I imagine everyone’s getting tired of me writing, “We’ve been busy”.  Maybe I need to invest in a thesaurus.  Thankfully we just had one kid in sports this spring, but baseball really seemed to take over our lives there for a couple of months.  It was a lot of fun, though.  Pics and details are on Bill’s blog.  BJ and Alyson will be playing soccer in the fall, and Bill may be looking into Fall Baseball for Christian.  I think he’s nuts 🙂

I had the pleasure of accompanying BJ on his field trip to the zoo on Wednesday.  Alyson got to come too, and she’d been asking to go to the zoo, so it was perfect.  (She can spell ‘zoo’, by the way.)  We had BJ’s friend Sammy with us, and the three kids stopped at EVERY bench to have their picture taken.

The new penguin exhibit is open and SO much better than the old one.  I’m sure I could’ve gotten a better picture, but the kids were not as interested as I was.  It was even feeding time, so I wish we could’ve watched a little bit longer.

And we ran into the famous peacock.  (Okay, so maybe not famous, but the peacock is one of the things I most remember about the zoo from when I was a kid.)

BJ was a really good big brother and made sure Alyson could see at each exhibit.  He was also really responsible about keeping himself and Sammy with Alyson & I.  BJ’s really grown up a lot this year.  Alyson really wanted to see the giraffes the most, and the boys both wanted to see the bats.  All were happy.  (Except poor Alyson who got sick at the end of the field trip.  We’ve come to the conclusion she was simply over-exerted.)

The annual school carnival was a couple of weeks ago, and Alyson got to ride a pony.  Mom would be so proud.  She even had her heels down (one, at least) 🙂  She loved it.  When we first saw the ponies from across the field, she asked, “Are they real?!?”  LOL

Christian and I also walked the Race for the Cure, our  annual tradition.  It’s always incredible to see the number of people turning out to make a difference.  You can see that while we were near the front and well past the half-way point, there were still thousands of people ahead of us and behind us.

Christian enjoyed the kids area this year too, especially the football toss (though he throws a football like he pitches a baseball).

I think that’s it… our update for another season 🙂  The summer will be filled with sports camps for the boys, daycare for Alyson, and work as usual for us adults.  Christian’s also looking forward to his first week of sleep-away bible camp!  We hope everyone has a happy, safe, fun summer!

Well, today is the last day of another school year already. I don’t know where the last 9 1/2 months went!

Alyson’s Kindergarten evaluation appeared in the mail today. She is, on average, a year ahead of herself. They evaluated 8 areas and assigned an ‘Estimated Developmental Age’ to each. In three areas, she tested at age 5 (personal skills, language, and gross motor). In three areas, she tested at 5.6 (visual motor, body image, and fine motor). And in two areas, she tested at age 6 (numbers and concepts). Very interesting. The bottom line says, “Alyson is ready for half day kindergarten. She is on probation based on age.” She’s very excited to go to her own school in the fall.

BJ is proud to be officially a 2nd grader. He had a couple of 2s on his report card, mostly accompanied by ‘occasionally’ on the Effort line. He’s starting to rush through work like Christian. He’s still getting 4s in PE 🙂 His teacher made a note that she appreciates the responsibility he took in turning in math assignments this year. Great job, BJ!

UPDATED:  Christian’s officially a 5th grader (wow, that sounds weird).  While he certainly struggled to turn in assignments, apparently the work he did in class showed significant improvement.  Yay!