Kindergarden Graduation - Lucas' turn!

I can't quite believe Lucas is moving on from kindergarten!  This is always a bittersweet day for me; I'm glad it's all over but sad at the same time since it's such a special, tender time in my little boy's life.  It was a wonderful year, we feel very blessed.

Here he is in the processional (sorry it's blurry, I was lucky to get a shot at all):

He's to the right of the girl in the pink dress (2 of his good friends are to her left - together they are "The Three L's"):

Here he is saying his line in the alphabet poem, he did a great job! He was the letter 'S':

Here he is in the 5 Little Ducks play.  It was pretty cute, I'll see if Jake can fix this footage for me:

Receiving his diploma (sorry for the blur but once again, I was lucky to get this shot at all):

We love his teacher!  She has had each of our boys for kindergarten so far and we are very thankful.  She is so good with them:

It was Field Day for the upper grades so we stopped by to see Joshua after the Kinder ceremonies.  6th graders got to supervise the stations and Joshua chose one of his favorite games, Pickle Ball.  He said they got quite a few "customers!"

Here he is demonstrating the game, trying to generate interest for his station:

Some of Josh's good friends were manning the hula hoop station.  They were good sports and agreed to a photo op:

Coincidentally, Daniel's class was just starting their field day rotation as we met up with Joshua in the gym.  He waved to us from afar but declined to come over for photos.  He was making a beeline for somewhere, I was guessing the snow cone station.  Turns out my suspicions were correct - he confirmed once he got home from school.  He said he was the first kid in line to get a snow cone and was pretty proud of that fact.  I have to admit, that beats getting your picture taken by your mom any day.

I Miss My Blog!

I used to love maintaining my blog a lot.  I was scrolling through old posts, reminiscing and feeling very nostalgic.  I'm really glad I took the time to post then so I can enjoy those memories now.  I seem to have painted a fairly sunny picture, which surprised me a little.  I think I didn't let on how stressed, etc. I chronically seemed to feel.  Time seems to have wrapped a warm, fuzzy blanket around my memories, especially of young(er) children and family times.

That's a good thing.  I know we were happy, but raising young children is hard.  That's why I don't like it when older women tell me "Just enjoy it when they're little, it goes so fast!" Or worse, "You don't know how easy you have it now, it only gets harder!"  I will never, ever say things like that to younger women (we/they need encouragement, people!)  Especially since from my experience, it gets better in lots of ways.  Granted, I don't have teen-agers yet, but I refuse to fear and tremble the way I'm warned I should.  

We're doing well now but as is always the case we are busy, etc. especially as we have added more (and more!) children to our family.  I don't think I'm chronically stressed/overwhelmed the way I used to be; along about baby #4 I (finally) got my sea legs as a mom under me.

But I think what happened as far as this blog is concerned is sometime last fall I just got behind with all the busyness of school starting etc. And then I got really behind and then I got overwhelmed with the thought of feeling like I needed to catch up and I just (reluctantly) let blogging go.  It's sad because I missed posting about our fun Halloween, our special Thanksgiving that we spent in the Bay Area, Christmas,  Lucas' birthday and our March Madness Birthday Marathon, among other things.  Oh yes, and a beautiful, amazing double rainbow that we were blessed with sometime in October or November.  I may still post pictures of that...

Ah well, enough of my rambling.  Here are a few of the more recent pictures from my phone.  They're random, but they're something.

Lucas and I have just enough time to stop by the library on Tuesdays after I volunteer in his kindergarten classroom, but before we need to pick up Caden from preschool.  He loves having his picture taken inside this 'p' for some reason.  When I showed this to Jake he said, "He had me take his picture inside that 'p' too!"

I decorated Daniel's classroom door for Teacher Appreciation Week (a parent volunteer from each class did all the teacher's doors).  I think it turned out pretty well :)  One of Daniel's classmates, who is also our friend and neighbor, was the inspiration for the theme:

Sometime over the spring Caden became kind of infatuated with this tree while waiting for Lucas (and our good friend Liam!) to come home on the kindergarten bus each day.  He thought it was interesting that the tree needed to be held up with "braces."  He requested his picture be taken with it on several occasions.  Here are two pictures, each taken a few weeks apart:

 As you can see, we've been enjoying a beautiful spring!  And just one last comment -- it's so funny to me the random things my kids want their picture taken with; Lucas and the 'p,' Caden and the tree...good times!