KID PARTY!

We had a good thing going with kid party.  Three sets of parents and 7 kids (+ a baby that went with Mom and Dad).  That meant two dates a month for each of us and one night of kid party a month for each couple.  Best of all the kids had kid party 3 nights a month.  We lost 1/3 of the group to Pocatello and miss them a ton.  It was fun while it lasted.  This particular night we were baking a shell on cotton balls just so we could smash them!

We especially miss Russ yelling KID PARTY!

Ridge

In the last few days Ridge has said a few things I don't want to forget.

One-  Holly was reading Ridge a Christmas book.  In the book there was a picture of a Mrs. Clause cooking.  He informed Holly that it was the mom.  She asked why and he said, "because she is in the kitchen cooking!"

Two-  I asked Ridge to put on his seatbelt while I was loading groceries.  He told me, "Mom, I need more training before I can put my seatbelt on by myself."

Fathers and Sons

Ridge, Rusty, and Mike made their first trek to the fathers and sons campout.  Apparently Ridge wouldn't take his sunglasses off, even at night around the campfire.  He got the nickname Hollywood.  Ridge came home and talked nonstop about how much fun he had and all the things he had done.  It is so fun to see them together.

Kindergarten Graduation

Katelyn was one of the kindergarteners in her class who received an award at the school assembly in May.  Her award was for excellence in spatial awareness.  Not 100% sure what that means, but it sounds pretty fancy.  Her kindergarten graduation was really cute.  The class sang us some songs they had been learning.  They got to come up one by one with their graduation caps on, tassles included.  Mrs. Lawrence popped a magic first grade balloon over each of their heads.  Inside was a special dust that instantly turned them in to a first grader when it touched their heads.  Happy graduation to our special little Katelyn.

Queen Nzinga

Kyleigh's class, along with a few others, did a living history museum.  Each student chose someone they had studied in history to represent in the museum.  Kyleigh chose Queen Nzinga from Ngola.  She is well known for a stand she took by refusing to sit at the feet of another King when he didn't offer her a chair.  Instead she motioned for a servant to sit underneath her to serve as her chair so she would be sitting at the same height as the other King.  Lucky for Kyleigh she has the best Dad in the history of the universe.  He sacrificed his knees and back to provide the best prop in the history of living history museums.  Kyleigh also did her own research and wrote a report.  She had to have her report memorized and as people walked around she had to repeat the entire report for each person.  She did a great job as Queen Nzinga (and Rusty wasn't half bad as a throne).

Sandwich Art

Sometimes (mostly a lot of the time) I can't resist random, unnecessary purchases for the kitchen.  One of those was edible markers for writing on food.  This is a sandwich masterpiece by Kyleigh.

Who doesn't love April Fools Day?  This year we made chicken and celery with a ranch dip (rice krispy treats shaped like chicken with a frosting like sauce over the top, and laffy taffy shaped like celery dipped in yogurt).  For "dessert" we had pie (meat based with mashed potato top).  My favorite part about these dinners is definitely not the food.  It's the kids' excitement and Rusty's awesome Dad reaction.  I love the pictures in sequence.