June Craz-y-ness

A wise person once told me, "Never poo poo what a person with children older than yours tells you." Well, perhaps this person didn't actually say "poo poo" but that was the jist of it. Now, a whole school year into "real" school, I have empathy for those friends with older kids who bemoaned the homework and projects and field trips and so on..... When you're dealing with crying babies and poopy diapers the trials and tribulations of homework seem like far off luxury, til you get there.

And we're not even there yet. Thankfully. Kai's school isn't big on the homework thing, particularly for the younger grades, instead valuing outdoor play, free time, creativity, and imagination. But they sure are into lots of end of the year events and celebrations, enough to make first time kindergarten parents' heads spin.

So much has been going on and I've had so much to blog about but really no time to do it. So here's a smattering of what the last few weeks have been filled with as we head into the home stretch - the last week of kinder for Kai and preschool for Peach.

In the space of the last 2 weeks there have been so many events, some of which we just haven't managed to make it to. We did make it to Art Night, the last of a string of themed celebratory evenings at Kai's school. It was worth it to see the mini-city that the kindergartners had created, each building a reflection of the individual personality of its artist.

That is Kai's train station in the green with the triangle roof.

There was a taco truck, a toys r us, face painting store and even a soccer field. Amazing what these little artists created as you can see. 

Because Teia is an honorary member of Kai's class, she even found some of her own art on display. She was pretty proud. 

Closely following Art Night, Greg created another of his own works of art for Kai to wear to a costume themed birthday party of one of his classmates.

We're kinda hoping Kai will still be into the Coaster at Hallowe'en; wouldn't that be efficient? But we're not too optimistic given his track record of having favorite things for about 2 months max. If he does want a new costume, we're just hoping it'll store more easily. We now have a Trolley and Coaster costume sized for a kindergartner and no garage to store them in. I've told Greg he needs to start a public transit costume business but he has informed me these costumes would be way too pricey for any reasonable parent to buy, given how much time it takes to create one. Either way, Kai looked pretty awesome. 

The paint was barely dry on the Coaster and we were off to the Kindergarten year end camping trip at Mt. Laguna. That weekend is worth a blog post in itself but that will probably never happen so I've thrown it in here, amongst all of the other June craz-y-ness that is going on. Not only did we have to prepare for ourselves, we were part of Team Saturday Breakfast and together with 2 other families, were charged with cooking and serving breakfast to about 40 hungry campers. Somehow we managed to pull off bacon and eggs, a fruit/yogourt/granola buffet and pastries, together with coffee made in as many french presses as we could muster (with tea and hot chocolate for the few non-coffee consumers among us). Relaxing the weekend was not, but the kids did enjoy their time in the great outdoors and discovered that they really like climbing on big boulders. 

Teia in her happy nutella place - like father, like daughter. 

So much of the weekend was not captured in photos but there was only so much we could accomplish without growing octopus arms. And we were SO tired. Did I mentioned we were tired? And thrown into the middle of all of this was Kai's end of year "family learning project" on the space shuttle. 

Before we had unpacked the camping gear and caught up on sleep, it was time for the year end beach field trip to Coronado Island. I was actually dreading it. Yep, dreading a pleasant ferry ride and a few hours spent on a lovely beach. Because it meant packing another bag of stuff, schlepping that stuff around and running around after children again for an entire day, rather than actually unpacking our camping gear and getting organized while the children were at school. But despite my grumblings it did turn out to be a nice day and I'm just resigned to the mess in my house for now.

And here are a few pics of my cute little loves on the ferry ride.

Teia with her arm protectively around her brother ♥

And insisting on sitting on his lap. 

Taking a deep breath as we head into a week of graduations, pot lucks, ice cream parties, end of year teacher gifts (not yet imagined, bought or created) and slightly frazzled children. After Kai told me tonight that he had 4 sleeps left until graduation, he asked me how many sleeps until he could go back to school in September. I take that as a really good sign that he's had a really good year. Now we all have to do is survive the rest of this month and then maybe everyone can get some sleep!