Finishing Up the School Year

The rest of May was a busy one.  My tomato and jalapeno plants were growing and doing well with all the rain, but one of them was blown over in a storm and it has never quite recovered.  The only problem really was too much rain.  

After the big kids were out of school we made it down to the Urban Garden section of the local food bank to volunteer again with friends.  After harvesting green beans for two hours, the kids were rewarded with feeding the goats.

The little two boys were with me so I could check the plants as they finish so they didn't miss any of those sneaky little green beans that like to hide.  Drew was with his buddy and Isaac worked hard all on his own (seen here).

When we moved into our new house in August, we lost a lot of closet space in the kid's rooms.  However, we gained an extra huge hall closet in addition to several others.  The one outside the boys' two rooms was turned into a shared closet.  I still have their hanging clothes in their room closets, but I did hang one pressure bar at the top (not visible in he picture) for Isaac to keep his school uniforms hung up because he is up before his roomie (Bob) sometimes.  I collected every basket or container not in use and labelled my heart out.  Each boy gets an entire shelf all the way around.  Then there are two more shelves (above what is pictured here) that have bins of boy clothes that no one is wearing currently, all labelled and ready for someone to grow into them.  I spent a morning moving out clothes that didn't fit and reorganizing since the boys are not perfectionists when it comes to putting their clothes away.  This closet serves well for a changing room for them too.   

Drew finished up his basketball season with his cousin on his team.  They were called "Flash and Dash" and finished the season already looking forward to the next.

Drew never smiles in group pictures.  I don't get it, because he's a happy guy most of the time.  He just hates picture time.

Hannah had her 10th grade concert.  She's not a singer really, but it is mandatory at her classical school to do these concerts on certain years.

Two of her good friends with her afterwards

The homeschooled boys had an end of the year bowling day.  Judah and Bobby haven't done much bowling before, but we signed up for Kids Bowl Free for this summer and are going to try to go once a week if we can after our trip.

This is a terrible picture, but I was trying to catch Drew altar serving at daily Mass after Mass was over.  It just took too long to get my phone out and the camera on.  He and his other homeschool friends that attend the same Mass and picnic day that we go to each week all did altar server training one day while the moms and little guys had the picnic and play time.  This day was his first day to carry the crucifix down which he was nervous about because it's heavy and hard to keep straight as he walks.  He was very focused.

Drew has also started reading the Harry Potter series and began his quest to build all things Harry Potter with his Legos.  

The day that school ended we drove to visit Gigi and Poppy before they moved out of their house.  The kids did some swimming, but not as much as usual because the water was still so cold from all the rain.  Playing pool became the obsession when Poppy taught the boys the proper way to play the game.

While we were there, Gigi got Genevieve a cake for her recent birthday and we celebrated again.  Gigi actually had tons of food for us and stuffed us full as usual.

When we got back home we spent the week getting ready for our RV trip to New Mexico and Arizona, and I spent a ton of time driving kids to sports camps all week.  Hannah also got some more practice driving in.  That next weekend, we had a couple of parties for the big kids and we had our family dinner with swimming at my sister's house.  Usually we've been swimming every weekend by the first week of June, but not in this rainy April and May.  It's barely hit 90 degrees a couple of days.

Bob, Dylan, and Drew