Friday, June 1, 2018

Finishing up school ...

It's June 1st today and that means we are in the last days of school for this year!!!  Yesterday, Ashlyn came home with a backpack full of books, notebooks, her pencil box and she is officially finished with her Peppa Pig lunchbox!!!  Matthew said they were also packing up things that will be moved to Houston Run for next years school term!  Finishing up first and seventh grade is a celebration and today Ashlyn's class will have a small party to celebrate their hard work this year and Matthew's class is making subs as a fundraiser for next years retreat!  The school halls are still buzzing with students and teachers and Hadassah was knee deep this week with final exams!  We are all ready for summer vacation and the count down has begun!!!

Matthew's class went to Gettysburg for their end of the year field trip!


 And Ashlyn's class went to Strasburg Railroad!!!


 
 
These two screen shots I got from Naomi Buckwalter's Instagram page!  She's one of the first grade aids and Ashlyn really enjoyed having her in their first grade class!!!  Thank you Naomi for giving your time and energy to first grade!!!
 


On a different note, the gardens are thriving!  The lettuce and greens did well this spring!


The herbs and tea are growing in leaps and bounds!




 We are still picking strawberries and loving every bit of it!!!


Strawberry shortcake was a must on our list this year to make while the berries are ripening!!!


Strawberry Salad is served every night at dinner!!!  With fresh butter crunch lettuce and strawberries right from the garden ... it's simply the best!!!!
 


This little man requested chocolate chip cookies!  They are one of his favorite cookies and I don't blame him one bit for loving these because they are so yummy!!!


Peony's is a flower that I love and I used to have a few bushes of the pink color!  When we rebuilt the house and got all new landscaping, the peony's got ripped out and never replaced.  I would love, love to add these to my garden's sometime but for now a friend from church said I could cut some from her gardens!  Thanks Becky!!!  They are so pretty and smell wonderful!!!!

 
This girl is growing up so fast!!!  Her school shoes were looking really bad and I wanted them to last until the very end but I totally made her day when I grabbed her a new pair at Target the other week!  She was so happy to have a new pair right in time for track n field. She was so excited that she wore them to sleep!!!  I didn't see that when she crawled into bed she had them on her feet!  But when I woke her up the next morning, she hopped out of bed with her shoes on!!!  We got a good laugh from this!!!  :)  Also, I am ready to let this girl sleep in during summer vacation.  All the kids do really good at getting up in the morning for school and normally they are not a problem to get up and going but lately this is challenging for Ashlyn!!!  She wants to stay up later and morning wake ups are getting rough!!!  She goes out to the couch and pushes off getting dressed for school until it's a must!!!  It will feel good to let her sleep longer!!!
 



And this picture is documenting an answered prayer!!!  God cares for all our needs and even for the little things that matter to the children!!!  The other week when we went to the beach for Hadassah's volleyball tournament, we left the motel that weekend without Ashlyn and Austin's blankies!!!  I have no idea how I missed both of these in the room but when we got home that night, the search was on!!!  Where are your blankies???  We knew right away that Ashlyn's blanket was left in the motel room because I remember packing up that morning and laying her blanket back on the bed.  I forgot to grab it before leaving the motel.  I called the motel and they said that they would put a note of a lost and found item and if it's found, they would contact me.  Ashlyn and I both said a prayer that it would be found because I'm sentimental and she loves her blankie.  She's old enough to sleep without it and she didn't shed any tears when she knew we left it at the motel but to get it back would be awesome!!!  Then the next day I still couldn't find Austin's blanket.  He has two of them so he used the one to sleep and I just thought that the other one would show up soon!  Well, I ended up calling the motel again and reporting Austin's blanket missing.  I'm sure they thought that I'm a irresponsible mom with leaving two important blankets in the motel room because that was my thoughts!!!  I don't know how I missed two blankets because I always walk through the rooms before leaving but it happened!!!  The motel guy said that they have sheets and blankets to wash that almost reach the ceiling but if it's found, again, they would contact me!!!  I was thrilled to get the call that Ashlyn's blanket was indeed found!  It would cost $16 to send it back home!!!  I was willing to pay because I wanted it back!!!  This blanket was given to Ashlyn by my grandma and it was still very special to us!!! 

Well, it happened that we had friends going to the beach the next weekend and so Martha Rose stopped in at the motel we stayed at and picked up Ashlyn's blanket!!!  She also asked about Austin's blanket and YES .... THEY WERE BOTH FOUND!!!  Martha brought them both home for us and the kids were so thrilled!!!  Thank you Lord!  Thank you Martha!  Thank you motel!!!


We stuck them both in the washer and this smile tells you how happy she was to have this personal belonging back!!!


Watermelon is another favorite food for our family and the children could not wait to eat some!  We did plant a watermelon plant in the garden and it's growing but far from giving us ripe watermelon just yet!  Thanks to Costco, we can enjoy watermelon now!


The last days of school are coming to an end and that means summer vacation is just around the corner!  I'm ready to have the kids home with me again during the day and we can't wait to go to the pool!!! 

We have some fun weekend events coming up!  To have the sun shine bright would be lovely because all week we've had some cloudy, humid days!  And because one of our weekend events includes an outdoor wedding!!! 

Enjoy your weekend!!!