlier than usual, as I was going to 5th grade camp with Piper the next morning.  
Since only Ruby is small enough that we care about her feelings, The Moms had a delightful time of hiding the eggs.  Rochelle got the Most Devious Award after she tossed a clover-green egg into….clover.  Yep, that egg was the last to be found.  
Also in the egg hunt were 2 confetti eggs each.  The 3 oldest demonstrate how to deploy said eggs.  Evelyn’s hair was a popular target.

After dinner, the kids practiced their circus acts on the trampoline.  The adults watched the show with rapt attention.



We were dazzled by the high quality of all the acts.

Happy Easter, Jesus!  We survived another Resurrection.  

Evil Easer Bunny



Last year, there were tears.  Not mine, of course. But to buy us more sleeping time, I hid the kids’ baskets as well as I could downstairs.  The extra sleep plan may have backfired.

This year, hoping my kids were smarter and more resilient (so that I had to be neither), I did the same thing. First, they woke to this:


Later, I added the PS No Crying!!

I buried each of the bunnies under as much other crap as I could, as the pictures show.

And then, once they found the bunny, they had to figure out the clue to find the rest of the loot.  “There’s no cooler kid than Kyla” didn’t work out for me, as she had looked in the cooler before she  had found her bunny.  Wesley’s “I hope this doesn’t leave any scars” befuddled them all for a long time, and I don’t know who finally figured out that I hadn’t underlined “scars” but “car”.  Wesley also found Piper’s on top of the freezer before she found her bunny in a box under a box in the office.  However, the big winner that morning? (Clearly not Jesus’s resurrection, at least before 9am).  Teamwork.  Kids teamed up against Evil Easter Bunny and won the day!  

My First!


It’s been 28 years in the making, but I finally got my first traffic ticket.  Kyla, Piper, and I were listening to Michelle Obama’s audiobook, and one of them asked me to turn it up.  Did so, got caught, and now have my first ever ticket.  I haven’t even been pulled over in decades.  Not that I haven’t deserved a ticket before, but I was born under a lucky star.  

The kids and I visited Mom and Janet today, and we measured Kyla’s height against Grandma’s in the old OMG-How-Tall-Is-She-Getting!?! game. I took a picture, just so they could see how close they are, but I accidently caught very lovely, and loving, pictures of two of my favorite women.  

Spring Flung: Home via Tulip Festival

The ferry left British Columbia about noon, getting us back to Anacortes mid-afternoon.  It’s only the smallest hiccup of a detour to go through the tulip and daffodil fields outside of Mount Vernon.  My favorite place is Roozengaarde, which does have an admission fee and lots of ways of asking for more of your money once inside ($13 cheeseburger, anyone?), but I fully got my $7 worth of the experience, and more than made up for everyone else as well.
Wesley (wearing PJs, sunglasses, and a scowl) went from 
  
to
👦
when I gave him my good camera and charged him to be my official photographer.  He actually did pretty well.  Here’s an album, because I was blown away by how well designed the tulip layouts were this year!  The daffodil made out of tulips is inspirational, but the first few of a flowing “stream” through non-symmetrical tulip fields is my favorite.

Why does my favorite tulip remind me so much of my favorite cocktail?  

So glad we made it this year!  It was a vacation bookended by our beautiful spring, both in weather and flowers.