4/1 Raine is on the right side of the bottom-middle photo.

4/5 Carter’s field trip to the Dallas Arboretum. Daddy met him there so they could pal around. Carter is in the middle row, first one from the right.

4/5 Raine in music class, she is in the striped dress playing maracas.

4/5 Raine’s class grew radishes.

4/6 Raine, in the top-left photo, meassuring in math.

4/7 Carter’s class, learning about plants.

4/8 Author Kimberly Willis Holt visited 2nd grade, Raine is wearing the purple jacket.

Raine with Kimberly Willis Holt when she signed her book.

4/11 Raine, in the middle-left photo, measuring objects in the classroom.

4/14 Carter’s class learning about the weather with Mr. Anderson.

4/15 Raine, in the top-right photo, using PeppleGo.

4/20 Raine presenting her alligator passion project.

4/22 Carter making Earth Day art.

4/27 Raine learning about alliterations.

4/27 Carter’s class doing math with virtual manipulatives.

4/29 I was the share reader for Raine’s class.

5/4 Raine, in the top photo, reading.

5/5 Carter’s class made these awesome cats in art class.

Here is Carter’s cat.

5/6 Raine, in the center-right photo, during maker spaces.

5/11 Raine, with the purple headphones in the bottom photo, playing Toontastic on her iPad.

5/16 Carter’s class with Ms. Marshall the school counselor (Carter is on the bottom row 2nd from the right).

5/16 Raine, in both of the top photos (gray cardigan), working on addition scoot.

5/18 Raine’s class doing fruit loop multiplication.

5/20 Raine, top left, got some new books from the book fair.

5/20 Raine’s class during reading time (Raine is in the front middle, not looking at the camera).

5/24 Raine’s art project this year, it was impressive!

5/24 During the library’s summer reading program presentation, Raine held one of the signs. She is in the top two photos on the left, pink shirt and black skirt.

5/27 Raine’s class doing the tube tug-of-war on fun day. Raine is in the background of bottom right photo looking bored.

5/31 Raine during the 2nd Grade celebration, bottom left photo. Her greatest accomplishment in 2nd grade was getting to reading level 40.

6/1 Raine’s class playing Gaga ball. Raine is wearing the tie-dyed shirt in the top-right, 2nd-right, 3rd-left, and bottom-right photos.

6/2 Start of summer party. Carter with Ben and Spencer, waiting to go down the water slide, in the rain.

Carter coming off the water slide. They didn’t need to add much water, the rain kept it pretty wet!

Raine with Mackenzie and Zoe, waiting to be dunked in the dunk tank.

Raine, Erika and Anna doing the whip and nae-nae.

6/3 CES teachers celebrating the end of the school year.

Here are a couple more art projects that the kids made this year.

Friday, May 27 we drove down to Houston. The wildflowers along the road were awesome.

How did I get such clear-ish photos of the flowers? Traffic came to a near-stop as we crossed a flooded river.

It took an extra hour, and we had to ford a flooded road or two, but we eventually made it to the Rumsey’s home in Spring.

Saturday we went for a walk to turtle bridge. Here are Raine and Alexa on their scooters crossing the bridge.

Carter, Alexa, and Raine found more “treasures” than they could carry in their hands.

Raine and Alexa with a herring in the background.

That afternoon we went for a swim.

It was exhausting!

Sunday we joined the Rumsey’s for sacrament meeting then packed up and headed west toward Austin. We saw even more flooding as we crossed the Brazos in the hardest hit areas. There was water everywhere.

We made it to Austin just in time for Daddy to check-in for his triathlon. They cancelled the swim, just like last year, because the current in the river was too strong.

The kids decided to check out the rooftop pool at the hotel (it was only on the roof of the parking garage, 4th floor). Here they are waiving to me up in the room.

Monday, Daddy left early for his race and stood under a bridge while the rain poured down and the lightning flashed. We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and then sat on the patio watching the rain.

The bike portion of the triathlon was canceled but they were still going to do the run at 10:00. Daddy decided that he didn’t want to wait around that long so he came back to the hotel and took a shower. As we left the hotel about 11:00 we had clear blue skies and sunshine!

We met up with the Walkers for lunch at The Salt Lick and had promised the kids that we would go to the Inner Space Caverns, but lunch took so long that we didn’t have time to take a cave tour. We mined for gems instead.

We looked at the zebras and then hopped back in the car for the drive home.

