I Can Make A Balloon Animal

A couple weeks ago we went to a friend's bday party and one of the moms took this photo of Riley and 2 of his friends.  It's hard to believe they are all 7 or almost 7.

  

Riley's art teacher sent his portfolio of art home last week and Riley has a lot of "Harry Potter" and "Rodeo" themed pieces.

We also went to Melt again and tried a one-day only flavor they had called Black Forest Cherry.  It was very YUM.

  

The boys had chocolate and Carter smiled sweetly for me before showing me the proper way to apply a chocolate ice cream mustache/beard.

 

  

Nana and Papa have joined the puppy-bandwagon.  A puppy showed up under their back shed the day before Memorial Day and after a week of seeing if he was micro-chipped and waiting on someone to claim him, they've ended up adopting him.  He's skittish around me and Chad and took some time to warm up to the boys, but seems to be coming around.  Nana and Papa have named him Dog, which seems to be a bit of a godwink as people keep commenting that it must be like that John Wayne movie and when Nana looked it up, its synopsis was as follows:

Set in the year 1909, Jacob "Big Jake" McCandles (John Wayne) is an aging rancher and near-legendary gunfighter estranged from his family. He wanders the west with his trusty Rough Collie, simply named Dog.

Pretty eerie huh?

 Here are some photos of Dog with Papa.

June 2 was Marvelous Monday at Lily B and I took the day off to volunteer as a classroom volunteer.  We started the morning with Texas Ballet Theater.  Riley was not a fan.

  

We then went on to African Drumming and Riley was MUCH happier.

  

The last session before lunch was all about Germany.

  

First up after lunch was Art.

And we finished the day making Balloon Animals, where I learned that I can make a balloon dog and a balloon sword.

  

Riley's teacher was also sweet enough to let us celebrate Riley's birthday early that day and we brought cookies to share as a snack and all his classmates sang him Happy Birthday.

  

Monday night was Cultural Arts Day at school and Chad took the boys up there, mainly because they wanted to go to the Scholastic Book Fair.  Carter picked out an interesting book for him.  I can't help but look at this as a romance novel for children based on the covers below......

  

Carter has also been cracking us up lately at bedtime.  I went in one night last week to put Princess to bed in her crate and found Carter on the floor wrapped up in one of Jake's old quilts on the floor.  When I asked him in the morning why he was sleeping on the floor, he said because he hadn't done that in awhile......When he tried to do it again the next night I offered him a sleeping bag and then the next night suggested putting the sleeping bag on the bed and that's how he's been sleeping the last few days. 

He did sweetly come into my room on Saturday morning and asked to lay in bed with me.  I told him he could, but he had to be still and he was and he fell back to sleep, so I actually got to sleep in until 8:15am! 

Saw another beautiful sunrise on a morning run last week.  :)

  

Riley won a bunch of awards at school for the end of the year.  Homework Hero (for faithful completion of homework), Extraordinary Effort Award (for demonstrating persistence and showing determination to always do your best), Super Scientist Award (of course!), Art Award, Citzenship Award and Reading Award.  He should also get a Perfect Attendance Award when all is said and done.  I'm very proud of him and how hard he worked this year.

  

On Saturday night the boys spent the night with Nana & Papa and on Sunday Nana & Papa did not have power so the boys got to play in the dark, before ending up in the pool swimming for 4 hours!  They are going to have such a fun summer with Nana!

  

Quick comparison of Riley from the first day of First Grade and the last day of First Grade.  He was quite a grump the first day, but all smiles by the last day!

  

We celebrated the end of school year by letting Riley choose where we had dinner and we followed that up by ice cream sundae dessert at home.  Great way to end the school year!

We also said goodbye to Carter's daycare last week.  It was very emotional on Friday, which was his last day and we are going to miss that little school a lot.  Doing my best to keep looking forward to all the new and exciting things in our future when both boys attend Lily B next year!