Evan's Last Day of First Grade

It was Evan's last day as a first grader. What an amazing year it has been! We loved Miss Borgen and can't believe how much he's grown as a problem solver, reader, math wiz, and speller! We look forward to a fun-filled summer! When asked how much time he'll commit to school work during the summer, Poppa aimed high and said, "3 hours?" Evan bargained down to "2 hours - 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the evening." Wow, ok. Good luck with that!

Kids chose their favorite Thai restaurant for their celebratory dinner!

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day! We had flag football in the morning. The Thundersharks won their first playoff game and moved on to the next round. They got close, but lost to a tough team. That was the end of a fun-filled season!

After a late lunch, we skipped dinner and went straight for dessert - froyo! Of course, Pops was hungry after, so we made a pitstop at McDonald's and strangely enough, the kids' appetites came back too...

Evan's Field Day

June 14th was a busy day. After Ellena's carnival, we went to Evan's Field Day. The PE teachers put on a cool event for the students - about 25 different stations/challenges. Ellena and I got to run the sack hop race. We were mighty prepared with our chairs, water bottles, snacks and whistle!

Evan with his buddy Will

Ellena ready to start the race

Poor Evan had to leave Field Day early. His belly was upset. But Poki was there to snuggle with him and make him feel better.

Ellena's Last Day at Montessori

On Friday, June 14, Ellena had her last day at Montessori. It was an exciting day. She showed me some of her favorite works. Then, it was time to go out to the carnival! She loved the fishing booth and even  helped me when it was my turn to volunteer at the booth. We will miss the wonderful teachers and friends that we've made at this excellent school.

With Mrs. Hoffman and Mrs. Lorance

With Mrs. Palomino

Ellena's Birthday Circle

Because Ellena's birthday occurs during summer break, she had the option to celebrate it early with her classmates. This will be our last Montessori birthday circle. She got to set up the months of the year and the 365 beads. Holding the Earth, she walked around while her classmates sang. She shared a snack with her classmates (fruit leathers) and got to be the line leader out to recess. What a special day!

Low Tide Nature Walk

I've been wanting to do a low tide nature walk for a few years, but the stars never aligned. It was either cold and rainy, someone was sick, or we had something going on. Well, today it finally worked out! Evan had gone to Alki beach for a 1st grade field trip and did something similar. He loved it and was excited to go again.  Today we went back to West Seattle, but a different beach park. We met with a volunteer naturalist and found some amazing creatures! We lifted rocks to see the crabs scurry away. We walked along the rocks and seaweed and found millions of anemone. We came across clams and huge crabs (Is it alive? Is it dead? Is it just an empty shell that he outgrew?) We also found a moonsnail emerged from his shell - you know it's rare when the naturalist takes a picture of your find!! We went to the water's edge and found where the sea stars were. And then we headed to the sand bank and found groups of sand dollars. Our favorites were the crabs, sea stars and sand dollars. Soo cool!

And I'm Back

This weekend, Ellena and I worked on a little book that has a picture of her through each year of her life. I went through the blog and pulled out some pics and tidbits of info about her. Thank goodness for the blog! So many fun times had already slipped my mind and we wouldn't have been able to do a very good job without it. So I'm back. Back to blogging. I'm going to make time for it so that we'll always have this to refer back to.

The above pic is from our adventure to Northwest Trek with our buddies, the McCommons. The boys did a Zip adventure course and had a blast :) It took about half an hour to get through and we were able to follow along as they did each challenge. As soon as they finished, Evan asked if he could do it all over again. He needs to grow a few more inches to do the next course.