Celia just finished up her K level math book, so she’s onto a first grade book and did the first two exercises already today. She is just chewing up the math lately. Josie is also sharing her excitement for her math book. Ewan is excited to be wearing Celia’s slippers. He’s also decided that he’s very excited for me to be taking his photo now anytime the camera comes out. It makes it very difficult to sneak around as he suddenly yells “take my picture! take my picture! get over here mommy take my picture!”

This was taken today at Waldo park, a great afternoon for play after the morning rain. The kids started making faces at me once they noticed I was taking pictures of them, but I enjoyed trying to use some of our beautiful foliage for some framing since it won’t be around much longer!

Today Celia had her 5th birthday and we had a small party with some of her friends! We hung out at my parents house, bounced in the bounce house, played limbo, played the ‘animal game’, and decorated star-shaped boxes for takehomes. They also played with the balloons. Simple pleasures of a five year old!

The bounce house keeps on going!

Celia under the limbo stick!

Sometimes they decided to go over the stick

Celia waiting for cake with her friends

There’s the cake!

Celia jumps for joy with the balloons!

This was her cake dress, she had to add it on before she could eat cake!

Today we went to have lunch with my mom and dad at my dad’s office. They have some nice picnic tables outside and the kids can be loud and active without being a problem in a work environment. Plus homeschooling lets us hang out with people during the day! They were playing a ‘spy’ game where they hid and signaled when someone found them. I set up my shot, and then announced dessert was served and so they showed up pretty quickly from hiding!

The logs are from last years holiday party theme. They literally made a cake that was almost half the size of this real log pile for the party for hundreds of people. It was good cake, but rather odd looking as I wouldn’t say logs are appetizing.

The kids down at Magnolia park on the swings. Ewan practicing his new tricks and skills hanging by the belly on the big kid swings.

Our other big activity for going to Cape Cod is always the beach! We went for two big trips, and then again for some picture taking sessions. The kids loved digging in the sand. Celia and Josie loved going out deep in the water and playing on the boogie boards. They were a lot more confident this year than last and wanted to go out beyond the safe areas. At one point the tide was coming back in so fast that we almost got in over my head and I had to pull them back in against their wishes. Also for fun in the water was the new phone case I got my dad that is waterproof. So we took it out in the pool, and out in the ocean and it kept working and snapping and we didn’t even loose it!

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My dad flying his kite! We didn’t lose it this year!

The kids up in the lifeguard chair!

The picture of Ewan with the duck whistle, RIP duck whistle 2015.

The turtle wars!!!

Smiles on the porch with sisters goggles!

One day I made oobleck for the kids, cornstarch and water. Cheap easy entertainment when you can get messy outside!

Jordi under water!

Josie in the water!

Celia on the boogie board!

Post beach nap.

Ewan on a boogie board!

Here’s how non-graceful I end up looking on my photo shoots, this time I had to do it in a dress. It was super windy!

Lots of these photos are courtesy of my dad.

If we haven’t talked to you lately, you may not know that we bought more house! The house above our house! And we’ve started some construction, it’s not going quickly, but we are standing in the photo above in the wall we removed. And lots of electrical work was done, but that’s not very noticeable. Working on painting now, replacing a door, restoring the tub and then we’ll refinish the floors before moving upstairs to do more work downstairs!