June Stories...

June 1st was the boys field day at their school. They spend pretty much the whole day outside doing fun relay type games. The entire school gets divided into color groups: Green, Red and Blue and then "compete" to see which team earns the most points. Oliver was on the green team and Lucius was on the red team. I don't know which team won but they both seemed to have a really good time.

I had heard Sweet Science Ice Cream opened a little window shop on Como lake, so one evening we ventured out to get a scoop of ice cream. We sat by the lake's edge and watched the rented boats come and go.

Oliver's class learn a columbian dance from their teacher at the end of the school year. Then they performed it for the senior home they'd visited often this school year. They also performed it a second time at the school wide assembly. Oliver was so thrilled to be in a sparkly skirt.

Oliver and I went to a dog sport park that my Aunt Melanie works at and we got to introduce Elska to some of their agility things there. She did awesome and Oliver was excited to work with her.

Lucius begged me one evening to go to his friends younger brothers baseball game so that he and his friend could play together. We showed up and it was raining. Thankfully I had an umbrella and was able to sit on the sidelines with his friends mom who is also a friend of mine. Lucius and his friend didn't care about getting soaked (which is huge for Lucius- he has come so far from his fear rain).

We were helping my Sister set up her garage sale one evening and we stopped to eat dinner. While Casen and Lucius were eating their dinner I realize that they have almost identical hair color. You could really see it when the sun shown on it. Crazy.

We tried going to the Witches Hat tower in Mpls one evening. It's only open one day the whole year. Unfortunately, we did not expect the crowds to be so crazy. The line to climb to the top was a solid two hour line if anything. So we walked to the bottom of the tower because we've never seen it up close, then we turned around and went home again. We're not much of a waiting in line kind of family. At least I did get a fun brother shot with this cool garage door we walked past.

There was a fun festival involving chalk that we wanted to go to. I invited my sister's family but they could only go on Saturday. Again, things didn't go as we had expected, but we made the best of it. Went we arrive at Chalkfest it was raining, so all the chalk drawings had been covered. We walked the few blocks and spun some wheels for prizes and then went home. Oh well, There's always next year. At least the boys got their hair dyed like they'd been wanting, and it was totally free.

River Swimming...

The end of May the boys had a Friday off of school and I didn't have to work so we packed up the car and drove to Afton State Park for a little swimming adventure. We hiked the half mile or so to the swimming beach right on the St. Croix River and swam for close to two hours. It was a blast. We had the beach all to ourselves.

After our swim the boys remember that I said we'd be hiking. What I meant was the hike down to the river, but apparently that wasn't a long enough hike. So Oliver lead us on an almost two mile hike through the hot meadow lands of the state park. You maybe can't see but Oliver was at the top of the hill before Lucius and I really got started climbing. He doesn't not feel the heat like the rest of us and he has energy coming from who know where.

I'd say it was a pretty fantastic day.

Last Day of School photo...

I would be remiss if I forgot to post the boys last day of school photo. They would only stand still long enough for one photo this year, which means this is as good as I get. I forgot to take it before school while we waited for the school bus (which is what I typically do). So this is after school after they'd been playing and just wanted to get back to playing.

They've changed a little bit from the beginning of school.

Another field trip...

Oliver's class went on a field trip this week to Feed my Starving Children in Eagan. I had never been before but heard lots of good things about the experience. Oliver wasn't super excited about going but once they started showing the videos and showing us how to pack the meals he started getting excited. He wanted to be on the food station part of the meal packing. He scooped up the vitamins and the dried veggies. I had a lot of fun sealing the bags that Oliver helped fill. Together with the rest of our table we filled 10 whole boxes of meal packs. In just under an hour our whole group filled 60 boxes. That's pretty exciting. It was a lot of fun and we want to go back again. Oliver sampled the rice at the end and was surprised at how good it tasted. He was also impressed that the 60 boxes we packed that day would go to feed 35 kids for a whole year!

Art-a-Whirl...

Last Friday evening we ventured over to Northeast Mpls to explore some artist studios during the big Art-a-Whirl event. Auntie Mick and Uncle Hung go almost every year and they always find such wonderful art pieces that we thought we'd tag along with them. We walked all around the Northrup King studios and saw all kind of different art. Oliver was on the hunt for a garnet jewerly piece. Lucius got some bird painting stickers which were pretty awesome. And I found a art print of a ship that was titled "follow your dreams" that I bought to hang on our walls.

We stayed out till well after the boys bedtime and I think we completely wore them out but it was a really fun evening with family seeing all the cool artists.

Oliver's many spring concerts...

Oliver had two Concerts this spring, one with orchestra and the other with the four 3rd grade classes at his school. Yes he is in 4th grade but he's in a 3rd-4th grade split classroom and since they were treated as 4th graders last year he wasn't in the 3rd grade concert till this year.

First was Orchestra. He plays the violin and wants to continue next year. I'm excited that he loves it and I hope he will practice throughout the summer but it'll be a challenge to find his motivation.

Second concert was at his school with all the 3rd graders. They memorize 13 songs, I think. They did a great job. He's in the back row, just to the left of the center. In the top photo he has he arms raised.

Lucius was a bit wore out during the concert and snuggled on Mormor's lap for a bit. He sure does love all his cuddles.