Random moments

This past week has been Dominic's first week of summer vacation. The first morning he woke us up at a crazy early time. I explained sleeping in on vacation with him and the next morning he slept til 8:15am and Caitlin til 8:30am. This is unheard of in our house.

Another morning this week I was woken up very quickly when these words pierced my sleepy mind.

"Wow! Mom is going to be surprised when she sees you!"

 They were making her a Hawaiian girl.

 I have the sweetest kids.

Guess I shot out of bed for nothing.

Notice band-aid on Dominic's chin? There is a story with that.

Right before lunch the day before Dominic had been running around the circle in his sock feet. He bit the dust and landed on his chin. It hurt him for quite some time, but he was pain free by evening.

Right before bedtime Caitlin needed a small band-aide. I'm not super strict about when to give band-aides. But I told Dominic to find me an owie. Dominic was frantically searching for a place to put one. He debated about a tiny, red spot on his arm until he remembered his chin.

Another sweet moment.
I went to book club and returned to see a note on the door.

 I think I might have mentioned it, but my kids are the sweetest kids.

Today Jon took the kids out in the kayak with some friends. I stayed home to go shoot some pictures and relax. When they returned Jon made the comment that we had some really great kids. Apparently they were so good, one of the other boaters even commented on it.
 

Tithe

Dominic has been earning an allowance since last year. But he spends it all in my little store here at home, so I never really thought about him tithing, saving, etc.

A couple people gave him money for graduation. He was so excited to have real money to put in his wallet. So Jon and I thought it would be a good time to explain tithing.

Dominic counted out his 10% and put it aside to take to church this week.

At church he carefully filled out the envelope and proudly put it in the offering plate when it went by.

 

I know that I'm a bit crazy about documenting every little aspect of my kids' life. But I can't help myself. One of my friends caught me taking pictures and laughed. Oh well. =)

Kayaking

Our modem has been giving me fits. I've tried to write this post several times and every time the internet gives out on me. So once again, I'm out of order. 

I doubt this bothers anyone else as badly as it does me. =)

We bought a used kayak from a friend and were able to get it out on the water last Sunday.

Waiting on the guys to run the vehicles down to the take out.

 It didn't take long before the waiting moved to the water.

 Blurry picture, sorry! We'd had hoped that both kids could ride with us in the tandem kayak. It only took us a second to realize that they were bigger than we'd imagined.

Thankfully our friends had a spot we could plop a kid.

What you see in front of Dominic is a water pump. The main purpose was to pump water out of the boat. You can imagine what the kids thought the main purpose was.

 

Caitlin wanted to paddle so badly.

 But it's just too heavy to do for very long, so Daddy helped.

 Lunch break was spent getting soaked.

 About half way through our trip (a 9 mile ride) we started noticing dark clouds.

We ended up waiting out a nasty cloud under a bridge.

The kids were cold (from getting so wet at lunch).

Ms. Nicole had an iPhone so I was ditched in favor of technology.

 Boating down a river is one of the most serene and calming sports I know.

I'm so glad we bought that boat. It was money well spent.

Water

One of the Coffee Girls was gracious enough to invite us all over this last week. When school isn't in session the amount of children and noise greatly multiplies and we don't end up together often during the summer.

The kids had so much fun on this slide.

Caitlin went down a couple of times with quite a bit of trepidation.

So she spent most of the day in the kiddie pool.

This kid cracked me up. 

His mom was trying to put sunscreen on him and he apparently thought it was torture.

 The boys played hard all day. 

The only breaks were for snacks and snow cones.

 

Thank you Ms. Tamra for a very fun day!

Memorial Field Trip

Life has been so incredibly busy that I haven't had a whole lot of time to be posting blogs. So please forgive me for this blog post being out of order.

On Wednesday before school got out Dominic's school headed back to the zoo. His classroom has a prayer board that they put prayer requests on. When a prayer has been answered they move the request to the answered side. Marissa had prayed that the school would get to go back to the zoo again this year. So to answer her prayer, someone sponsored another field trip for ACE.

I was kept very busy with an independent little girl who wanted to walk the entire time. Unfortunately she only has a slow speed. So I spend the entire day at the back of the line with her. I really didn't see Dominic most of the day. But they both had fun and that is what is most important.

 

 Grammy and Gramps joined us about lunch time and then came home with us for Dominic's graduation.

 Caitlin's favorite place at the playground.

Last Day of School

Graduation was on Thursday night. The kids returned to school for a half day on Friday.

Dominic and I were talking on Friday morning and Dominic announced that he wanted to buy Ms. Beth-Anne a wind chime. 

"Because she's special and I buy wind chimes for special people. Just like I did for you on Mother's Day." (He picked out wind chimes for me when he was 3 yrs old.)

