I love it when Juliet's friend's mom sends me pics of their play dates. Arts and crafts fun at Addie's!
Meanwhile, Callie with her neighbor friends.
Patrick has Sookie cuddles down to an art form
Final swim meet! Patrick and Chandler had a lot of fun doing swim together.
Nathan and Brian got to go to a cool kid concert
They saw Puscifer. I can tell by the name and the stage lighting that I hate them, but I'm glad Nathan had fun.
Sookie has been getting ALL the cuddles. She's very pleased.
I don't know what Juliet is doing here but I can tell she's naughty
Eleanor and her friend Elise took a selfie as proof of life and it was actually a really nice picture of them
It got hot enough for us to host Patrick's birthday pool party. But we figured that out a day in advance, so people only had 24 hour notice on the Monday afternoon party. I thought that was actually nice, hopefully a few people wouldn't be able to make it on such short notice. I think everyone we invited except one person showed up. So many wild boys in the pool ...
The party crew
Juliet and Stella and Lila decided to join in on pool time and I warned them they might want to stay out of the deep end where things were the most wild. Instead they invaded ... everyone survived.
A standard Patrick birthday song experience
So many wild boys
Evening swim with Nathan after the party
Nathan and I got to celebrate our 15th anniversary with a Pad Thai lunch date outside his office because the evening was full of band concerts and kid activities.
Bradley's posture while playing tuba is quite the thing
I joined him for a band field trip and performance at Worlds of Fun. It was interesting to see his friend group in action, lots of questionable decisions as they ran around the crowded theme park trying to find a ride with a short line. But I had a nice time hanging out with the boy and he decided to buy his own dippin' dots when I refused. It was $10! I guess it's good he has some lawn mowing money.
Juliet and Patrick went to a party night at the elementary school and Juliet got some awesome temporary tattoos and also got a fair amount of temporary hair dye.
And she skipped her Saturday art class in order to go to a friend's birthday party where she roller skated for the first time.
Sweet Callie! She got a new bone and it's cute except when she brings it over and drops it on my foot so I'll pay attention to her.
Poor tired Juliet. Mornings are hard.
I had a lovely Mother's Day! Baked goods and flowers and a nice family walk later in the day.
Cuddles at church
I also took Eleanor, Patrick, and Juliet to go play tennis while Nathan took Bradley to the driving range.
A coach/friend Brittany came to hang out with her two kids, everyone had a very nice time. The club was a ghost town on Mother's Day.
The kids got celebratory ice cream treats, they were so pleased.
Eleanor chose to wear very tiny roller skates on our family walk and hills were difficult, so she caught a ride at the end.
We also made cake pops! It was a busy day. Sort of out of the blue she decided to make these for her friend group at school. She chose red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting and a white chocolate covering. I usually don't really like cake pops but these were very good!
Family Mario Kart while waiting for the cake pops to set.
Cake pop team pics!
So much bonding
We had our final Girl Scout meeting of the year that week and I was worried because it was an outside activity and it was a warmer day, so I brought little bags of ice for each of the girls to play with/drink. It was a very popular choice.
It was a gorgeous day and the girls all had a blast, I'm very pleased with how well Girl Scouts went this year.
We had a dad come and lead a geocaching activity for the final activity of the year.
Juliet is obsessed and wants to find the cache every time we go on a walk now.
Goslings! Walks around our neighborhood are so pretty.
The school was actively trying to murder us with activities by the end of the year so we had a walk for ADHD and parents got to come walk with their kids for some unknowable reason. But I like seeing the kiddos and fortunately for me they were walking together, so I joined in.
So tired. All the mornings were like this at the end of the school year.
I've been playing a lot of tennis, this is Patty who recruited me for a Thursday evening USTA team. I'm actually kind of a big deal - I'm undefeated in 3.0 singles. I know it can't last but I keep playing people who are definitely better than me and I just keep hitting the ball back. It's been very fun!
We played a 6PM match at the Plaza and went out for dinner afterward. We met Spiderman on the way!
I missed Juliet's field day the next morning because I had a tennis match but then I went by Patrick's field day and he was so busy with activities he barely even said hi to me. Like I said, so many end of year activities.
Nathan has been fitting in some good driving range time with Bradley. It's been really nice for both of them.
And Grandma Colleen came into town for various graduations and recitals.
She played lots of games with Juliet
And then got to see Patrick's 5th grade graduation.
Look at that cute boy!
The best part of the ceremony was when Juliet ran up to Patrick and they cuddled during the slideshow
Patrick basically had a party day after graduation and they just ran around the school and had a foam party and played games in their classes.
So many good buddies. I'm so glad switching school in 4th grade worked out so well for him.
Then on to Juliet's dance recital that evening!
Backstage photo of Juliet's dance class
It was really cute to watch their routine. And shout-out to Patrick who was the only sibling who was able to attend and seemed to actually enjoy himself. There were a lot of really impressive dance routines by the older girls and the little girls were all so cute!
Backstage photo near the end, thanks to Addie's mom who was helping out backstage.
I found multi colored dyed roses at the store and debated on whether or not a 7 year old girl would like them or not, which was ridiculous because she was obsessed and showed them off to everyone.
What a lovely photo ... thanks, Juliet.
With the dancer girl!
The next day we had Bradley's graduation. He was supposed to dress up and he chose his matching Hawaii outfit, which I think is the cutest thing ever.
It was chaos after the ceremony but we found Bradley for a little hello
They took all the kids to Main Event for their graduation party. Bradley had a nice crew of friends to run around with.
Some at home pictures with people who didn't get to see the graduate after his ceremony.
Nathan and Colleen trip pic
The last day of school! Juliet got a photo with Ms Breckenridge. I'm so glad she's had such wonderful teachers.
The best picture I could get of Juliet and Patrick. Oh Juliet. Side note - I got Patrick a gold chain because he won a super cheap one at Dave n Busters and was devastated when it instantly lost all of its gold coating and looked as cheap as it was. The new gold chain also isn't real gold, but it's considerably nicer than the Dave n Busters one and he wears it every day.
It was a surprisingly chilly day for the end of May, Juliet needed to find warmth wherever she could.
Water fight! So many of these plans were based around a warmer day.
Patrick saying goodbye to his gifted teacher
5th grade farewell parade! It's Juliet's final year being in school with a sibling.
Austin's mom sent me this photo of him and Austin. So many nice kids at this school.
Eleanor enjoying some devoted Juliet cuddles
And more golf for the boys!
They actually did some legit golfing - 9 holes down at the Linn Valley golf course
And Bradley got to practice driving around some of the roads down at the lake
Nathan cleaned up the garage and Juliet helped and also lifted weights
I get videos like this from Juliet not infrequently
We were leaving for our trip to Hawaii just a few days after school ended but we fit in a Patrick trip to the zoo for Chandler's birthday.
Bradley helped me drive Sookie over to grandparents for while we were gone. I thought she might like the car ride better if she wasn't in a carrier. I was wrong.
Sibling bonding as Eleanor helped Bradley download shows for the Hawaii trip.
It was a fun-filled May, Hawaii got its own blog post!