5/21 Bahama Bucks

5/21 Carter the rock-star

5/25 Costa Vida

Carter graduated from Kindergarten today! He is on the back row, second from the left.

They sang three songs before receiving their diplomas.

Here is Carter walking across the stage. (I love how they hand them the diploma and then take it back from them before they leave the stage!)

Carter loved Mrs. Schultz, she was the perfect teacher for him.

After the ceremony we went back to his classroom for photos.

Carter and his best friend Ben.

May 13-14 was the father and son’s camp out at Worth Ranch, in Palo Pinto County. They roasted hot dogs and marshmallows for s’mores, slept in a tent, hiked, performed service, and had a great time. That’s about all I know!

Raine and I had girls’ night on Friday. We ate dinner at Freddy’s frozen custard, watched Studio C, and put Jamberry nail wraps on Raine’s nails. It was so much fun that I didn’t take any photos!

Saturday wasn’t as exciting; the non-profit board that I serve on had its quarterly meeting so Raine had to tag along. She brought her portable DVD player and watched a movie during most of the meeting then listened to music and drew pictures. At some point I had to sneak over to where she was sitting and tell her to quit singing along to the song she was listening to. It was adorable, but slightly distracting!

Our good friends, the Kinzlers, came to visit the Friday and Saturday before Mother’s Day. It has been a while since we’ve gotten together so it was fun to catch up. The kids played together like old friends.

Emerson, Raine, Ophelia, and Carter testing out the marble run they made.

Saturday morning we attended a wedding open house at the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. We saw many, many of our friends from the old ward there and it was fun to catch up with each of them. The weather outside was gorgeous so we took a quick walk around outside before saying goodbye to the Kinzlers.

Ophelia, Raine, Carter, PJ, Emerson, and Katya throwing coins into the fountain.

Ophelia and Raine taking a break under the tree.

A couple quick family photos . . .

then dinner and presents.

Carter thought that since he gave me two presents, he should get to open one of them!

This one was my favorite:

Monkey bread and Godiva chocolate, that pretty much sums me up!

Friday was the kindergarten Mother’s Day brunch. They “sang” a couple songs, a capella, and recited something their mom says.

The entire kindergarten.

Here is most of the performance:

Afterward, Carter and I had brunch together.

Carter made me this cute plate and place-mat.

It looks just like me!

I came back later that morning to eat lunch with Raine.

Raine’s U7 team, the Peppermints.

Back row: Leighton, Amber, Demi, Hannah, Coach Kim
Front row: Valerie, Peyton, Madelyn, Raine, Kennedy (missing Eugenia)

Carter’s U6 team, the Great White Sharks.

Back row: Heath, Carter, Luke, Ryan, Coach DJ
Front row: Blake, Conner, Ashton

Peppermints ice cream and trophy party

Sharks ice cream and trophy party

Raine loves performing arts, she is a right-brained child in every way. When she heard about the school talent show, she HAD to participate. Unfortunately, she has a left-brained mother who knows nothing about these things. She was not going to be deterred though. She got together with a friend during KidzU and they came up with a “cheer” for the talent show. They did it all themselves. I tried to dissuade them in every way possible but in the end, they were committed to participating and I wasn’t about to crush anyone’s dream.

Raine designed their t-shirts and I ironed it on the night before the dress rehearsal. They were the 30th out of 36 performances so Carter and I sat there in the high school auditorium for 2 hours during the dress rehearsal. This was both a blessing and a curse I figured. Since they were going to be performing after the intermission, at least the audience would be significantly thinner. (Fewer people to say “where was the parental oversight on that one?” Because that is exactly what I would have said! But we really did try. These girls were just so head-strong, and I didn’t have time to get them together outside of school, so any influence I tried to exert was fruitless. At least it was short!)

April 22, the night of the big event, Raine and Erika striking a pose for the paparazzi.

Here they are on-stage.

After the show, with her flowers.

I really am proud of Raine for sticking to her plan and not letting anyone talk her out of pursuing her dreams. I’m also impressed that she wasn’t intimidated by what others were doing in the show. Their act was sandwiched between a 5th-grade girl who played the harp like a concert master and a vocal duet. There were a number of disturbingly impressive acts in the talent show — but I guess that’s to be expected in the area we live. However, Raine did her thing and never compared it to anyone else. I hope she can maintain that throughout her teenage years because it will save her a lot of insecurity!