He also told me that his lunch was to be only snacks and so he helped me pick out the snacks and chose a Little Debbie for part of his snack.

I went and found some wind chimes and then picked him up at noon.

He was wired. Between the special school snacks and his cookie he was off the charts wild.

 

Giving Ms. Beth-Anne his gift.

Saying good-bye to friends.

Hmm, I just noticed these pictures are all of girls. =)

Dominic is really looking forward to summer vacation, in part because of all of the fun things planned. But he's already mentioned that he wants to make sure and see his friends and teacher a lot this summer so he won't miss them.

I still can't believe my baby boy is a 1st grader.

Beginning of Kindergarten picture

End of Kindergarten picture

The best teacher

I've mentioned this before, but we pray every morning in the car before we leave for school.

This morning I wanted to thank God for the great school year so I just went ahead and prayed. After I finished Dominic asked if he could pray as well. Here is his prayer.

"Dear God, Thank you for the nice day and that it's the last day of school. Thank you that I'm going to have a fun summer. And thank you for my teacher, cause she's really, really good. And I like her. And thank you that I HAD a teacher so I didn't have to teach myself. Amen."

I guess I know where I stand. =)

I returned home and received this text -

You have the sweetest son. For bellwork they are writing what their favorite part of the year was and he put "My favorite part of the year was being with you."

Beth-Anne

Dominic truly had the best teacher this year. And I'm not just saying that because she's my friend. Dominic has flourished under her care at school and I've thanked God multiple times that he has her for two more years. He will have a great teacher when he leaves that room. But I know that he loves Beth-Anne and that she has been good for him, so I'm thankful that he can continue with her next year.

Kindergarten Graduation

Tonight was Dominic's graduation from Kindergarten.

It was a very bittersweet time for me. I can't believe that my oldest child is now ready for first grade. That seems inconceivable. It was also hard because Marissa should have been there smiling and laughing with the other kids and she wasn't.

But I was also so very proud of my little man.

He won an award for Phonics and Reading. (No surprise there.)

He's grown so much, both physically and emotionally this past year.

He's had to experience things that most grown-ups haven't gone through and he's amazed me with his hunger for knowledge and his love for life.

I'm so in awe of the blessing that God gave me almost six years ago.

 Waiting to march up.

 Receiving his diploma from Ms. Julie

 Receiving his Phonics and Reading award

 With his fellow Kindergarten classmates

 Silly kids!

Congratulations Dominic!!!

Mother's Day

My Mother's Day was unusual. Check out my other blog if you want a full description.

I get to celebrate Mother's Day because of my two precious children. They both light up my world and I'm so very thankful that I get to be their mommy. Somehow those two kids got all of the great genes that Jon and I have and the combination is amazing. (I'll be honest, they might also have gotten a stray bad one or two. But we aren't focusing on that.)

Yesterday evening when we returned home from Nashville the kids disappeared into the other room. A few minutes later they came out with this little package in their hands. It was actually in Dominic's hand and Caitlin was just itching to tell me what was inside.

Dominic - "Mom, we got you a present for Mother's day. Guess what it is?"

Caitlin - "IT'S A NECKLACE!!!"

Dominc - "CAITLIN! You aren't supposed to tell!"

But it was so cute and the smiles were so precious that I had to laugh.

It was a very sweet necklace that I'd been eying for a while at Poet's. (Thanks to my dear husband for helping quite a bit.)

Thank you to my dear sweet children who make each and every Mother's Day so special. 

And thank you to my wonderful husband who helps them - a lot!

On stage

Dominic has had a couple of activities that have put him up front or "on stage". So I thought I'd combine them. By combining them in one post you might also catch a glimpse of the extra crazy child he'd been this past week. I think I have a little boy in serious need of summer break.

 After receiving his certificate to graduate to the next level.

 I have blown this one up so you can see his expression.
 It cracks me up every time I see it. Crazy boy!

This was a "bad parent" moment for me. But still funny. The slide show was having some issues. So the director called the kids up to share what their favorite honor was for the year while we waited. Dominic wasn't sure which one he liked best so she tried looking at his sash to give him some ideas. Not one new honor had been put on his sash. Sigh! Bad mommy! I'll have to work on that before he starts back in the fall.

 Finally a serious face.

 We were missing about 5-8 kids, but a pretty good picture of our little Adventurer club.

The next day the school went to a nursing home to give a presentation.

These pictures don't show it as well, but he was just as crazy.

 Jumping for a song they were singing.

 Caitlin with her other mommy. 

She begs to go see Miss Leslie and Charlotte every day.

 Making fish faces instead of singing.

 Visiting with the residents.

It's a good thing that school is out next week. 

I'm not sure how long either he or his teacher can stand him. =)