Father's Night at UPK

Thursday (June 3rd) Molly and Dave went to Father's Night at UPK. It was a potluck dinner, stories, crafts, and science experiments. What a cool night!! With all the business, Dave didn't have too much time to take pictures, but he did get shots of Molly making a lava explosion. So much fun with vinegar, baking soda, and blue food coloring. KABOOM!!! Dave made a quiche to take and it was gone fairly quickly. What a great idea for the Dads, most of whom do not take the children to school or pick them up, to get to meet one another and spend some time at a very important place to their child's development. Have I mentioned how much I love this school????

Adding ingredients.....

Waiting......

Explosion!!!

Memorial Day at Greenwood Park - Gorgeous day!!!

We've lived in NY for 10 years and have never been to Greenwood Park which is only about 25 minutes from our house. It is over 400 acres of stunning property with a ton of ammenities in the Broome County park system. There is no entrance fee and plenty of picnic opportunities (grills and tables), along with a sand beach, canoes, kayaks, paddle boats, a huge playground, concession stand, bath houses, fishing and hiking trails. Whew, I am tired just typing all of that! We headed out with our coolers and bathing suits to take on Greenwood Park and boy, were we not disappointed at all!!

Emma steals Caleb's sunglasses in the van on the way. I had to give her a time out.

The kids wanted to hit the beach as soon as we arrived. The water was perfect temperature, the sand was just like at the ocean. Areas for swimmer and non-swimmers, lifeguards on duty, plenty of fun for all ages!!
Caleb tests things out by splashing first
Molly swims backwards
Caleb, much wetter, doing dunks now

Potter gets out from a swim and dries off. Look at the view and size of the lake!

On our way back to our picnic site, we saw a Downy woodpecker. He wasn't even afraid of us!!
From far away, it looked like dark bark. Up close, a zillion caterpillars. Wow!
The kids decided to spread out on their towels to eat lunch.
Crash found a cool spot under the table.

All the trees that were shading our table. Looks neat!

Another view of the lake
Emma eating all of my salt and vinegar chips
Molly and Caleb climbing trees wherever they go....

Sunday afternoon at home

Molly and Caleb in perfect light

Molly making grass bracelets
Molly and Potter cooling off, it was quite hot over Memorial weekend
All four kids cooling off in the water table. Who knew it could hold that many bodies??

Our hike along the Susquehanna

Sunday morning we decided to hang out at home for a little while, then we headed down to the Susquehanna River and hiked along the bed of the river. It was quite muddy since the water had receded, but Crash was off his leash (and let me just say here how absolutely well behaved he is off the leash in the nature preserve, and at the river on this day) running crazy and the kids were all over the rocks and fallen trees. We had a couple steep points where we had to climb up the bank, but overall, it was just another beautiful day outside in Endicott!! I love where I live!!!

Potter and Crash starting out along the river

Emma and me!!
Another lone shot of me. Now that Dave has his own camera, maybe I'll actually be considered to be part of the family and going along on trips and outings!!
My sweet little guy. With his shorts and shirt both on backwards........

I love this girl!!! She is afraid of NOTHING!!!

Wiping off the evidence.....
After getting back to the boat launch area, we ran into some friends of Potter's from school and they shared the bread they brought for the geese. Feeding frenzy!!
Caleb scraping up little bits to give the geese.
Potter tries not to get TOO close

Nature preserve with Emmawright

Emmawright came on Friday night to spend Memorial Day weekend with the Clarks. On Saturday morning, we hit Panera for some breakfast and then went for a death march hike in the nature preserve. Potter (I'll blame him) took us up some hugely insane steep trail that had us all panting. Seriously, more than a 45 degree incline. We wound around some trails we hadn't taken before and then met up with the trail that took us along the lake and over the bridge. It was a gorgeous day outside, sunny and warm, but with the trees overhead, we were relatively cool. But we were lunch for a bazillion mosquitos. Meh.

Molly climbs everything

Which she learned from Potter

Emma had been hanging from this huge tree, but when I got the camera out, she bailed on me

Another of my cutie pie
I never get tired of taking a picture of the kids on this same log. Seriously, I must have this same general pose at least 50 times in my photo library.
My best friend
The secret grotto, now with Emma.

Straight jumps on tumble track

Cute of my little man!!

Caleb's first open gym day

Caleb has graduated (in name only) from the Mommy and Me gymnastics class to the preschool class. This means that he goes in by himself for an hour instead of me accompanying him in class for 45 minutes. (What this really means for me is that I get to sit in the lobby and read my book and drink my Starbucks drink for a whole hour ;) Last Thursday was the first open gym day for him, so I went in with Molly (who was home sick from school) and we got to see him. He did a perfect job following directions; I was so proud of him!!

Sitting in the circle for warm ups

Pushing up into a (saggy) table

Extending that leg
Rock and rolls
Flying on his carpet to an unknown destination
Standing in line to do laps of running, galloping, and walking on heels.

C.H.A.R.L.I.E. gala night

Potter participated in the CHARLIE program again this year at school. The acronym stands for something that is basically a grant funded after school program, providing a variety of classes that the students can sign up to take for 6 weeks. This year, Potter elected to take the archaeology class, taught by one of the former 5th grade teachers (who coincidentally now works at the preschool Molly and Caleb attend) and he had a blast!! The gala night allows all of the different classes to display their projects and talk about what they did. There are lots of refreshments (provided by the cooking class and healthy snacking class), social time, and fun all around.

Archaeology display table with many of the projects they worked on.

This fish was first embalmed back in February. Surprisingly, it didn't stink too much and given its age, it pretty much in tact. Cool.

The broke apart clay pots and then had to reconstruct them, as an archaeologist would do at a dig site.
The sarcaphogi that they made and have a mummified barbie doll inside.
Their papyrus scrolls and other neat items.

Toad (frog?) in the yard

Last week, Caleb found a toad/frog in our backyard. This was particularly interesting to them, given that we have our own toad inside that we feed sumptuous meals of crickets and mealworms. This toad was a good 4-5 times bigger than Jumpy (our toad's name) and the kids at first wanted to bring him inside with Jumpy, but Potter thought that since he was so much bigger, that would be a bad idea. Ya think??