Wonderful family day

Saturday was a great day!! We all went to Jamestown to visit the cemetery where Mom is buried and where a lot of other Gage and Ames decendants are buried as well, but at a different plot. The children were entertained, thanks to Meredith supplying them all with balsa airplanes, while we all took a part in planting, weeding, landscaping, and watering Mom's grave. It is such a lovely spot in the cemetery and it felt good to visit. Afterwards, we went to Moonbrook CC for a wonderful lunch. The children were so well behaved there too, we just have a fabulous group of kids!! Once we were home, Meredith and I took all the kids to the beach, as we had been promising it the whole visit. We stayed for 2 1/2 hours and had such a nice time. Since it was only the first day of the season, nothing was too crowded, including the beach area. We even ended up getting some sunshine on what had been a mostly overcast day! The boys were at home, watching FIFA and then headed off to play some frisbee golf. Everyone got what they wanted and we were totally wiped out by 1:30 when we went to bed. We packed so much into such a short time together, it was awesome!!!!

Dave and Doug, edging out for the flowers

Molly next to Granny's grave

Most of the kids next to Granny's grave

All the kids (see Odin hiding?) by the Gage/Ames gravesite.
Meredith putting her expert touch on the planting
Granddad does some final watering
At lunch, Granddad make Sir Hinkum Funnyduster. I still don't know that whole story....

Molly at the beach

Odin 'blue lips' Clark at the beach. Our waitress had given him a blue ring pop after lunch.....
Finally, a picture with all the kids in it. Couldn't get them to all look at the same time.
The Chautauqua Belle came and actually docked at the beach. Odd.
You can see how close it is to the swimming area. I could only get Molly to pose with the Belle.

Christmas in June

Friday in Chautauqua saw Lin and Meredith getting away for a while to Starbucks and Wegmans, two destination errands for sure!!! Later in the day, we decided to celebrate Christmas in June!! Given how punctual we are, both families had brought the presents we had intended to mail to one another last Christmas, but just hadn't managed to quite get to it!! The kids were in heaven, as you'll see!

Granddad and Mac having a bourbon, pre-Christmas

Odin LOVES the marble towers and is an excellent builder
Molly got a pink and purple princess cape. She might have slept in it one night ;)
Caleb and Odin both got foamy pirate swords. Holy cow that is a lot of fun!!!
Potter got knitting needles and an instruction book. Sadly, Meredith didn't teach me to knit, so Potter might be on his own.....

The dueling cousins. I **LOVE** this!!!!!

In Chautauqua......

After Caleb's gymnastics, we sped home and then left for Chautauqua!!! Doug, Meredith, and Odin were already there with Granddad, making this a fabulous destination!! Thursday night, the kids chilled out and watched part of Star Wars.

Meredith is so freakin' crafty, she had HAND SEWN Obi Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader

Leia (and C3PO that Caleb had) I mean, really, she is showing me up big time!!!
Odin wasn't so sure about Star Wars, hid behind Mama and the chair

Caleb - open gym and awards day!

Caleb's last day of preschool gymnastics included a lot of neat skills. He has made such progress, going from the Mommy and Me class to the preschool class in one year. Last Thursday was his final class until the fall. They had open gym and then received their awards from Miss Rosie, whom I just love!! She is an awesome teacher with the little ones.

Caleb and his v-sit

Caleb doing his table
Miss Rosie giving Caleb his gold medal
Caleb - gold medal and certificate in hand
Caleb's preschool classmates. YAY!!!

Caleb doing his handstands

Caleb on his obstacle course

Molly's first Superstar open gym

In case you don't know, Molly has been moved up from Level 1 to a class called Superstars, which is an advanced class that teaches the skills of both Level 2 and Level 3 concurrently. Only a handful of girls were selected for this class, so it was quite an honor for Molly to be chosen. She now goes to gymnastics 2 hours a week and she is absolutely loving this!!! The videos show the skills that they were working on this particular class session. Sadly, since I left for a bit of the class (it is two hours and I had the boys with me, couldn't make them sit through all of that!!) I missed her climbing the rope that goes to the ceiling. Her upper body strength is amazing!!!!

Pool time!!!

The last bit of fun was heading over to the pool! I had many pictures of the kids, but they all looked the same, so I chose one of each. The have recently redone this pool and it is great. The deepest it gets is 2 feet, perfect for all the kids this age.

Playground, carousel, teachers...

Molly had a great time at her end of the year UPK picnic. There was a lot to do on the playground, in the sandbox, on the carousel and of course, being with her teachers. What fun memories she'll have!

