first day of school for the older two

Mandatory 1st day of school photos.  My kids are adorable.

in which my oldest is now a decade old

Buddy turned 10 today.  He wanted a blue angel food cake.  The frosting had half a bottle of food coloring in it and the color stayed so light! It tasted great though.  We had a small family party for him.  He got to open his presents.  It was a good day.

 

in which they swam for miles

The swim-a-thon.  Wherein the kids swim for 90 minutes straight, if they so choose, to see how many laps they can do.  Last year Buddy swam 138 laps, two laps short of a two miles.  This year he swam 164 laps and Sunshine swam 77 laps.  They both did terrific and were rewarded with ice cream afterwards.  Thank you to those who were able to help support them this year.

 

in which he is no longer a bear

Buddy finally earned his Bear rank in Cub Scouts! He also earned his religious knot, a golden arrow, four silver arrows, some belt loops and pins.  He was so excited, but he was even more excited to become a Webelo.

 

in which it was the last week of school

The kids only had two days of school this week.  They each had a field trip doing something fun.  Sunshine went swimming.

I snuck into Sunshine's classroom to snap a picture of her (and if you look closely, you can see Turtle snuck all the way in there to visit before the bell rang).

 Buddy went bowling.  I snapped this picture right before the ball hit the pins for a spare.

 Buddy received the all A Honor Roll for the third trimester in a row.

in which the back porch had to go...anywhere but there

Part of the clean up that had to be done around the house was removing the back porch.  Dad and Buddy were very careful to remove the planks from around the newly installed and painted siding.  It only took them a couple of hours, during which time they found more spiders and empty snail shells than they could count.  Yuck!

 

in which they swam at a meet

The kids had another swim meet.  They did well.  Sunshine was really confused at first at where to be and when it was her turn.  She tried hard though.  Buddy is used to these by now and placed fifth in both backstroke and freestyle.

 

in which we took a much needed break

We've been working hard.  So today we decided to take a break.  Buddy had three requirements left in order to finish his Bear in Cub Scouts.  Two of the requirements were to go on a picnic and take a hike.  We took a short drive and ended up in a state park overlooking the ocean.  Today was beautiful!  We enjoyed our picnic at the top of the cliff.  We ate sandwiches and the boys got chased by their Dad. 

 

 When we were finished, we hiked down to the bottom and the kids played on the beach.

 I mentioned that the kids played on the beach.  There was a huge drop off the trail and because I have bad knees and I'm not a huge fan of falling, I stopped before the drop off and just watched. 

 Just a little further up on the beach, right out of sight in the picture, happened to be a family that we know.  It was the guy who has been doing the work on the house, Mr. L.  It was funny to run into him there.

in which he raced a dragon (car)

This year the Pinewood Derby was a very different experience.  First off, Dad was feeling great, as was everyone else in the family.  Secondly, the racers were half scouts this year, which made the racing so much shorter.  The boys got to have their cars go down four times, once in each lane, and then their times were averaged.  Buddy came in 4th out of 13 scouts and 9th overall (28 or so cars).  He did a great job and was so excited his car did better this year!