Emma's LAST day

Today was Emma's official last day of preschool! In the fall Emma will be on to Kindergarten! I'm so proud of her. Emma's growing up and is such a cute, happy, and smart little girl. She's had a great school experience over the past year and has made lots of great friends. She LOVED her teachers too. The kids and I had a great time celebrating her final preschool day in her class...

Emma with Mrs. Goodman and Mrs. Garcia

They had cookies and juice for the kids and parents... Jake fully enjoyed devouring his M&M cookie

Emma and her carpool buddy, TJ

Jake apparently felt right at home when we got to Emma's class and plopped himself right down on the carpet with some other boys :)

Emma getting up to receive her end of year bag of goodies and hugs from her teachers


Happy Summer!

Playdates are Fun... and Daddy is Awesome

Can you believe that school is almost out for summer?! I felt like this school year went FAST. Emma's last day is tomorrow and then I need to get going with summer plans! We have some trips on the calendar, but I need to figure out how to keep all 3 of my kids busy and entertained while we're at home. This afternoon we had more cute friends over to play and this reminded me of the fact that playdates are a great summer activity... so I'm definitely adding that to the summer list!

We made some cookies while Dagen and Kallie were here...


They were doing a great job rolling the dough into little balls - and then I looked over and noticed that Dagen had eaten half of hers... (but I don't blame her... cookie dough is the BEST!)



Our backyard doesn't really have much to do, but somehow the kids still keep themselves entertained!



You know it's summer when the otter pops make an appearance!
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So, Ben is just one month away from completing his intern year of residency! This is a big deal, because intern year is definitely the hardest. He's worked long hours and often worked weekends, but the 2nd and 3rd year of the program get a bit easier. Today just so happened to be Ben's LAST 30 hour shift of intern year! We added up about FIFTY 30-hour call shifts that Ben has done during this first year of residency and this was the last of those. Next year he'll probably only have to do about 10 of these long shifts, so we're really making progress, right?! I laughed when Ben said that after this first year is up, he'll no longer have to keep 3 different pagers on him. I was pleased for him and then thought to ask how many pagers he'd have to wear starting his 2nd year... and he said 2. Well! One whole pager down! What an improvement! ;) We celebrated with Ben by eating dinner with him at the hospital. The kids think their daddy is pretty awesome stuff...

Home at last!

Ben's younger brother, Peter and his wife Lacy came home on Sunday after being in Japan for the past year teaching English. They had many adventures and came home with lots of stories to tell and gifts to give. :) We got together on Sunday evening at Lacy's parent's home to celebrate their return to Arizona. We had a great time catching up while eating lots of yummy food and enjoying their huge backyard! In the fall Peter will be attending graduate school at ASU. We are happy they are home!

Lacy playing with Japanese sparklers with the kids :)

They came home with lots of treats and toys from Japan. I really liked the lemon flavored Kit-Kats!

They brought home this little shirt... we're not sure what it's talking about ;)

Emma hanging out with Uncle Ben

Cute Cousin Allison watching the chickens

I've been told that I have lots of close up pics of Jake on my blog, just walking and grinning... I must think he's cute!

This is blurry, but it shows Emma mid-flip on the trampoline... I didn't know she could do that until now!



All the siblings... Ben, Peter, and Emily :)

Becca's FIRST swim lessons

Cute Amy put together a swim lesson group this week for the 3 year old crowd. What a great swim teacher she is! She had so many little tricks up her sleeve for getting the kids involved and excited about swimming. I wish I could say that Becca was brave and wonderful, but she wasn't really. :) She was the only one of the bunch doing a lot of flailing and crying and running to mommy begging for a towel, BUT she did very well on the last day (which worked out that this was also the one day I decided to take pics)! Yay! We suspect the increase in temps today was what helped - the high finally reached 100... meaning the pool water was that much warmer for my little skin and bones Becca. haha. Thanks to Amy for a fun week of swimming!



Playing motorboat... there was a lot of giggling going on when they played this :)



Look at that cute little swimsuit wedgie on Becca ;)

Yay! Backfloating! One of the few swimming skills that I myself know how to do

Fun with Friends

The kids had plenty of opportunities to socialize today! This morning Emma had her last field trip of the year with her cute preschool class. I tagged along with Becca and Jake. I can tell Emma's really going to miss this great group of friends (classmates and teachers) that she's made this year. It was nice to get to spend some more time with all of them, seeing as Emma has spent many many hours with this group over the course of the school year. And Becca and Jake had a great time too!

He's so cute with his little monkey backpack peeking over his shoulder. :)



Becca already impresses me with her domestic/motherly nature... she insisted on wearing an apron and repeatedly created little dishes of play food and served plates full to a nice group of moms sitting at a nearby table... she even got them all utensils and routinely filled up their glasses with "milk"







I didn't get a good full shot of this... but they were painting this big castle structure that had obviously been slathered with many layers of paint by many kids over the past few weeks - I had to take a deep breath and let the girls have at it, with the hope that the paint must be washable :)







This afternoon we had some more fun friends to play with... a cute friend of mine recently had the sweetest little twin babies, so we had her two older kids come over to play. As the lone boy, Jake was feeling outnumbered... so he took a nap. ;)





Little Alice is now a big sister to two little ones - a boy and girl... so I thought it was pretty cute to see her find a boy and girl baby doll to carry around - she kept telling me that they were her babies. :)

The doctor is IN

A while back Emma's teachers asked Ben if he would be able to come into the classroom and talk to the kids about being a doctor. We arranged Ben's schedule this month to include a weekday for one of his days off so that he could volunteer in Emma's class. So, today was the day and Ben did such a great job! He told me beforehand that he was more nervous to do this then to do a presentation in a room full of other doctors. :) I think Emma was proud to get to have her daddy come be the teacher for a short while too. It was cute. Ben read a funny book about a "doctor" and then talked with the kids and asked lots of questions about what they knew about doctors, and hospitals, and even different organs in our bodies... then he demonstrated on Emma (who wanted to wear her doctor coat as well) lots of different tools that doctors use to check their patients. Another doctor at work lent him a box full of little stethoscopes so that the kids could all give them a try and listen to each others hearts and lungs. The kids all then got suckers for being good patients. :)










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In the evening as the summertime approaches, the sun just never seems to go down and it doesn't get dark until about 8pm. This usually drives me crazy because the kids bedtime is 7:00 and I often get grief about how it's still light outside, so it can't be time for bed yet. I'm mean and make them go to bed anyway :/ BUT, sometimes we go out to play in the evening and then I REALLY love that the sun isn't setting at an earlier hour. After dinner today, Ben and I took the kids to the park (well, the girls rode their bikes, and I mostly yelled at Emma the whole way to stop at the curbs and to wait for us, etc... she's still very wobbly on that bike and I kept imagining her veering off the sidewalk and into the busy road... *sigh*). But once we got there the kids were free to just play and wander and ride their bikes all over the place. The weather is just so nice right now... we are on the verge of 3 digit weather... it still hasn't quite hit which is surprising for May, so we're trying to enjoy the pleasant temps while they last. It was a very fun evening at the park...















Jake was trying to back up and then sit on the trike seat... but he's still just a little too low to the ground and missed it