Brooklyn is now a kindergartner

This past week Brooklyn finished pre-school.
She has enjoyed every minute a being a preschooler, but couldn't be more excited about finally being in kindergarten.
The teachers had a great pancake breakfast for all the students and their families.
My mom and Camey even came to enjoy the morning celebrations.

Brooklyn had such a great teacher and aid.
They did such amazing things with the kids all year long, I loved all the art projects Brooklyn was constantly bring home. They also taught her how to write her name, along with all the A,B,C's and all the 1,2,3's.

They sung the cutest song about the ocean,
they even had hand signs to go along with it.

She had such a great class. Most of these kids have been together since last year.
Now they are all ready to move on to kindergarten.

This is Brooklyn's friend Joey, they are like two peas in a pod!

Sweet sisters!

It is so hard to believe that we now have two elementary school age children, my how time just goes by so fast. We were really hoping Brooklyn would also get Blake's kindergarten teach, Mrs. G was a great teacher. We have found out that she is actually going to be in Mr. Denney's class next year. He was a second grade teacher this year and is moving down to join the kindergarten classes. We are sad to not have Mrs. G, but have heard nothing but great things about Mr. Denney. Brooklyn can't believe that she is going to have a "boy" teacher.
(That what she tells everyone)

Bens new look

Ben has now gone to two R.S.P. weekends. This last weekend they gave him his new set of National Guard attire.

It was sort of a shock to see him when he walked in like this.
They had to wear these all weekend and it was not
nice weather this weekend at all.
I think he looks so good in his uniform!

We're all so happy with Ben decision to take this step in life. It will be a lot of hard work on both our parts, but this is a very important step in our lives. Ben will leave at the end of August for Missouri and will be gone for 22 weeks. He gets to come home for two weeks at Christmas and we're all really glad for that. He should then be home the third week of January for good.

Our Mothers Day get away!

For Mothers Day this year we all took a trip up to Angles Camp. My mom got another one of her amazing timeshares for the weekend so we celebrated all weekend long.

When we got there on Friday we all got our suits on and
went and jumped into the huge pool that was at the resort!

The kids love to swim.
They're like a school of fish,
they never want to get out of the water when it's time to leave.

On Saturday we woke up, got ready and drove to Yosemite for the day.

Last time we all went here Brooklyn was about six months old.
Everyone was so full of the great energy that this place is full of.

Our first stop was the deli.
Traveling with a group of kids this big,
we tend to get a lot of kids telling us that their starving
as soon as they see anything that relates to food!
(It's crazy how history repeats itself.)

After we ate, we headed over to the Indian display.

~This would of been the perfect tiki size for our family~

Once we made it through the Indian village we asked the kids
what they wanted to do and they ll wanted to see a waterfall up close...

So we followed the walkway over to Lower Falls. They have really done a lot of up grades since the last time we had been there. It was so easy to get around with our group of eleven.

The falls were in full force with all the snow melting.

It was such an amazing site.

On our walk to the falls all the kids did a bit of rock climbing.

Here we are at the bottom of the falls.
The water was so loud and the mist gave you such an amazing rush.

Poor mom was so cold being
by all the cold misty spray.

We all ran across the bridge.
The kids were all having so much fun.
This was such an amazing thing to see.

Everything about Yosemite is breathtaking!

As it got closer to our time to leave
we stopped to do our traditional tree hugging.

It had been such a long time, to long since we had been here.
The time just flew by and none of us wanted to leave.

Bayleigh really wasn't sure what we were doing!

After our adventures outside we all went up
to the pizza parlor to share a pizza.

We sure all had a great time. The kids were all so good and were so full of life and amazing energy the entire day. I love sharing this experience with everyone.

Even though it's a bit late, I want to wish everyone a Happy Mothers Day. Thank you Ben, Mom and Camey for such a great weekend. Thank you to all the seven amazing children I was with, You all make me a very happy Mom!