Molly wanted me to take her picture while she was hanging on the swing

Molly could climb easily to the top of the poles holding up the sandbox cover
Molly and Ms. Paufve

On the carousel with Caleb and her future husband Dante (and my friend Adrienne)

Molly, Caleb, Brady and Stephen up front
Molly and Mrs. Mieczkowski
Choo choo train on the slide
Watching her do things like this makes me nervous, but she is soooooo good at it

Monkey love!!

Molly's last day of UPK was celebrated at a local park. Luckily, it didn't rain, although it threatened to do so all morning and into the early afternoon. Wanting to get a group photo of all those cute little monkeys, Mrs. Talley started her Pied Piper act and made a huge monkey train to get the kids together. It was absolutely perfect!!!!

Fourth grade award ceremony

Potter received 3 awards on Monday at the 4th/5th grade award ceremony. He was awarded a certificate for chorus, a certificate for being in student council and serving as secretary, and he was awarded a certificate for.......wait for it........CITIZEN OF THE YEAR!!!!! I love my son!!!!

Mrs. Herman gives Potter his student council award

Mr. Williams got on stage and said 'I have two words for you, Potter Clark' and then he gave him his citizen of the year award. Love Mr. Williams too. He has been ***fabulous*** with Potter this year.

Monkey shirts

I decided to make shirts for everyone in Molly's UPK class as an end of the year goodbye gift. I have to say that they came out even better than I had imagined. Girls had pink shirts with pink letters, the boys had blue shirts with blue letters. Even made one for Mrs. Talley, her teacher. Love them!!

Father's Day!!!

This morning, we celebrated Father's Day with Dave, the greatest father that there is!! We began by giving him some thoughtful presents (he has thoughtful children!), then we headed over to Panera to pick up breakfast, then to the Nature Preserve for a Father's Day hike. It was a beautiful day outside! Our hike took us on trails we had never been on before (there are reasons for this it turns out) and we ran into some interesting things along the way. Then we headed back home for a quiet and relaxing afternoon. Ahhhhhhh.........perfect!!!

Dave looks at the framed picture of his family, one from the National Zoo a couple weekends ago.

The best group shot I could get. People were moving around very quickly, hence the fuzziness around some folks!!
The kids and I picked out a Crock Pot for Dave this year. Funny, most presents that anyone gets in this house are related to food. Wonder what he'll make us first???
The post-present opening pig pile by the children. Crash is just trying to figure out how to get on top.
At the nature preserve, horking down our bagels and Starbucks.

Dave and Crash. That dog absolutely loves Dave.

Ok, so we set out on this trail that wasn't as steep as the one we took over Memorial Weekend, but it was quite narrow. The goal was to get to the very top of the hill (which we didn't quite make last time) because the huge water towers are at the pinnacle. We did make the water towers, after a lot of sweat, and so I told Molly we had to document it, as I might not make it up there again without someone having to drag my body along behind them. Ok, so it wasn't that bad, but sheesh, we need to do this in winter when I won't be hot, sweaty and cranky. It flattened out and widened up a great deal, so I thought that the rest of the hike would be nice, flat and DOWNHILL. Boy, was I in for a surprise.

After leaving the water towers, now going along 'Anthill Trial', the trail got narrow again and there were these freaking huge anthills all over the place with ants swarming the trail. Honestly, you could not stand still or you would be covered up to your knees with these stupid things. And of all days, I had decided since it was hot, I would wear my Teva sandals. Brilliant!! (Oh, anthill pictures are coming, don't worry, but I was running the first time with the dog to avoid a trip to the emergency room for my epi pen). We ended up on this trail loop that was almost untouched. It isn't used by many people, mostly birders we learned. BUT, the very very cool thing was that as I was walking along, I saw what I thought was a plastic toy animal, but turned out to be one of the SKINKS that the University Preserve protects!!! It was the most amazing color of orange with iridescent spots on it that shimmered as it moved. We watched him for a few minutes, then moved along. We didn't see any others, sadly.
This picture isn't in focus very well, as now we are on the return trip from our loop, and I was sprinting (yes, me, out of shape, SPRINTING) past these anthills, yelling to the kids 'keep walking, don't stop moving, go, go, go!!!' Some of these are at least 4 feet in diameter and a couple feet high. Makes me itch just looking at these.......
On our walk back to the van after we were off the trail, Potter spotted this really cool and totally intact snake skin. Apparently, someone shed last night!!!!