July

In June, we were pleased to discover that we were expecting our 4rth. This, however, meant that by July normal life and picture taking had ceased. From looking at a friends blog I know the kids attended the summer reading program in July and I remember going to see fireworks for the 4rth, but other than that, there is not much to report for July.

June

June marked the end first grade for Teah. She had a great year and adored her teacher Mrs Noel. She achieved school awards for both academic achievement and citizenship (only one of which was given per gender per class). She also received classroom awards in just about every subject (except handwriting :) ). We are very proud of all her hardwork and the young lady she is becoming.

In June we also visited the zoo again, which in the summer months means spending a fair amount of the time cooling off at the splash pad.

In June Manu and I also celebrated our 10th anniversary. Some friends were kind enough to take the kids overnight for us and we enjoyed an evening in New Mexico. The next day they joined us with our kids and we participated in the annual Raft the Rio event. It is a fundraiser for the southwest environmental center and the idea is you build a boat/raft from recycled materials and float down the river. We had a blast and somehow out raft even managed to stay in one piece down the river. The greatest obstacle was that in some place there were sand bars that made the river super shallow. The sand bars both tried to tear apart our makeshift vessel and were exhausting to push the vessel through. Still it made for a great day and floating down the river in the deeper sections was quite relaxing (although the whole thing scared Marama quite a bit - apparently she did not think our vessel was very stable.)

May

In May we celebrated Xanders 5th birthday. He had a water party, which involved lots of water (and mud), water balloon launching, playing and finished off with a water gun fight. Unfortunately there are no pictures of the water gun fight because, well, everyone was otherwise occupied.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

April

April was a quiter month than Febuary and March both in activities and in pictures. We did however get some nice doggie snuggling pictures around that time.
 

 

 

The kids also participated in healthy kids day at the YMCA with some of their friends.

 

 

 

Merry Christmas

So there has appearently been some complaints concerning our lack of Christmas cardage - and for those of you who are interested, this is as close as it gets