The Friday after school actually got out was National Donut Day. Normally, I don't keep track of these non-holidays, but there were lots of people on Facebook talking about it, and I had enough advance notice to find a place near us giving away free donuts. I took the kids in the morning. And after we got a free sugar rush, we headed to our local library (not our regular one) for their Summer Reading Kick Off. Their theme this year is super heroes, so they had local heroes and their vehicles come for the kids to explore. It was hotter than sin out there, so we sunscreened up, and I slowly melted while the kids waited in long lines in the hot sun to get stickers and coloring books from friendly police and firemen. Oh, and we played with trucks, too.
Inside the fire truck
Swat Car, a first for me
front
and back
Joy the Motorcyclist
The Captain the less-enthused
That's The Captain's head poking up in the Patrol SUV
Better driving shot.
And Joy the Unseen
Proof she actually was in there.
Then on Monday, our usual library (one city South, for those who are curious) started their Family Movies on Monday afternoons. We have been doing those for 3 years now, so we grabbed our blankets and waters and enjoyed Sky High. Coincidentally, their Summer Reading theme is also Superheroes, so here are mine.
We have had no trouble enjoying reading time almost everyday and we will have many treats and prizes by the end of the summer.
The Captain graduated from Kindergarten! It was awesome! They put on a big program for the parents and then he got to come home early.
Here's all 5 classes of Kindergarteners- 3 English, 2 Spanish/bilingual.
In case you didn't spot him, he's on the very top left.
He had a speaking part. I'm pretty sure they chose them from their homework responses. There were 8 speaking parts in 4 pairs. The first would say what they liked about Kindergarten, the second said why they were excited for 1st grade. The Captain was in the first group.
The classes helped spell the word, they took 3 letters each, but The Captain's class was first and I missed some of it, so here's the last two letters. The link on YouTube has captions in the description.
Here's the end of their "sound off".
They sung many songs including, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and God Bless the USA, and this one, which is much better in Spanish, but again, I missed the beginning, so you get the end.
The Captain getting his diploma. He was the first student to walk off without it.
Don't worry he went back.
His class.
And this Spanish/bilingual class had the distinction (from me) of being the best dressed. All those kids looked stylish.
Since Johnny took the day off, we headed up to a science center in Frisco. We wanted to go for Joy's Preschool, but graduation was during that time, so we headed up when we were done. We didn't see any preschool kids there, but we had so much fun that we bought a membership. There was a big butterfly maze that had stops along the way to learn about their lifecycle. At the stops were activities and stamps for a coloring page. Here's Joy the Caterpillar about to be eaten by a bird. We must have made a wrong turn in the maze.
Here's the kids stuck on the spider's web.
In the rest of the science center, there was a section with these great building blocks. The Captain wanted to make something using all of them.
Lee was mostly content to sit on them.
We played for a few hours, road home, and were plumb tuckered out. It was a great beginning to summer. Except that The Captain had one more half day to do.
We'd been talking for awhile about Joy getting her hair cut. After seeing many pictures, Johnny convinced her that she wanted a pixie cut. I was worried that she might miss her hair, but after Johnny told her about donating it to make wigs for children who loose their hair when they get sick, she was really on board. Knowing we were going into summer in Texas and doing swimming lessons for at least 4 weeks this summer, I decided it was a good enough time as any.
There's a woman in our ward who is a cosmetologist and Joy's former Nursery leader, so I thought she'd provide the best, most positive professional hair cutting experience. I asked her on Sunday, and she got us in that Tuesday after school. We had the salon to ourselves for most of the time, which meant I could sit by Joy (holding Lee, of course) through the whole process. The Captain could have sat with us too, but his ear was hurting, so he sat by the door and distracted himself as well as he could on my Kindle. (Note to self: put aspirin in the car to help with future problems like this.)
I took some pictures of the process. I'm sure you expected nothing less.
Here we are getting started. We were worried she wouldn't have enough to donate. Locks of Love needs 10", which she barely had. We ended up sending it to Children with HairLoss, and they only need 8" so we were covered.
I would have taken a picture of the cutting, but I had to hold the hair so we could get all 10".
Her shampoo. She liked having a bath without getting wet. Although she kept sitting up, so her back did get pretty soaked.
Waiting for a blowdry.
She ended up getting a bob instead of a pixie cut, so they wanted to give her some pixie dust as a consolation prize. They couldn't find any glitter, so the glued on some jewels instead. They're by her right eye in the picture. It was really sweet and she loved it.
She pretty much charmed all the people in the salon with her constant chatter.
Here's the back.
And the side.
She loves it. I love it. It's so much easier to take care of, especially when she doesn't let me brush it. Now The Captain wants to go to an actual salon to get his cut next time.
First of all, let me apologize for the quality of these pictures. I had to take pictures of the actual pictures on my phone because I don't have a scanner, so it's a bad copy of the originals, which are actual prints. Yet more proof that our library is awesome. What am I talking about? Well, our library hosted a stuffed animal sleepover. We dropped off our stuffed animals, then after hours, they explored the library, made some new friends, read books (of course), and went to bed. When we picked them up the next day, they brought pictures of their adventures.
Here are all the animals. We brought the alligator sitting in the lap of the giant white bear on the right, and the blue monkey whose head you can barely see between the panda and the brown monkey just to the left of the white bear.
That blue monkey
Who went swinging in the trees.
And spinning on the globe.
And that alligator getting into some puzzles.
Playing with the copier.
Getting ready to slide down the bannister.
Hopping down the stairs.
Reading alligator books
And going to bed.
The kids (and I) thought this was so much fun. They loved looking at the pictures and were tickled to see all the stuff their animals did during their sleepover.
Miss Lee's birthday was on Memorial Day. And since we haven't had many people to memorialize in recent years, we took advantage of being back in Texas to see my grandmother's grave. It was the first time that we had seen the headstone. Thanks to my dad's ridiculously accurate directions, we had no trouble finding it. I thought it was appropriate for Lee to see it, since she was named for this grandmother.
And since we were in Ft. Worth, we decided to make the most of it by going to the Botanical Gardens (something I had also done with my grandmother shortly before she died, so it made a nice memorial as well.)
We had a surprising amount of fun.
Of course, the kids do love anything involving the outdoors.
I finally have a new background picture for my phone.
In front of the rose gardens.
The other two, of course, have to be in on the action.
We finished up, and headed home. Luckily, I had packed our water things, and as the storm held off, we went to the splash pad to introduce Miss Lee to recreational water. We were hoping it would be a hit, but it was rather cold. And it wasn't too long before the thunderstorm sirens chased us out.
So we stopped at the party store for some 1 year balloons. I may have had a few pictures in mind.
Miss Lee was . . . okay with the situation, but not happy.
Not even when we let her crawl around.
And then she ripped that bow off her head.
And suddenly she couldn't stop smiling.
That is, until I started trying to get her to stand up.
She was not cooperating.
But in the end, Mommy gets the photo she wants. Even if it is a bit moody.
Then there was birthday cupcakes.
She opened her presents the next day and quite enjoyed the new toys.
As far as her stats go, she is 20# 3.5 oz. And I have no idea how tall she is. Somewhat taller than at 9 months. I think around 29", the nurse doing the measuring didn't tell me and I couldn't catch a look fast enough. Anyway, she's right around 60% on everything but head size and that's still around 40%, so she's growing well, healthy, and generally happy.
